The Film of the Book/Sandbox

""The best comment I heard about Starship Troopers was 'Based on the back cover of a book by RAH.'""

- Paul Tomblin

Got a hit book? Turn it into a hit film. What could be more natural? The name alone will sell tickets, and adapting a hit book to the screen can't be that difficult, can it?

Unfortunately, as many studios have found, it's not quite that simple. Print and film are very different media; what works for one will fall flat on the other. A good rule of thumb is: Great literature usually makes a bad movie, while mediocre literature often makes a great movie.

In print, special effects are easy; in film, they are expensive. In print, describing a character's thoughts is normal; in film, a voiceover is seldom acceptable. In print, a story can take days to read; in film, audiences won't sit still for more than a few hours. Getting round these problems means changing the story, for better or for worse.

One issue is that a typical novel is simply much too long to fit all of it in a two (or even three) hour movie, so significant parts of it must be cut out. Sometimes entire characters may be changed, have their screen time lengthened/shortened (if not cut altogether), or important book-related plot points may be whizzed by, creating a moment of Fridge Logic. All of this tends to a trendy belief that no matter how good or bad the movie is, "The book was better."

Sometimes the film is so successful the book gets forgotten (Bambi, Mary Poppins, The Princess Bride). Other times, the book is still read long after the film is forgotten. In the middle ground, the book will probably be republished with a cover based on the movie poster and "Now a major motion picture!" or something emblazoned on it.

The Film of the Book is the opposite of Novelization, except when it's a new novelization of The Film of the Book. These are almost always execrable, vastly shorter than the original book, or both.

The Other Wiki has something to say about this kind of thing in its usual style. Adaptations like this are likely to lead to Old Guard Versus New Blood incidents.