This sounds like good fodder f or several of my fellow Cornerites. Here’s the intro:
With the release and critical success of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, an adaptation of a novel once considered impossible to film, what better time to look into the process of adaptation. Most movies these days are based on literary sources. Which is ironic, considering the increasing lack of interest in books these days as opposed to the spoon-fed thoughts offered by Hollywood.
While many novels can be almost directly translated to screen, especially pre-20th century novels such as Jane Austen’s gossip columns, more recent novels can prove difficult. There have been bad novels turned into good films (pretty much everything Hitchcock Made, The Godfather), and plenty of dull adaptations of good books (Dune, The Unbearable Bore of Being in a Cinema to Watch This). There’s also a few oddities, such as Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman’s bizarre self-referential adaptation of ‘The Orchid Thief’. But despite the film industry’s frenzy in snapping up adaptation rights, there remains a few novels many fear.
Below are what I consider to be the most difficult novels to adapt, and who, if any, is fit to do that job.