In
modern day culture you can rarely read a good book without it being turned into
a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. Audiences
consistently look for a good film adaptation and it is a guaranteed money maker
for the studios. One of the biggest page turner’s of the year 50 Shades of Grey
has already locked a screenwriter in place and soon all of the finest young
actors will be lining up for the starring role of Mr Christian Grey.
Some
of the films from IMDB’s Top 250 Movies of all time list are novel adaptations.
Are writers really counting that their films will be made into a big budget
blockbuster? Or are film studios counting that the talented authors of the
world will write a bestseller that they can sell to modern audiences?
I
think that the above questions can be answered yes, with both parties hoping
for the same thing. Film makers are guaranteed that if a book is part of a
phenomenon then a film will be successful. However, if it has been a successful
book franchise then the studios are practically skipping to the bank. It is
important to remember that Harry Potter would not be the juggernaught that it
is today without the film franchise. Other great examples of this are: Twilight
series, The Hunger Games trilogy and the James Bond series.
One
of my favourite novels of all time is ‘Trainspotting’ by Irvine Welsh, a
Scottish novel which follows drug addict Renton
and his friends through the ups and downs of Edinburgh life. In 1996 Trainspotting was
released as a major motion picture and was extremely well received by critics.
The film was fantastic and I thought that the casting choice was perfect;
however the book is far superior as there are more characters and links in the
story which really stand out. There is a great blog post about Trainspotting which you can check out here.
There
are literally thousands of good books which have been brought to life on the
big screen; another favourite of mines is High Fidelity where the formula
changed on film. Instead of the central character Rob Gordon living in London, they instead wrote his character to live in Chicago. A big change if
you ask me, but one that worked extremely well.
On
the other hand there are people who prefer to see films than read novels as a
lot of people simply don’t have the time to sit down and read a book and would
rather see what all the fuss was about in the space of around 2 hours. I have
friends who do this, they have never read a Harry Potter book but are quite
happy to watch the films and I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with
this.
On
a chance outing to the cinema one day, my other half and I went to see The
Lincoln Lawyer (which you can read my review here) as we had discount vouchers
and I went into this film knowing little about it and having never read the
book. After seeing the film it made me want to read the book to see what
elements from the storyline were missing and to gain a better insight into the
story.
I enjoy reading a good book and I also love a
night out at the cinema. I think that it is safe to say that as long as there
are great novels being written, the studios will never not have a story to
tell. What do you think?
There is a great article on this published by The Examiner which you can read about below:
As
always feel free to leave any comments below and I will reply to them or if
you’re a twitter fan contact me @Screen_Gal with any comments. I’m sorry that I
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