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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"The best comment I heard about ''[[Starship Troopers (
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?
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== Action ==
* ''[[The Bourne Series (
* ''[[James Bond]]'':
** ''[[James Bond|Goldfinger]]'' the book has a plot to steal the gold from Fort Knox (which the movie Bond points out is impossible) using a nuclear bomb to blow open a door while everyone is suicidally close. The movie changes the scheme into a plan to raid the fort just long enough to place the nuclear bomb in the main vault. Any gold surviving the blast would be radioactive and thus worthless, making the value of Auric Goldfinger's own gold jump at least tenfold.
** ''[[
** The only Bond movie from the eighties to follow the plot of the novel was ''[[
* ''[[Jaws]]'' started life as a harmless-enough page-turner with extremely unlikeable characters, and was adapted into one of the best movies ever made.
* ''[[
* ''[[Fight Club]]'': Even the book's author thinks the film ended better. A foreword in a later run even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this trope; "There was a ''book?''"
* Movie adaptations of [[Tom Clancy]]'s Jack Ryan novels have gone from remaining true to the spirit of the original to... not, as the movie series rolls on, according to some fans of the original novels.
* ''[[Watchmen]]''
* The ''[[Band of Brothers (TV series)|Band of Brothers]]'' miniseries is based off of a historical novel written by Stephen Ambrose, and despite a few blatant inaccuracies. The sequel, ''[[The Pacific]]'', is based off of several veterans' memoirs.
* ''[[Tropic Thunder]]'' [[Lampshade|lampshades]] and parodies this trope ''hard''. The entire premise of the film is that a movie company is attempting to make a film based on a in-universe book of the same name. Humorously enough, it's implied that the script is fairly faithful to the book... it's just that nobody has read either. The trope is eventually subverted twice when it's revealed that {{spoiler|[[Based on a Great Big Lie|the author never went to Vietnam]]}} and at the end, when {{spoiler|the film is changed to ''Tropic Blunder'', a documentary on [[Troubled Production|how badly the production of the film failed]]}}.
* ''[[The Guns of Navarone]]''
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* ''[[White Fang]]'' and ''[[The Call of the Wild]]'' by [[Jack London]]. The problem seems to be that Hollywood can't handle an animal as the main star of a movie, and so completely rewrites the story to include an important human who is actually the main character. The canine star becomes the [[Sidekick]].
* Somewhat inverted in ''[[Monty Python and The Holy Grail]]'' with "The Book of the Film" which they dip into to cover the boring bits quickly.
* The movie supposedly based on ''[[The Dark Is Rising]]''. The book is pretty good, to the point that some consider it an underground classic of (children's?) literature. The movie is pretty bad, to the point where it deserves to have an episode of [[
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== Biography ==
* ''[[Naked Lunch]]'' is un-adaptable, for a variety of reasons. (Chief among them, semi-obscene, no coherent plot.) [[David Cronenberg]]'s solution when doing a film adaptation was to graft a few scenes and ideas from the novels onto a [[Roman à Clef]] version of author William S. Burroughs' life.
* ''[[Malcolm X (
* ''[[What's Love Got to Do
== Children's Fiction ==
* [[Disney Animated Canon]]:
** ''[[Peter Pan (Disney film)|Peter Pan]]''
** ''[[
** ''[[The Jungle Book (Disney film)|The Jungle Book]]'' Book-Kaa was a wise and trusted friend who took over as Mowgli's mentor when he was too grown-up for Baloo. Book-Hathi was the wisest and strongest of the animals and generally acknowledged as Master of the Jungle (until Mowgli learned a secret about him). The monkey-folk didn't have a king, and if they had, it wouldn't be a member of a different genus from a couple of thousand miles away. Book-"Father Wolf" is renamed "Rama" which is the name of a ''bull'' in Kipling's original. And many other things as well. Other than the setting and some names, there is next to no resemblance.
** ''[[101 Dalmatians
* ''[[
* ''[[Watership Down]]'' had a fairly good animated movie, despite cutting off some characters and changing minor plot points. Fortunately, it wasn't [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerised]].
* ''[[Mrs. Frisby and
** ''[[The Secret Of NIMH 2]]: Timmy To The Rescue'', a straight-to-video musical with virtually nothing to do with the first film.
* Much of [[
* [[Dr. Seuss]]: In addition to the many [[Made for TV Movie|animated TV specials]] based on the works of [[Dr. Seuss]], four of his stories have made it to the big screen: ''[[How the Grinch Stole Christmas (
{{quote| '''Wikipedia:''' As a result of frequent mature themes, the widow of Theodor Geisel (who holds the rights to his work) declared that there are to be no more live-action movies based on the works of Dr. Seuss, arguing that the film has clearly deviated from her late husband's family-friendly work.}}
* ''[[Holes]]'' by Louis Sachar got a pretty faithful adaption. But that's mostly because Sachar wrote the screen play
* ''[[Ella Enchanted]]'', by Gail Carson Levine.
* ''[[City of Ember]]'' is actually not a bad movie on its own, though it did add a new [[Mentors|mentor]] character for Doon and also a [[Nightmare Fuel|giant mole that chases the kids through an empty storeroom]], among other things.
* ''[[Coraline (
* ''[[Where the Wild Things Are]]''
* ''[[How to Train Your Dragon]]'' is an animated film set in a very similar world to that of the original children's books, with many of the same characters, but in a [[Pragmatic Adaptation]] the premise is altered to allow for dramatic conflict and dragon riding that impress on-screen.
* ''[[The Brave Little Toaster]]'', even though [[Keep Circulating the Tapes|it's probably not possible to get the book anywhere except online]] [[Crack is Cheaper|for a ridiculous price.]]
* ''[[Ramona and Beezus (
** There was a Canadian TV series in the 1980s based on the Ramona books, starring a young Sarah Polley.
* ''[[Harriet the Spy]]''
* ''[[The Nutcracker
* ''[[Diary of a Wimpy Kid]]'' actually started out as a [[Web Comic]].
== Comedy ==
* ''[[Get Shorty]]'' as well as its sequel, ''[[
* ''[[Waiting to Exhale]]'': turned Robin from a career-driven woman who was burdened with caring for her elderly parents into a naive nymphomanic who had book sense but no common sense.
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== Coming Of Age Story ==
* ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'' Replacing all of those subtly significant threads with the most important subplot (Boo Radley) and taking a more guarded approach to characterization would've made the book rather simplistic, but made the movie great.
* ''[[Gone
== Drama ==
* ''[[Forrest Gump]]'' was adapted from a very funny novel about an [[Idiot Savant]] who becomes an astronaut, a chess master, a harmonica player and a millionaire into a guy who's [[Inspirationally Disadvantaged]], and who [[Historical In-Joke|touches important events and people]]. The character of Jenny was changed from a sensible [[Girl Next Door]] type into a tragic shallow party girl (admittedly deepening her character). The sequel, ''Gump And Co.'', followed more in the vein of the movie, both in increasing the number of random cameos and retaining the deaths of Forrest's Mom and Jenny, neither of whom died in the original book.
* ''[[
** ...''[[
** In the early 2000's, an author named Mark Winegardner published two [[Novelization|books]], entitled ''The Godfather Returns'' and ''The Godfather's Revenge'', which in many ways are sequels to Part II. In many ways, the new novels read very much as if written in Mario Puzo's own hand, only enhanced in quality and subtly altering [[Canon Dis Continuity|facts which simply did not fit]]. Eventually, in the closing chapters of the second book, we learn that [[Manipulative Bastard|Nick Geraci]], a Winegardner original character who had died trying to take over the Corleone family business, had written his memoirs while in exile and had them published posthumously. Which, in time, are...
** ...made into a trilogy of movies (two of which become cinema classics) detailing the story of a "fictional" mafia family through the years. Thus, it is suggested that, within this apparently separate universe, the [[Based on a True Story|events of the books and film are true]] and were [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|brought to us by somebody who was there]].
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* Most of [[John Grisham]]'s early novels have been made into films by this point, with varying degrees of success. Even the novel that Grisham said he would never option for film ([[A Time to Kill]]) was made into a movie... a fairly good one at that. It helps that Grisham's novels are essentially beach-read page-turners.
* ''Never Let Me Go'', based on the book of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, kept the majority of the plot intact, as well as pulling off spot-on portrayals of the three main characters.
* [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1066120-scarlet_letter/ Several] [http://www.rinkworks.com/badmovie/reader/43.shtml reviewers] [http://www.hit-n-run.com/cgi/read_review.cgi?review=40461_wyldfyr note] [http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9510/scarlet_letter/review/index.html that] [[They Just Didn't Care]] for ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]''. This was mocked in ''[[
* ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'' by the Coen Brothers is a very rare example of a film that's even better than the book it was based off of. And the book is pretty damn good.
* ''[[Mysterious Skin]]'' is considered another rare success: It is both faithful to the book, and it presents the difficult subject matter with consideration instead of [[Anvilicious|shoving it into the viewer's face]].
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* ''Greed'', the film adaptation of the novel ''McTeague'', is famous in film history as the most literal adaptation ever. It faithfully recreated every scene as it appeared in the novel, included every character most of the dialogue (not a mean feat consider that it's a silent movie), and was shot on location. The result was a movie that was a unwatchable mess (except to film buffs) that's over ''ten hours'' long.
* ''[[The Color Purple]]''
* ''[[
* ''[[Cold Mountain]]'' was based on the novel of the same name by author Charles Frazier.
* S.E. Hinton's ''[[The Outsiders]]'' was adapted into a movie that was identical. To know one is to know the other.
* ''[[
** ''The Black Dahlia'' however, didn't do so well. [[James Ellroy]] even mocked it before it was being made.
* ''[[Jackie Brown]]'', Quentin Tarantino's adaptation of Elmore Leonard's ''Rum Punch''
* ''[[La Reine Margot (
== Fantasy ==
* ''[[Field of Dreams]]'' was based off of [[
* ''[[Bridge to Terabithia]]'' was an example of a fairly accurate adaptation (it being co-written by the son of the author probably helped in that regard.) being made to look horribly unfaithful through commercials; [[Never Trust a Trailer]]. The book was, {{spoiler|sadly}}, inspired by a true story. {{spoiler|The author's son best friend was struck by lightning and died in a freak accident, which makes the authors son the real-life Jesse. It's only natural he would never let the book be adapted otherwise.}}
* ''[[Harry Potter (
** The end of the relationship with Cho. In a nutshell, Book: they break up because, among others, he realized the only reason why they were together was because of Cedric's death. Movie: He breaks up with her because she told Umbridge about Dumbledore's Army, but it's later revealed to have been under truth serum, so it's implied they get back together.
** Also major in the case of the sixth movie, which arguably misses the overall function of the book by almost entirely omitting {{spoiler|the lessons delving into Voldemort's past that ultimately help Harry understand and thus defeat Voldemort.}}
* ''[[The Inheritance Cycle|Eragon]]''. Multiple missing main characters, more main characters having a single line or so, completely different locations, general failure to understand universal laws such as magic in-universe, and a completely different ending. Proved a [[Franchise Killer]] to the prospect of a movie of the sequel, since so much was omitted or defiled, although it did still make a profit.
* ''[[
* ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'', based on the novel of the same name. The bare bones of the book's story is there ({{spoiler|Poseidon's child is framed for stealing Zeus's lightning bolt, he goes on a quest to get it back with Annabeth and Grover, he's successful}}). Might be more towards executive meddling because a number of the plots that were left out because they leave things open for future movies, which they didn't know would happen. Add to that some of the character personal changes (namely aging the main characters 4-6 years) made it easier to make the movie.
** They removed a swordfight with the god of war.
** The biggest outright removal was the [[Big Bad|main villain]] of the series, {{spoiler|Kronos}}. Among other things they changed the character of Grover from a somewhat serious character who had moments of comic relief, to an outright jive-talkin' black kid. They removed the concept of mist, which explains why [[Sunnydale Syndrome|no one noticed]] greek gods actually existing. They didn't mention the prophecy that led to no children of the big three being born. All the characters were changed from ages 12 to ages 16, and the main overarching romantic plotline between {{spoiler|Percy and Annabeth}} was resolved in the first film. And they killed {{spoiler|Luke}} the other main villain of the series (even though it could be considered somewhat ambiguous, as he is last seen being launched into the water by the trident, so it is possible that he survived.
* ''[[The Princess Bride (
* ''[[Mary Poppins]]''
* ''[[The Neverending Story (
** The second film covers the second half of the book, and takes more liberties with it.
* ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' films.
* ''[[The Golden Compass]]'', an adaption from the ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' novels, suffered from considerable [[Executive Meddling]] for its [[Rage Against the Heavens|subject matter]] and [[Downer Ending]] (which is on [[YouTube]]!).
* ''[[The Pagemaster]]''
* ''[[Stardust (
* ''[[Interview
** ''[[Queen of the Damned]]''
* ''[[A Wizard of Earth Sea]]'', which managed to [http://www.slate.com/id/2111107/ piss the author off in a big way] with the changes made.
* ''[[Seven Faces of Dr. Lao|7 Faces of Dr. Lao]]'' is the film adaptation of ''[[The Circus of Doctor Lao]]''.
* [[MGM]]'s ''[[The Wizard of Oz (
** The notion that making the Oz experience into a dream was an "infamous" change is probably a minority opinion. ''The Wizard of Oz'' is one of the most beloved movies of all time, and in many ways it has overshadowed the success of the book.
* ''[[What Dreams May Come]]'' is based on a 1978 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. There are substantial differences between the book and movie in the characters, the presentation of afterlife, and the ending. Matheson based his depiction of afterlife on extensive research into mysticism and near-death experiences, which he lists in a bibliography at the end. He states in an author's note at the beginning that the characters are the only fictional component of the book.
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* Pick any [[Stephen King]] book, and chances are it's been adapted to film (in some cases, ''twice'').
** In turn, pick any of those movies. Chances are, Stephen King himself didn't like it. He's outright stated that he hates some of the movies based off his books, such as the two sequels of 'Children of the Corn.', and strangely, ''[[The Shining]]'' ([[Stanley Kubrick]] turned it into a downright horror masterpiece, but removed several plot elements that King felt very personal about, [[Write What You Know|because they were partly based on his own life]]). He did, however, like the movie's ending of ''[[The Mist]]'' even more than his original.
* All of Thomas Harris's books involving Hannibal Lecter -- in fact, the most recent one, ''[[Hannibal Rising]]'', saw the screenplay (also by Harris) finished before the ''book'' was. The series of four novels has produced ''five'' movies (''[[The Silence of the Lambs]]'', ''[[Red Dragon]]'', ''[[Hannibal]]'', ''[[Hannibal Rising]]'', and ''[[Manhunter (
* ''[[
* Although frequently so altered as to be nearly completely unrecognizable, almost every single movie by [[Stanley Kubrick]] and [[Alfred Hitchcock]] were based on books (notable exceptions are ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' and ''[[North
** The early sections of ''2001'' (set on the Moon) were based on [[Arthur C. Clarke
* ''Stir of Echoes'' is a movie "based" on a book of the same title by Richard Matheson. Other than one or two plot points, they have nothing else in common. The book itself is fairly outdated, which probably explains why the movie managed to be so removed from it and still be good.
* ''[[The Relic]]'' was a highly entertaining book that has spawned a really interesting series. The movie, not so much.
* ''[[
* ''[[Dracula]]'' has been made into dozens of films, the most notable being [[Dracula (
* ''[[Haunted
== Mystery ==
* ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]''.
* ''[[
* Subversion, but also a confirmation of the reasoning behind most changes -- the Vayner brothers' 300 page detective novel ''Era Of Mercy'' was adapted nearly word-for-word into a 9 hour "cinematic serial". Even that didn't satisfy the fandom, which complained about insufficient motivation for one of the leads without a voiceover to explain his thoughts.
* [[James Patterson]]'s first two novels, Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls, became films.
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== Romance ==
* ''[[Twilight (
* ''[[Blood and Chocolate]]'' was made into a movie in 2007, by completely subverting the entire theme presented in the original book.
* Emma Thompson's adaptation of ''[[Sense and Sensibility (
* ''How Stella Got Her Groove Back''
* ''[[The English Patient]]''; the movie [[Pragmatic Adaptation|left out]] a lot of the book, in the process shifting the focus onto the title character's backstory. Often blamed for encouraging [[Misaimed Fandom]] directed the destructive, violent love affair central to said backstory.
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== Science Fiction ==
* With the exception of ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'', no book by [[Philip K. Dick]] will ever be faithfully adapted. Mostly because he was crazy, and yet the books were incredibly smart. Also, almost none of the movies keep the titles of the books and stories that inspired them, mostly due to trying to turn quirky, introspective science fiction into bigass action movies, and the names had to reflect that switch.
* ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (
* Richard Matheson's novel ''[[I Am Legend]]'' has been adapted to film four times in four wildly different adaptations; [[Vincent Price]]'s ''[[The Last Man On Earth]]'', Charlton Heston's ''[[The Omega Man]]'', the [[Will Smith]] vehicle which [[I Am Legend|shares the title of the book]], and [[The Asylum]] [[The Mockbuster|mockbuster]] ''I Am Omega'', starring Mark Dacascos. Not a single one of those adaptations is faithful to the book.
* ''[[Starship Troopers]]'': The script was already mostly written (under the title "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine") when they heard about "a book that had a bug war similar to the one in the script" as well as Verhoeven ''never finishing the actual novel''.
* ''[[The Postman]]'' became ''[[The Postman (
* ''[[I Am Number Four]]'' is based off of the book of the same name by Pittacus Lore, a penname of James Frey and Jobie Hughes.
* ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'' has had two very different film adaptations.
* ''[[Jumper (
* ''[[Dune]]''. [[David Lynch]] took a ''lot'' of liberties in the 1984 adaptation. The film's biggest hurdle, though, was telling the story in less than six hours -- if you've read the original, there's a reason its first volume is divided into three "books".
** [[Sci Fi Channel|Syfy's]] [[Miniseries]], ''[[In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It|Frank Herbert's Dune]]'' and ''[[In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It|Frank Herbert's Children of Dune]]'', were much more faithful than David Lynch's film, though they still took a few liberties. Such as increasing certain characters' roles, and downplaying or outright removing other characters.
* The movie ''[[Children of Men]]'' was more enjoyable than the book, which was a 350 or so page guide to how to do Christan symbolism in the least subtle way possible.
* The Japanese book ''Parasite Eve'' circa 1995 got sent to the big screens in 97. Then in 98, ''[[Square Soft]]'' caught on and made a video game sequel called (you guessed it) ''[[Parasite Eve]]''.
* ''[[The Hunger Games (
* Richard Matheson's novel ''Bid Time Return'' was made into the movie ''[[Somewhere in Time]]'' (the title of which was used for later editions of the book). There are some significant changes in its adaptation to screen, most notably in the period to which the protagonist travels back in time (in the book, it's the late 19th century, in the movie early 20th) and in the nature of what's happening (in the book, but not the movie, the protagonist is dying from a brain tumor, raising questions about whether the time-traveling experience is real or not). Also, the movie but not the book includes a spectacular [[Temporal Paradox|ontological paradox]] centering around a watch with apparently no origin (the protagonist receives it from an old lady in the present day; he goes back in time and gives it to a younger version of the same lady, and that's how ''she'' got it in the first place; and so on).
* Edgar Rice Burroughs' ''A Princess of Mars'' was made into the movie ''John Carter''. Some needful updating was done but some very pointless major alterations were also made. Instead of Mars being a dying planet simply because it's really frigging old, the Therns were dragged in from a later book, ''Gods of Mars'', as the real power behind the Zodangan leader Sab-Than. He leads the mobile city (perhaps inspired by Greg Bear's ''Strength of Stones''?) of Zodanga. Mars' deprecated state is blamed on the planet-wide resource pillaging of the Zodangans, with the Therns as the shadowy big bad behind the scenes, though they show up in the first few minutes. The atmosphere factory, powered by Ninth Ray energy is nowhere in the film. It was likely excised to give Dejah Thoris a reason to be made over into a scientist working on a machine to use the Ninth Ray to restore the environment. To make it a family friendly instead of NC-17 film, everyone on Mars is wearing way too much clothing. ;) To the good, the designers got the Tharks, thoats, Woola, white apes and other critters dead on to the book. Too bad they didn't adhere so close to the actual story.
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