#Book Adaptations

[mzannthropy]

At least the current two The Count of Monte Cristo adaptations were quite decent. Whatever people will say about either, or both of them, they cannot be included in that cohort.

picture of dorian gray but dorian and basil are brothers and it's modern.

phantom of the opera but it's a ya version with franchise potential.

wuthering heights but it's margot robbie and jacob elordi.

[inafieldofdaisies]

The Decameron (2024) | Season 1, Episodes 6 and 8 Parallels | Lou Gala as Neifile and Karan Gill as Panfilo

“I can't seem to die without you.”

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

“We have various shows we developed that we shelved. HBO developed them. We hired them, we wrote scripts, and they decided not to proceed with them — for now. If it is made, I don't want to hire some other writer to have his version. I want my version. I want to get a director on it who loves the material and would be a great director.”

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN — recently about adaptations of his books.

[glow-wine]

I've seen multiple Wheel of Time show haters on Reddit say that they want the show to get canceled so that the production company can start over and make a new adaptation at once. This is absolutely wild. This is toddler logic: If I break the toy my mommy just bought me, she will immediately drive back to the store and buy me a cooler, more expensive toy. No, she is not. You're going back to playing with sticks in the garden!

[thisbluespirit]

Films watched (1930s): THE LADY VANISHES (Gainsborough, 1938); dir. Alfred Hitchcock; adapted by Sidney Gilliat & Frank Launder (based on The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White). Starring Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Dame May Witty & Paul Lukas.

"People don't just disappear into thin air."

[wrenswreath]

Every time someone calls something that was only in an adaptation and not the actual book 'canon' a part of me dies.

[sombredancer]

Recent visually beautiful and generally watchable Russian fantasy movies

(because I start forgetting they exist at all) Ironically, all of them are adaptations of books/comics.

I Am Dragon / Он — дракон (2015) This movie is a very free adaptation of the novel "The Rite" / "Ритуал" by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko (Марина и Сергей Дяченко). It's a reinterpreting of an ancient tale about a maiden, a hero and a dragon. I don`t like the novel because it's very postmodern, wracks the typical fairytale plot and hurts my escapist feelings by ugly reality, but the movie is pretty fairytale-ish and nice. Firstly, it is visually beautiful and represent Slavic pseudo-medieval lore the way it should have always been in Slavic fantasy.

Secondly, as a love story between a monster and a maiden, it has got A PLENTY of tropes I'm usually looking for in Chinese dramas, so I understand very well why it was pretty popular in Asia.

Thirdly, when I said it's visually beautiful I wasn't joking. The main hero is played not by an actor, but by a male model, who is shirtless all the time (and sometimes pantless) and has a very fit and good-looking body. It's something unbelievable that someone in Russia made a movie to please women's eyes! Really, it's insane!

The folk-rock band Мельница wrote an insanely beautiful song "Обряд" (The Rite) for this movie (more matched to the book plot, though), but it was never used as OST, which is a shame. The song is about a black sheep girl, who is denied by society and asks a dragon to come for her and to take her away, because the dragon is denied by this world just like her. You can listen to it here. The band also has a song "Змей" (The Wyrm) (based on Lev Gumilev's poem), which is more accurate to the plot of the movie: the wyrm kidnaps maidens to make them its wives, but they are all dying during the flight; at the end of the song a hero-knight is ready to shoot it in order to stop it. Listen to it here.

It ends with HE, which is better than the book's obscure ending, so it is pleasure for me to rewatch it till these days.

Major Grom: Plague Doctor / Майор Гром: Чумной Доктор (2021)

It is an adaptation of Russian comic series "Major Grom" by Bubble comics. I am traditionally not very happy with the source material, but it is very good reworked to be the screen play of this movie.

It's very beautifully made in terms of director's, cameraman's and screenwriter's work, which is a rare thing for Russian movies. Also, the actors are young and handsome, especially the villain, which is a rare thing not only for Russian movies, but for the current Western movies, too. It has got a lot of allusions to Russian reality and a lot of beautiful views of Saint Petersburg, the second capital of Russia and one of the most beautiful Russian cities. And it has got some unusual visual solutions that turn it into a comic it should be.

The plot revolves around a mysterious serial killer (kinda bad Batman), a black sheep police officer and Russian Mark Zuckerberg (kind of). Mark Zuckerberg is the best guy of this movie and I like him a lot! Серёёёёжа! 🧡🧡🧡

This movie wasn't popular in Russia because of political situation in the country by the moment of its release (the both sides found out in there something insulting for them and banned it), but even if it has something like that, I honestly didn't pay attention to it. It's just a nice blockbuster with a tragic and handsome villain. The villain also has got his own BL-drama (in the comics they are really lovers, it`s as obvious as it could be shown in a Russian comic).

By the way, the villain is hot, insane, ruthless, sensitive and suffering. How does he contain all of this character treats in one personality? you may ask. He doesn`t. He has dissociative identity disorder, I would answer.

I don`t know if it works by now, but some time ago you could watch this lovely movie on Netflix.

The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита (2024) This is a loose adaptation of Russian classical novel "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov. I genuinely hate this book, but the adaptation reinterprets it, divides it into very interesting layers and makes it understandable and beautiful.

It`s layered, so it will probably be hard to understand what layer are we currently on if you are not familiar with the original story. The first layer is an ugly Soviet reality, the second layer is a plot of the novel that the main hero is writing, a story within a story. The third layer is the insane intertwining of the first two layers. On the reality layer the Master loses his job and freedom because of friend's denunciation and becomes star-crossed lovers with a married woman. On the novel level he meets devil, who visits Moscow by chance, and the devil gives him and his woman opportunity to live their lives being free from everything that usually tortures people IRL. Somewhere among those layers is a little plot about Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

The movie is visually beautiful. Although it feels pretty anti-Soviet, Soviet visuals of the movie are gorgeous. There were used the Stalin-times concepts of Moscow of the Future, the CGI buildings in frame came from the real architecture projects of those times. The Stalin Empire architecture style and views are typical for Moscow (but as I know, ironically, this all was shot in Saint Petersburg). It seems to me that this movie is heavily stuffed with visual allusions to the Western works: devil's escort looks like bunch of Pennywises, Margarita is Enchantress from Suicide Squad I, the scene of blood dripping is from Blade I etc. Usually, when I see it in Russian movies, it feels like plagiarism because I can recognize the reference but there is nothing except for these references . But here we have got the plot, so the allusions work as allusions and don`t irritate me.

The movie is dark, disturbing, uncomfortable. It really makes you feel as if you watch devil and his escort marching around you; they ravage, kill and destroy everything and you can only breathlessly, helplessly and in fear watch them. The German actor playing devil is insanely good. He stole the movie and I understand why it should have been named Woland (the devil's name) instead of the current movie's name. You may want to watch it, because it's very unusual in terms of plot and visuals experience, especially when you are not familiar with the book.

[kay-royal]

Books and book series I want shows or movies off but am scared about how Hollywood would do it

Charlie bone

Dorothy must die

House of night

Emily windsnap

All the lovely bad ones

Deep and dark and dangerous

Feel free to add on

[insanelydeadlybookcollector]

One of my favourite things Once Upon A Time did was skew fairytale, myths, fables, and folklore. This isn't new or even remotely groundbreaking, especially because the entire premise was adapting these stories. But I like how they did it and how much attention they paid to other retellings and, in a manner of speaking, validated those retellings and interpretations.

By this, I mean, how the writers have harnessed the story world Author plot and storybook existence and shown how in a few oral retellings or translations the gist of the story that we as an audience (and Emma in the story world) know has the bones of autobiographical truth but misses a few crucial details.

I could talk all day about retellings of snow white and Cinderella and Red Riding Hood that the writers of OUaT pay homage to (Red as the Wolf is no where close to being a new take but God they do it well). And then even changing the stories in a way that matches what they do with retellings in a novel way (Regina as the Ursula from Disney anyone? meaning the "real" Ursula can be anyone at all because this audience doesn't actually know Ursula) which serves in the same manner as their nods to existing appropriations and adaptations.

But I think, for me at least, how well they do this in their character of Captain Hook, a literary figure with near nothing specific tying him down and 101 readings because academicians and creatives alike have no consensus on what the hell Barrie was on about.

And from these little glimpses and subtle nods to retellings you can see how the story might have been twisted from autobiographical truth to some of the adaptations we know to the source texts. For example,

1. Hook as the original lost boy - a popular theory in adaptations. We see Killian and Liam in Neverland when he is barely an adult and still naive (sort of) and hopeful, long before his revenge days.

2. Hook as a symbol of adulthood, maturity and aging - for those who read Barrie as an allegory for children rallying against growing up and the only adult cast as a symbol of that, this guy is 300 years old.

3. Hook as the villain - sure thing.

4. Hook as fighting the tyrannical Pan - guess what? We've got that too.

5. Hook as rescuing Lost Boys - got that.

6. Hook as the guy kidnapping or otherwise delivering Pan lost boys - you'll never believe it.

7. It's an Crocodile that takes his hand - Hook calls the guy that took his hand that he's afraid of and hates with a passion a Crocodile.

8. Hook is Pan and vice versa, one grew up to be the other - not quite that. But we have a close enough story in 2 ways - pan/Malcolm and pan/henry.

9. Hook is Peter's father - again, a close enough story is provided that could easily be misremembered a few generations down or mistranslated a few times. Peter is Rumples father.

10. Hook wears red and has a perm - and I really do love this. They drop Blackbeard (the Treasure Island character that Hook was based on [so there's an even better nuance there too, not just in story world building but a nice nod to canon that their story world plot of misappropriations of the oral tradition of bedtime stories and generational stories is entirely feasable]) in Neverland looking exactly like Disney's Hook. Indicating that 'hey a pirate that looks like that is in neverland and well, there's only one of those in the story so it must be Hook' happened at some point.

I'll never get over how good they did that in story plot device of we're an appropriation, but our story is about this one source book existing that's a hundred percent accurate although it doesn't have all the details and somehow this realm is a bit mixed up on the facts.

[itneedsmoregays]

Happy anniversary, Little Women (1994) and (2019)!

Wow, two Little Women anniversaries for the price of one!

Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic book was released 30 years ago today, while Greta Gerwig's version hit the big screen 5 years ago on this day too!

[dyinggirldied]

Alice in different colors other than blue. From left to right, top to bottom:

Alice in Wonderland (1985)

Fushigi no Kuni no Alice (1983-1984)

Alice (1988)

Alice in Wonderland (1999)

[wornoutspines]

The Wheel of Time Season 3 is off to an epic start! The premiere is packed with action, stunning visuals, and a darker tone that sets the stage for an incredible season. Read more in my review #TheWheelOfTime #WoTSeason3 #EpicFantasy #TVReview #SeasonPremiere

[inafieldofdaisies]

The Decameron (2024) | Season 1, Episode 6 “A Stony Brook Away” | Lou Gala as Neifile

“What shall we do today?” “I just want to talk... about everything.”

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

“Maybe I’m one of the few people in Hollywood who still thinks that when you adapt a work of art, a novel, a short story, you should do a faithful adaptation. [It] annoys me too much because they change things and I don’t think they generally improve them.”

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN — talking about the changes in adaptations of his own books.

[anniedj08]

Welcome to Anna’s Anne of Green Gables Rant.

So I saw a TikTok edit of the 1980s Anne of Green Gables and LITERALLY EVERY. SINGLE. COMMENT called it Anne with an E.

BUT those two are not the same, despite having the same source material. Anne with an E is Anne of Green Gables but Anne of Green Gables is NOT Anne with an E. The first book in that series was one of the first book that I fell in love with and the first time I remember shipping a couple (Anne/Gilbert)

and when I watched Anne with An E forty the first time, safe to say I was severely disappointed with what they did with it. They made a heartwarming coming of age novel with triumphs and troubles that we can find a modern day equivalent to and they made it something dark and dramatic. The heart warming aspect are still there and I love the modern commentary on some of the more difficult aspects of the late 1800s/early 1900s like the residential schools and unequal marriages

but the show missed the mark for me and I felt like they were trying to made a show that fit the times/with what was popular at the time and they chose the wrong source material to do that.

Anyways, that was me crashing out

Anna over and out