Great Movies From Terrible Books?

I hardly read fiction, and the latest one I have read (Catcher) won't be made into a movie.

The Fire Within (1963) based on the novel: Will O' the Wisp 1931 by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.

John Kennedy Toole, if you don't know, wrote A Confederacy of Dunces, a brilliant novel about New Orleans, in the in the mid-1960s.
Hollywood has been trying to turn John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces into a movie for 37years ever since it was first published in 1980. Various things have held up production of the film over the years, including the deaths of four of its potential stars, a lawsuit, and a devastating hurricane. I don’t know what’s happening with it, but the book is a masterpiece...

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I was surprised to find out True Grit was a novel, which I read recently. I was equally surprised to find I enjoyed the movie, which I saw for the first time this year. It may not be a landmark film, but the story and characters were ones you wanted to follow; and the landscapes were eye catching. The book wasn't terrible, but seemed more style than substance- the movie-John Wayne version- was much better.

I love that book. It is a real shame that the author only wrote the one book and then killed himself. He won the Pulitzer Prize for it posthumously. However, the title of the thread is Great Movies From Terrible Books, so that book would not apply.

Personally, I cannot think of any bad books that became great movies (unless you count the James Bond books, but, from what I understand, while they aren't nearly as good as the movies, they aren't terrible either).

The White Lioness was a hard slog and feels like a story that should be self-contained rather than involving the character of Kurt Wallander. It's okay and the central idea compelling, but there are better Wallander stories.

The TV film with Rolf Lassgård improves the plot as far as Wallander is concerned because he actually gets to go to South Africa. Plus Jesper Christensen, who people will know as Mr. White in Daniel Craig's Bond films, is fantastic as the villain.

Moby-Dick is far from being terrible but it becomes heavily focused on the science of whales for the majority of the novel. This is fascinating but there's always the pull to return to the main narrative. The 1956 film enhances various aspects of the story and gives it a lot more of an eerie, supernatural atmosphere than in the text itself.

I didn't think Jaws was that great of a novel, but I went in with the bias of seeing the movie before reading the book.

I notice the last few mentions were tales in the water, dealing with a huge animal, and I think that's why some movies are better than the books, because a movie has words, audio, and video.

I found the Bourne books a hard read, really tough to get through.

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I've heard that Forrest Gump the movie is better than the book.

Something came to mind...now these arent terrible books but the LOTR trilogy is really a slog to read through, with some absolute nonsense added in for padding. Yet the movies, no matter how long each edition gets, is a joy to watch.

In terms of terrible books, I read The Martian, admittedly post movie but it is nowhere near as engaging as the movie. I barely got through it. In fact, if I am being honest, it is a very poor sci-fi book. I then found out it was self published and understood the lack of quality.

I cant think of any other terrible books I have read, because if a book is really bad, I dont bother finishing it.

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The Bridges of Madison County was a phenomenon in the book business in 1992, a slim 192-page novella that was a mega best seller for until-then-unknown author Robert James Waller, eventually selling over 60-million copies worldwide. A fictional love story set Iowa involving a housewife and a National Geographic photographer on assignment to capture the covered bridges of the community, it is also a horribly written piece of crap. Just dreadful.

I was working in a bookstore at the time, with this damn thing flying off the shelf. I sat and read the whole terrible thing in two shifts behind the counter. 192 small pages of BIG TYPE. I think if you type set it like a normal book of the era, it probably would have been about fifty pages.

Because of the incredible success in sales, a film adaptation was of course inevitable, Spielberg was attached as producer, and when Clint Eastwood was approached to co-star he decided to direct it himself. He managed to talk Meryl Streep into reading the screenplay even though she found the book unreadable. The script adaptation is by Richard LaGravenese, who's original screenplay The Fisher King had turned him into a hot commodity in the industry. His paring down the essence of the story minus much of Waller's awkward cheesiness coupled with Eastwood's laconic sensibility and love of jazz somehow manged to turn this ridiculously bad best seller into a very good film.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

It was interesting reading these comments and mulling over the idea that epic scenarios might tend to be better shown than described. You could probably say the same thing about Dune. Yes the book is good but the visuals of both the existing adaptations brought the universe to life in a very satisfying way. The design in the film just beats the miniseries for me.

I've heard that too.

Hated the book and the movie.

Charles Dickens adaptations... Oliver! was especially solid. Great acting, and excellent set design.

Forrest Gump the book is just horrible. The author clearly thinks he's wittier than he actually is, there's a lot of dumb humor and gross humor, but no heart or soul, and his attempts at satire are abysmal. The film improves on this greatly by changing everything except for the basic premise, which is a man with a child's IQ is witness to and a participant in a lot of the landmark events of the 20th century. A lot of the greatness in the film is due to Tom Hanks who demanded a rewrite if he was going to star in it.

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Dune is better read than watched. Neither film captures the epic feel of the book. I love David Lynch, but his Dune is a slog, and it doesn't capture the novel very well at all.

The only Dickens story I've read all the way through is A Christmas Carol and even then it's hard to believe him not having the edge on any production given his incredible use of language. There have been some decent adaptations of the story but I think many of them fall down in some way. I think we're overdue a really faithful, well-made film version.

This also made me remember Jeremy Brett's fidelity to Arthur Conan Doyle when he was playing Sherlock Holmes. He'd have the story in question on hand and refer to it to make sure Doyle's work was being adhered to. Now having read more of Doyle, to the extent where I feel like he's nearly on a par with Charles Dickens, I can see how that Sherlock Holmes series brought his writing to life, especially his humour.

I think that's doing Lynch's film a bit of a disservice but maybe I feel that way because I came to Dune through the film without having read the book. I'd never seen anything like it, and it was epic to me. I definitely think that devices like the voiceovers to let us hear the characters' thoughts did work better than is usually represented and was a good way of transposing the book to the screen.

I'm going to add Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) to the list.



I love the movie, but I'm still working my way through the books (still only on the third one) and I don't know if it's just me, but I find the "Aubrey - Maturin" series almost unreadable at times.

There's an endless use of unexplained nautical terms that makes them read more like textbooks than stories, but author Patrick O'Brian's syntax and structure is just out there!
I don't know if he was just trying to make it read like old English, but half the time I don't know who is supposed to be talking, who's being referred to, that a setting has just suddenly shifted to another location with no lead in, etc.

I don't know how anyone could have read these and said, "This would make a great movie!" when I can't even tell what's going on most the time. The first book had virtually no plot (that I could discern) - basically, just the daily life of men at sea: the Captain and the Doctor become friends and the Dr. joins the crew - that's pretty much all that happens in the first book (outside of one ship battle, maybe). They do seem to get a bit better as they go along with actual plots coming into play, so maybe by the 20th book it was cruising, but I know I'll never get that far!

As far as the books, don't know if I'll be able to...