Read the book — then see the film

Pop corn If you prefer to read the book before you see the movie, this list of book-based films and TV shows is for you. Each title is linked to our catalogue and to the Internet Movie Database. Please note - films are listed by the film title, not the book title, and these can sometimes change.

If you are interested in movies based on children’s and young adults’ books try our Kids Read the book list.
For books based on movies and TV that have already come out see Books into film and TV.

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - R - S - T - V - W- Z

Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter: One of America’s greatest Presidents may have turned a bit in his grave at the thought of being turned into a horror novel that mixed history and the present craze for the undead. Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2010 novel follows his mash-ups of Jane Austen and zombies and has Lincoln losing his mother to vampires and swearing vengeance on the bloodsuckers. Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian born director of the adaptations of the popular Russian vampire novels of Sergei Lukyanenko, is directing this one. Benjamin Walker plays Abe Lincoln with Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his wife Mary, Dominic Cooper, Alan Tudyk and Jimmi Simpson.
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The alchemist: Portugal’s biggest selling novelist penned this work some years back (first translated into English 1993) and it’s had great appeal to those who like stories about people following their dreams. The novel, set in Spain at the time of the Inquisition, deals with a boy whose dreams of a treasure take him on a journey from his home in Spain to Egypt. Laurence Fishburne directs as well as playing the lead and the cast includes Jeremy Irons and Madonna.
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Anna Karenina: Apparently the Leo Tolstoy classic has been adapted 24 times for film and television in various countries. The durable tale of passion about the rebellious Anna and her affair with Count Vronsky is being filmed on British and Russian locations from a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Keira Knightley plays the title role with Aaron Johnson as Count Vronsky. Anna’s husband is played by Jude Law with and impressive supporting cast including Matthew McFadyen, Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Kelly Macdonald, Ruth Wilson, Andrea Riseborough and Michelle Dockery.
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As cool as I am: Pete Fromm’s 2003 YA novel follows a teenage girl in a Montana town as she goes from 14 to 16 while her parents, married young and wanting to recapture their youth, make coming of age more difficult than it should be. Sarah Bolger plays Lucy, the central character with James Marsden and Claire Danes as her parents, Jon Tenney, Peter Fonda, Jeremy Sisto and an appearance by Alannis Morisette as herself.
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At Swim-Two-Birds: A film version of the classic 1939 novel by Flann O’Brien has been on the cards for some years. It is a story narrated by an Irish literature student but the story is actually three stories about different people. The film is apparently (hopefully, in terms of finance, as this is not highly commercial material) going ahead soon in Ireland with actor Brendan Gleeson making his directorial debut. The cast is headed by Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Gabriel Byrne.
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Austenland: Shannon Hale’s 2007 novel is a wry comedy about the 21st century obsession with Jane Austen, more especially with the BBC hit series and focused heavily on Colin Firth’s portrayal of Mr Darcy. To a young New Yorker who finds the men around her can’t compare with Mr Darcy it is all a bit much. When she is given a present from a wealthy relative to go to a sort of Pride and prejudice theme park in England for Austen fans she finds the Regency world not that easy. The film is the directional debut for Jerusha Hess who was co-writer, with her husband, of Napoleon dynamite and Nacho libre and it is also the movie producer debut for mega selling author Stephenie Meyer. Keri Russell is in the leading role with JJ Field, Bret McKenzie, Jennifer Coolidge, Georgia King and Jane Seymour supporting.
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B

Back roads: Tawni O’Dell’s first novel was published in 2000 and would have been just another good first novel if Oprah hadn’t picked it for her book club and sent the Pennsylvanian novelist, whose work – three novels so far – all centre on the coal towns of her home state. Adrian Lyne, who has directed everything from Flashdance to the recent (unsuccessful) Lolita, is making this one with Jennifer Garner, Andrew Garfield and Marcia Gay Harden in the lead roles.
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Bag of bones: A novelist (Billy Crudup) gets writer’s block after the death of his wife and moves out to his holiday home. A chance encounter when he rescues a small girl from being run over leads him into a relationship with the child’s mother (Jennifer Garner) a widow whose psychopathic father-in-law will do anything to get custody of the child. Mix in some strange dreams and you have typical Stephen King material and indeed this is an adaptation of his 1998 bestseller.
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Beastly: The 2007 Young Adult novel by Alex Flinn is a modern spin on the Beauty and the Beast tale, locating it in Manhattan and centering on an arrogant school student who is transformed into a monster and can only regain his human form by falling in love. The movie, targeted straight at that goldmine audience of preteen and early teen girls, features Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen, Neil Patrick Harris and Peter Krause.
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Being Flynn: Nick Flynn’s 2004 book Another bullshit night in Suck City is a disturbing father and son memoir that opens up a tragic part of contemporary America. The book deals with what happened to Flynn in his twenties when he worked at a shelter for the homeless in Boston and came into regular contact with his father, an ex-con with a major drink problem. Paul Weitz, whose career has gone from American pie to About a boy, is directing with Robert De Niro and Paul Dano as father and son, Julianne Moore as Flynn’s mother, Olivia Thirlby and Matthew Goode.
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Bel Ami: Guy de Maupassant’s classic tale of a shrewd young man about town who moves skilfully from poverty to wealth, largely using the ancient method of the casting couch to get ahead. The film is a vehicle for Twilight superstar Robert Pattinson in the title role. Kristin Scott Thomas, Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci are the female leads with Philip Glenister and Colm Meaney supporting. The film is directed by notable British stage directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod.
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Big Sur: With the film version of Kerouac’s classic On the road coming up, it may be Kerouac’s movie time has come at last. His novels are perennially popular and libraries will know that the dubious honour of being in the not to be returned by customers category he sits alongside Mr Burroughs and Mr Bukowski. This screen version of the 1962 novel is adapted and directed by Michael Polish who started his movie career with the quirky and memorable Twin Falls Idaho. Josh Lucas is playing Neal Cassady and Radha Mitchell is Carolyn Cassady with Kate Bosworth, Henry Thomas, Anthony Edwards (as poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti), Stana Katic, Balthazar Getty (as Beat poet Michael McClure) and Jean-Marc Barr as Kerouac.
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The big year: Mark Obmascik’s 2004 book is about a zany topic of the most anorak-ish kind: the race to spot the most bird species in North America in a single year. The three obsessive bird spotters are played by Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Dustin Hoffman with a supporting cast that includes Anjelica Huston, Steve Martin, Rashida Jones, Rosamund Pike and Dianne Wiest. The director is David Frankel who did Marley and me.
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Birdsong: It has taken a while to get the 1993 Sebastian Faulks novel to the screen. The BBC is filming it as a two part television drama with Eddie Redmayne playing the main character, young Englishman Stephen Wraysford. The novel tells the story of story of Wraysford’s passionate but ultimately doomed, affair with Isabelle Azaire before the war, and the enduring effect it has on him as he fights amidst the blood and gore of the World War I trenches. French actress Clemence Poesy plays Isabelle with Richard Madden, Joseph Mawle, Anthony Andrews, Thomas Turgoose and Rory Keenan supporting. The adaptation is by Abi Morgan who has previously adapted Monica Ali’s Brick Lane for television.
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Buddha’s little finger: The Viktor Pelevin novel, originally published in Russia and translated in 2000, is an interesting meditation on identity and Russian history, as well as a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist philosophy. It moves between events of the Russian Civil War of 1919 and the thoughts of a man incarcerated in a contemporary Moscow psychiatric hospital and it’s a brave enterprise for any filmmaker. It is directed by Tony Pemberton and it features French actor Jean-Marc Barr and English actors Sophia Myles and Rupert Friend.
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C

Camilla Dickinson: Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s novel from 1951 is coming to the screen in a film by first time director Camilla Moore. The title character, a young girl, is played by Adelaide Clemens and the story concerns her reactions to the divorce of her parents (Samantha Mathis and Cary Elwes) and how she strikes up a friendship with the rebellious elder brother of her best friend (Gregg Sulkin).
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Christopher and his kind: Christopher Isherwood’s 1976 account of his time in Berlin at the time of the Weimar Republic told how he met Jean Ross (the inspiration for the madcap Sally Bowles of Goodbye to Berlin, and later, the musical Cabaret) and Gerald Hamilton, (inspiration for the title character of his novel Mr Norris changes trains). Matt Smith, better known as Dr Who, plays Isherwood and Imogen Poots plays Jean Ross, Lindsay Duncan plays Isherwood’s mother, Toby Jones is Gerald Hamilton and Pip Carter is W.H. Auden. It is a one-off BBC production.
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Cloudstreet: The film version of the 1991 novel by Tim Winton is a television miniseries and has been filmed on location in Perth where the author was born and has lived (he now lives in Fremantle). A likeable book that tells the story of two working class families who come to live at a particular house in a period between the 1940s and 1960s. New Zealand’s Kerry Fox joins a largely Australian cast including Todd Lasance (the one with the inborn sneer from Home and away), Emma Booth, Stephen Curry and Essie Davis.
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Coriolanus: The Shakespeare play has been adapted for television in the past but this is the first big screen version. The title part is played by Ralph Fiennes who also directs. An impressive cast includes Vanessa Redgrave, Gerard Butler, Eddie Marsan, Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain and James Nesbitt. It has been filmed on location in Serbia.
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Cosmopolis: Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel is a strange unsettling tale of a wealthy New York asset manager travelling in his limousine to get a haircut at the time there is a funeral procession for a rap star, a Presidential visit and a riot. It was one of DeLillo’s worst received novels even if some critics thought it brilliant. A weird one to adapt but who better than David Cronenberg to do it. The lead is played by Robert Pattinson with Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti, Jay Baruchel, Mathieu Amalric and Samantha Morton supporting.
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The crimson petal and the white: A big-budget four-part British television series featuring Romola Garai in the lead has been adapted from Michel Faber’s 2002 novel, a clever historical tale about the dark side of Victorian England. Garai plays Sugar, the young prostitute who works in a brothel run by a ruthless madam (played by Gillian Anderson). Richard E. Grant, Amanda Hale, Chris O’Dowd and Mark Gatiss are also in the cast.
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D

Death of a superhero: New Zealand writer Anthony McCarten has adapted and directed his own 2005 novel for this film, a Kiwi/German co-production. Freddie Highmore is playing the leading character, a 14 year old boy who uses a fictional comic book to distract him from his struggle with leukaemia. Locations are being filmed here with the animated sequences done in Germany. The co-star is a rising German actress, Jessica Schwarz, who has recently appeared in a film of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and a bio-movie of the life of Romy Schneider.
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The deep blue sea: Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play is like many of his works, a subtle and understated portrait set in a time when things were often unsaid. His plays went out of fashion in his own lifetime and it is only in recent years that they have been reevaluated and staged very successfully. This play, originally filmed with Vivien Leigh and Kenneth More, is about the doomed affair between a woman who leaves her husband for a young former R.A.F. pilot. Rachel Weisz was the star of a recent London production and she repeats the role in this film adaptation by Terence Davies with Tom Hiddleston as her young lover, Simon Russell Beale and Ann Mitchell.
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Dirk Gently: The 1987 Douglas Adams novel comes to the big screen with Stephen Mangan as the title character, a self styled “holistic detective” who makes use of “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things” to solve the whole crime. Others in the cast for this television special include Helen Baxendale, Darren Boyd and Jason Watkins.
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Down and dirty pictures: Peter Biskind’s 2004 book took a sharp and gossipy look at the rise of independent movies (now very much on the descendant as big studios divest themselves of their small budget branches) in the 1990s. It has been adapted into a feature film with Vincent D’Onofrio playing large and loud Miramax head Harvey Weinstein and there’s an impressive supporting cast including Andy Serkis, Matthew Perry, Sally Hawkins, Hugh Dancy, Elias Koteas and Toby Jones
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Dracula: Bram Stoker’s classic about the gentleman who sleeps by day and goes out bearing his fangs at night came out in 19897. The story turned up on the stage as a vehicle for overactors from then and as soon as film came about Dracula did his stuff on the screen. It has been one of books most often adapted to the screen, sometimes well, often badly. The latest is in the hands of the Italian goremeister Dario Argento who has made the film mostly in Hungary with German actor Thomas Kretschmann as the title character and Rutger Hauer as vampire hunter Van Helsing. Argento’s flamboyant daughter, Asia Argento, plays Lucy, the principal recipient of Dracula’s bites and the film is in 3D.
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Dune: Frank Herbert’s vast novel is going to be filmed again directed by Peter Berg. The most well-known version of Dune was David Lynch’s love it or hate it 1984 production with Kyle Maclachlan as Paul Atreides and also featuring Sting, however there were also two mini-series of Dune and Children of Dune, in 2000 - 2003.
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E

The Eagle (of the Ninth): Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1954 novel became a British television series in 1977 and now it is going to be tried out on the big screen. It has been adapted by Jeremy Brock who has a good pedigree with the screenplays of Mrs Brown and The last king of Scotland. The novel is the first in a series set in ancient Rome and the film, directed by Kevin Macdonald, has a good cast including Jamie Bell, Channing Tatum, Mark Strong, Douglas Henshall, Donald Sutherland and Tahar Rahim.
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Eleven minutes: Mickey Rourke, Alice Braga, and Vincent Cassel are starring in an adaptation of Paulo Coelho’s 2003 novel which Palestinian Hany Abu-Assad is directing. Braga stars as a naive girl who swears off romance after a bad experience with her first lover. However, she only swears off the romance part; the girl becomes a high-priced call girl working at a club in Geneva, owned by Rourke’s character. Then Cassel gets thrown into the mix, playing a music executive "who gets her hooked on S&M." Filming of this steamy tale takes place in Brazil.
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End zone: Don De Lillo’s novel, his second, came out in 1972 and it has taken this long to make its way to the screen. It is the story of a young footballer at a West Texas college which is in its first year of integrated teams. Josh Hartnett is playing the lead role with Sam Rockwell and Kat Dennings in the other lead roles. The director is George Ratliff whose previous movie was an odd and unsuccessful psychological thriller called Joshua.
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Ender’s game: Orson Scott Card’s multi-award winning novel about a young boy sent to an advanced military school to prepare for a future invasion is the first in series of titles set in the 'Enderverse'. The movie will star Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley but as with Hunger Games its the kids who are the focus and Asa Butterfield (Hugo, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) has the lead as Ender Wiggan.
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The Eye Of The Storm: Patrick White is undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest authors but little of his work has ever made it to the screen. This 1973 novel is set in the Sydney suburb of Centennial Park, where two nurses, a housekeeper and a solicitor attend to Elizabeth Hunter as her expatriate son and daughter convene at her deathbed. However, in dying, as in living, Mrs. Hunter remains a powerful force on those who surround her. Charlotte Rampling plays the central character with Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis as her son and daughter. Colin Friels, Robyn Nevin and Helen Morse also star. The novel has been adapted by actress Judy Morris and directed by Fred Schepisi.
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F

Farewell my queen: Marie Antoinette is back on the screen again in this adaptation of the 2003 (translated) novel by Chantal Thomas which is told in the form of the memoirs of a woman employed as a reader to Marie Antoinette in the last days of the French queen’s reign. Diane Kruger is playing the Queen with Virginie Ledoyen and Gerard Depardieu co-starring under the direction of Benoit Jacquot.
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Filth: Irvine Welsh’s 1998 novel features an Edinburgh policeman who is so obnoxious he makes Dirty Harry look like Gandhi as he connives, coerces and generally makes life miserable for all around him. Like Trainspotting, this is a raucous lowlife black comedy. The lead part is a real change of pace for James McAvoy with others in the cast including Jamie Bell, Alan Cumming, Imogen Poots and Brendan Gleeson.
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Flipped: Wendelin Van Draanen’s 2001 Young Adult novel revolves around the confusing romantic developments of antagonistic boy and girl neighbours who eventually share a kiss when they reach their teens. It takes place between 1953 and 1957. The boy and girl are played by Australian actor Callan McAuliffe and American actress Madeline Carroll. The parents are played by Rebecca De Mornay, Aidan Quinn, Penelope Ann Miller and Anthony Edwards and the director is Rob Reiner.
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Foundation: The first book of Isaac Asimov’s classic series was published in 1951. The trilogy has never been filmed despite winning a one off Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series in 1966. Now New Line are looking to film it with an eye to producing a Lord of the Rings type trilogy.
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Freaky deaky: This adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel has been a long time coming to the screen as the novel came out in 1988. It’s the story of a Detroit policeman who comes up against a group of sixties radicals who are now part of an investigation into the bombing of a limousine. The cast includes Christian Slater, Billy Burke, Roger Bart, Katie Cassidy and Michael Jai White and it’s directed by Charlie Matthau (son of…)
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G

Game change: Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s 2010 book, subtitled Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the race of a lifetime was a highly entertaining book about recent American political carryings on and it has been turned into an HBO movie. It may have been expected that Tina Fey would do her Sarah Palin act again but no, the hunting, fishing and shooting senator is being played by Julianne Moore. Ed Harris plays John McCain with Woody Harrelson as his campaign manager Steve Schmidt, Ron Livingston as senior adviser Mark Wallace and Melissa Farman as Bristol Palin. Jay Roach, who did Meet the parents, directs.
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Gods behaving badly: The 2007 novel by Marie Phillips is an odd one to make it to the screen. It’s all about the Greek gods behaving badly crammed into a London townhouse and forced to have day jobs (Aphrodite using her skills to be a phone sex operator and Dionysus working as a DJ). Alicia Silverstone and Ebon Moss-Bachrach play the two humans caught in the crossfire of the gods. There’s an interesting cast to play the gods with Sharon Stone playing Aphrodite, Christopher Walken as Zeus, John Turturro as Hades, Edie Falco as Artemis, Gideon Glick as Eros, Rosie Perez as Persephone, Phylicia Rashad as Demeter and Nelson Ellis as Dionysus. The locale has been changed to New York.
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Great expectations: The British know that when in doubt reach for Jane Austen or Dickens. This adaptation of the Dickens classic, originally published in serial form 1860-61, has probably been given a bump forward after Oprah gave it her blessing when Jonathan Franzen was on her show and said his all time favourite author was Dickens. It turned out that Oprah had never picked up a Dickens but she rectified matters by choosing this one and taking it - in a special edition along with A tale of two cities – to the top of the American bestseller list. Mike Newell is directing from an adaptation by David Nicholls (of the huge bestselling One day) with Jeremy Irvine as Pip and Holliday Grainger as Estella. Helena Bonham Carter plays Miss Havisham and Ralph Fiennes is Magwitch.
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Great expectations: Yes, a second version. This one is a miniseries from the BBC which may be aired in time for Christmas this year. Douglas Booth plays Pip in this one with Vanessa Kirby as Estella, Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham, Ray Winstone as Magwitch, David Suchet as Jagger, Mark Addy as Pumblechook, Paul Ritter as Wemmich and Harry Lloyd as Herbert Pocket.
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The great Gatsby: Scott Fitzgerald’s novel came out in 1925 and quickly achieved classic status. It is regarded as an almost perfect piece of writing and has always been in print. The story of the bootlegger turned millionaire in the Roaring Twenties and his fated love for Daisy, wife of the rich and well connected Tom Buchanan has echoes of today in the financial boom and bust economy. It was an unexceptional film with Alan Ladd in 1949 and then a large expensive overblown version in 1974 with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy. A television version in 2000 with Toby Stephens as Gatsby and Mira Sorvino as Daisy has never been seen here. This version is being made in Australia with Baz Luhrman directing as well as adapting. Leonardo DiCaprio is Gatsby this time round with Carey Mulligan as Daisy, Joel Edgerton as Tom, Daisy’s husband, and Isla Fisher as Myrtle, Tom’s mistress.
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The Great Ghost Rescue: This is an adaptation of a 1975 children’s novel by Eva Ibbotson about Humphrey the Horrible, an amiable ghost with a far from amiable family. The spectral family then travel across England looking for a new home when their castle is up for redevelopment as a holiday resort. They end up meeting a boy who is unafraid of ghosts and helps them start a ghost sanctuary. French director Yann Samuell has a cast that includes Kevin McKidd, Jason Isaacs, Steven Mackintosh, Emma Fielding and Georgia Groome.
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H

The hobbit: What can you say about Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Tolkien classic except that every rabidly loyal Tolkien lover will be scrutinising it for any deviations from the book. Already there is Frodo, who doesn’t actually appear in the novel, coming into this as a sort of bridge into the prequel. Elijah Wood plays Frodo and Orlando Bloom plays Legolas who is also brought into this. All the usuals including Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis are signed up with Saoirse Ronan, Hugo Weaving, James Nesbitt, Christopher Lee, Aidan Turner, Bret McKenzie, Jed Brophy, Lee Pace, Dean O’Gorman and Mark Hadlow on board with more names yet to be announced. The film will be released in two parts.
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I - J

I, Claudius: Currently with a projected date of 2010, rights to Robert Graves’s 1934 novel were obtained by veteran producer Scott Rudin (The Queen). Reports suggest that Leonardo DiCaprio and screenwriter William Monahan may be involved with the production. The BBC made it into a miniseries, starring Derek Jacobi and John Hurt in 1976, which we hold on video.
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I don't know how she does it: Allison Pearson’s novel came out in 2002 and it was one of the first popular novels that looked at the phenomenon of the businesswoman who feels stretched managing both career and family. Pearson is best known for her column on this very subject in the Daily Mail, a column that is satirised mercilessly in the Private Eye column by Polly Filler. How the film version will fare is interesting given that it is a subject that has already been done to death in the media and is already old hat. The adaptation is an American one with Sarah Jessica Parker in the lead, Greg Kinnear, Pierce Brosnan. Kelsey Grammer and Jane Curtin.
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John dies at the end: David Wong’s 2009 novel began life as a web serial online in 2001, then as an edited manuscript in 2004 and a paperback in 2007 before ending up, with additional material, as a hardcover title in 2009. As an online title it became a cult item and now it becomes a film directed by Don Coscarelli who made the Phantasm series. It’s a comedy horror with science fiction elements and plenty of crude jokes of the Farrelly Brothers kind. Paul Giamatti, Rob Mayes, Clancy Brown and Glynn Turman lead the cast.
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K - L

Killing Bono: The 2004 book, I was Bono’s doppelganger, by Neil McCormick is the basis of this new movie which features Irish actor Martin McCann as the self styled saviour of Africa. The original book recounts the time the author spent in school with the members of super-group U2 including their frontman Bono as he rose to rock superstar and the music world’s most famous crusader since Bob Geldof. The film is intended less as a biography about Bono and U2, focusing more on author Neil McCormick’s feverish 10 year quest to emulate Bono’s success in a series of different bands. Ben Barnes plays McCormick with Pete Postlethwaite, Justine Waddell, Krysten Ritter, Charlie Cox and Luke Treadaway. Nick Hamm directs.
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Killing Them Softly: Some novels take years to reach the screen and Cogan’s trade, the third novel by the late author George V. Higgins, came out in 1974. It is, like most of the books by this highly rated author who died in 1999, a hardboiled tale set in Boston and dealing with criminals and cops and told heavily in dialogue, making it ideal for the screen. It has been adapted and directed by Andrew Dominik who made the impressive The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford, much praised and a boxoffice disaster. Brad Pitt was the lead in this one and he is in the lead here as the title character with James Gandolfini, Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Ray Liotta, Ben Mendelsohn and Richard Jenkins.
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Killing Pablo: The story of how Colombian gangster, Pablo Escobar, was assassinated and his Medellin cocaine cartel dismantled by US special forces and intelligence, the Colombian military, and a vigilante gang controlled by the Cali cartel. Current cast includes Christian Bale as Major Steve Jacoby and Javier Bardem as Pablo Escobar.
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The last voyage of Demeter: The Demeter is the name of the ship that transported the master of all vampires, Dracula, from Transylvania to London in Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel. This part of the novel has been used for a story of the voyage in which the crew are murdered one by one by an unknown personage who, of course, is the fanged one himself. David Slade, who directed the more teen romance oriented vampire romance Eclipse, is behind the camera on this one and Jude Law is to play Dracula with Noomi Rapace and Ben Kingsley also cast.
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Lawless (The wettest county in the world): Matt Bondurant’s 2008 novel is based on the true story of his grandfather and two grand uncles who ran liquor through Franklin County, Virginia, during prohibition and the years after. John Hill coat, which made two standout movies, The Proposition and The Road, is doing the film version and Nick Cave has done the screenplay. The main actors are Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska and Guy Pearce.
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Lay the favourite: An adaptation of Beth Raymer’s entertaining 2010 book which is a memoir of her time in the obsessive high risk/high reward world of professional sports betting in Las Vegas. The film version is directed by Stephen Frears and has the talented English actress Rebecca Hall playing Raymer with Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta Jones and Justin Timberlake supporting.
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Life of Pi: Canadian novelist Yann Martel won the Man Booker Prize in 2002 for his extraordinary novel about a teenage boy and a tiger on a lifeboat for seven months. It has been adapted as a stage play already and Alfonso Cuaron and Jean-Pierre Jeunet had been tagged at various times to direct a film version but it has taken Ang Lee, whose movies have covered a lot of different territory, to bring it to the screen. The book has been adapted to the screen by David Magee and a 17 year old Delhi student, Suraj Sharma plays the lead role.
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Lincoln: This adaptation of Team of rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin has been done by playwright Tony Kushner for a large scale production directed by Steven Spielberg. Daniel Day Lewis is playing Lincoln with Sally Field as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing their son with a large supporting cast including James Spader, Hal Holbrook, David Strathairn, Lee Pace and Bruce McGill.
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M - N

Master Class: Terrence McNally’s play, first performed in 1995, was inspired by master classes that the diva Maria Callas did towards the end of her career. It has been one of those great stage vehicles for older actresses who want to really let rip. Faye Dunaway has owned the film rights for over a decade and she is now playing the lead. Filmed on location in Detroit, Dunaway directs as well as stars and is supported by her son, Liam Dunaway O’Neill, and Stephen Moyer.
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Mildred Pierce: James M. Cain’s classic 1941 noir thriller became a classic Hollywood movie in 1945 with Joan Crawford pulling all the stops out as a waitress who wants to get ahead so that she can provide for her ultimately ungrateful daughter. She rises to become a successful restaurant owner but all ends unhappily. This remake (for television) is a vehicle for Kate Winslet as Mildred and is directed by Todd Haynes (Far from heaven). Evan Rachel Wood plays the unsympathetic daughter with Guy Pearce, Mare Winningham and Melissa Leo supporting. The movie isn’t updating the book so it’s a distinctive 1940s setting.
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Moby Dick: Time for another adaptation of the enduring 1851 classic by Herman Melville. This one is the biggest production so far of German outfit Telemunchen who are partnered with an Austrian group and making the epic television miniseries in English The megalomaniac Captain Ahab is played by William Hurt with English actor Charlie Cox as Ishmael, the narrator of the tale as a new crewman on the final fatal voyage of the whaling ship Pequod. The First Officer Starbuck is played by Ethan Hawke and Ahab’s wife by Gillian Anderson. Donald Sutherland plays Father Mapple, Eddie Marsan is Stubb and Raoul Trujillo is Queequegg.; Read the book ~ About the film
The motel life: This 2006 novel was the fiction debut of the Oregon songwriter and lead singer of the band Richmond Fontaine. It’s about two brothers who live messy lives working odd jobs and drinking. One of them is driving one night when he accidentally kills a boy on a bike, He convinces his brother to go on the run with him. Brothers Gabe and Alan Polsky are directing with Stephen Dorff and Emile Hirsch as the brothers, Dakota Fanning and Kris Kristofferson.
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The Moth diaries: This 2002 YA debut novel predates the present slavering enthusiasm for vampires as it’s about a girl at an exclusive school (there don’t seem to be any others in books and movies) who begins to suspect her roommate is a vampire. Model/occasional actress Lily Cole is the vampire and Sarah Bolger the other girl with Scott Speedman co-starring.
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The night watch: The 2006 novel by Sarah Waters is a very convincing evocation of a period, in this case the 1940s, and the world of austerity that prevailed. The book follows a number of characters and moves from 1947 back to 1941. The leading roles in this BBC television adaptation are taken by Anna Maxwell Martin, also in the new adaptation of South Riding, Jodie Whittaker, Claire Foy, Harry Treadaway, Claudie Blakely and Kenneth Cranham.
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O - P

On the road: Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel finally makes it to the screen. Walter Salles directs and British actor Sam Riley is playing Sal Paradise, Kerouac’s alter ego, travelling across the U.S. in the 1950s. His friend Dean Moriarty is played by Garrett Hedlund and Amy Adams, Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst have the thankless lead female roles with Tom Sturridge, Viggo Mortensen, Alice Braga and Steve Buscemi also in the cast.
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One for the money: Fans of Janet Evanovich and her bounty hunter heroine Stephanie Plum may or may not see Katherine Heigl, veteran of many a chicklit comedy, as their heroine. In this, an adaptation of the first novel which came out back in 1994, Jason O’Mara plays Morelli, Patrick Fischler is Vinnie Plum, Sherri Shepherd is Lula, Daniel Sunjata is Ranger, John Leguizamo is Jimmy Alpha and Debbie Reynolds plays Grandma Mazur.
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Quartet: Ronald Harwood’s play, first performed in 1989, is set in a retirement home for musicians. Three elderly former opera singers are joined by a fellow singer, a big star in her day and once married to one of the men. The film version features Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, Sheridan Smith, Trevor Peacock and Ronnie Fox.
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R - S

Resistance: The 2007 novel by Owen Sheers takes an interesting premise: what happens in 1944 when a number of women in an isolated Welsh village find their husbands have disappeared. The revisionist storyline posits a situation where D-Day has failed and half of Britain is occupied. An interesting choice for Amit Gupta, directing his first major film on location in Wales with a cast led by Andrea Riseborough, Michael Sheen, Stanislav Janevski, Kimberley Nixon and Mossie Smith.
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The Restraint Of Beasts: The 1998 novel by Magnus Mills was shortlisted for the booker Prize that year. The novel is a very clever black comedy about two Scottish labourers who travel south to England for a job mending fences. It’s narrated by “the foreman” who is keen on efficiency but won’t get it from his employees. The film version is directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and produced by Tanya Seghatchian, the duo who made the excellent screen version of the Helen Cross novel My summer of love. The cast is headed by Rhys Ifans, Ben Whishaw, Warren Clarke and Eddie Marsan.
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Romeo and Juliet: Yet another version of the evergreen Shakespeare classic. This one is being made by Italian director Carlo Carlei on location in his own homeland with a cast of young actors led by Hailie Steinfeld, memorable as Mattie in the recent remake of True grit, as Juliet, Douglas Booth, an English actor who was in the film of Christopher and his kind, as Romeo, Ed Westwick, well known from Gossip girl, as Tybalt, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Benvolio and Paul Wesley as Paris. The nurse is played by Holly Hunter.
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Salmon fishing in the Yemen: Paul Torday’s first novel came out in 2007 and was his biggest success so far. It’s a droll comedy about a middle aged fisheries scientist who is approached by a sheikh who wants the sport of salmon fishing introduced to the Yemen. Ewan McGregor is in the lead with Kristin Scott Thomas, Emily Blunt, Rachael Stirling and Jill Baker supporting and Lasse Hallstrom directing.
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Savages: Oliver Stone is directing a film version of Don Winslow’s 2010 novel, a crime thriller set in the drug dealing world of Southern California. Winslow has been around for a while as one of the well reviewed and first rate crime writers but this novel took him into a new and better selling dimension. The book is about two friends, sharing the same girlfriend, who have a thriving business growing and distributing dope. A Mexican drug cartel muscle in on their territory and kidnap the girlfriend and demand ransom and this kickstarts the plot. John Travolta and Aaron Johnson lead the cast with Blake Lively as the kidnapped girl, Uma Thurman, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek and Emile Hirsch.
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Screwed: Ronnie Thompson’s 2007 book detailed his life as a prison officer and it came with the tagline - My name is Ronnie Thompson. Being a prison officer was something I used to be proud of. I soon realised the truth of what it’s like working as a screw, though. It's a headache. Corruption, danger, violence. Welcome to my world. The book has been adapted by Thompson who also produces and the main character is played by James D’Arcy with Noel Clarke, Frank Harper and Jamie Foreman supporting.
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The sea: John Banville’s 18th novel was the one that catapulted him into another category from that of the well respected English novelist when it won the 2005 Booker Prize. The book is a beautifully written piece about an elderly historian whose wife dies of cancer and who decides to revisit the seaside villa where he spent holidays in his childhood. Stephen Brown directs on location in Ireland with a strong cast headed by Rufus Sewell, Rosamund Pike, Ciaran Hinds, Charlotte Rampling, Sinead Cusack and Ian McElhinney.
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The slap: Christos Tsiolkas’s 2008 novel, his fourth, became a significant international success. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. It’s a very readable tale about quite unpleasant people which is all about the fallout from an incident when a four year old boy at a barbecue is slapped by a man not his father. It has been turned into an eight part television series with a large cast led by Jonathan La Paglia, Melissa George, Sophie Okonedo, Alex Dimitriades, Lex Marinos and Diana Glenn.
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Snow flower and the secret fan: Wayne Wang is directing an adaptation of Lisa See’s 2005 novel, a story that begins in 19th century China where two 7 year old girls are matched as “laotong” meaning they’re bound together for eternity. A parallel story looks at some of the descendants and how they face the complexities of modern life. The main actors are Bingbing Li, Gianna Jun, Vivian Wu and Hugh Jackman.
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Someday this pain will be useful to you: Peter Cameron’s 2007 YA novel is about a New York teenager who has to cope with his dysfunctional family during the last summer before he heads off to university. Italian director Roberto Faenza’s English speaking debut has an interesting cast led by Toby Regbo as the main character, Lucy Liu, Ellen Burstyn, Stephen Lang, Marcia Gay Harden and Peter Gallagher.
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South Riding: Winifred Holtby’s 1936 novel is partly based on her experiences as a schoolteacher and growing up in the East Riding of Yorkshire and, for those who work in local government, it is an inspiring picture of the beneficial influences of local government on people’s lives. The novel was made into a memorable television series in the 1970s with Dorothy Tutin in the lead and now the BBC have resurrected the book for a TV series, recently shown in Britain to great praise. Anna Maxwell Martin plays the main character with David Morrissey, Douglas Henshall and Penelope Wilton.
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Straw dogs: The notorious violent Sam Peckinpah film from 1971 is set to reach the screen again. This adaptation of the 1969 novel The siege of Trencher’s Farm is the story of a man and his wife who relocate to a rural home and have construction work done on their house. The locals are a bunch of ratbags who cause trouble and eventually there is a bloody standoff. The novel, now out of print but probably due for a reprint when the new film comes out, is a more subtle and interesting work but ultra violence is always profitable and the Peckinpah film was a big hit. The new version has James Marsden and Kate Bosworth in the husband and wife roles originally played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George with Alexander Skarsgard, James Woods and Dominic Purcell supporting. The director is Rod Lurie and the location has been changed from England to America’s Deep South.
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The suspicions of Mr Whicher: Kate Summerscale’s 2008 book became a big bestseller, well reviewed and far removed from the usual true crime tales that make the bestseller list. The story is based on the killing of Francis Saville Kent, the three-year old son of an apparently respectable factory inspector at the family’s Georgian country house. The boy was stabbed in the chest and had his throat slashed. His body was found in a privy. With jealous half-siblings, a dead mother who had gone mad, a cruel governess turned stepmother and a staff of gardeners, stable-hands and servants in the mix, the crime scandalised Victorian society. The book went on to win the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction in 2008. It has been adapted for television with a strong cast including Alexandra Roach, Jay Simpson, William Beck and Lucy Scarfe.
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T-V

360: Arthur Schnitzler’s famous play Reigen or La ronde is the perfect example of fin de siecle drama. It came out in 1900 but the scandalous nature of the piece meant it didn’t get a public performance until 1920. It is about a string of sexual encounters between characters from right across the social scale of Vienna. It has been made into various movies, good and bad, over the years and this version is a lush production that takes in locations from Vienna to Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix, Arizona! The screenplay is by the British playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan and Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles is directing.
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Tiger eyes: Judy Blume’s 1981 YA novel is about a teenage girl whose father is killed in a hold-up. The family go to stay with relatives in New Mexico where the girl meets a mysterious boy named Wolf who is able to help her work through her grief. The novel was adapted by Blume herself with her son Lawrence. The latter directs and the lead couple are played by Willa Holland and Tatanka Means.
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Too big to fail: Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 book created a lot of buzz and was excerpted in Vanity Fair. It is about the Wall Street financial crisis and won an award for the best business book in 2010. Predictably a subject like this isn’t going into the movie theatres and has been taken on by HBO. A big cast led by Topher Grace, James Woods, Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Cynthia Nixon, Edward Asner, Tony Shalhoub and Matthew Modine are in it, under the direction of Curtis Hanson.
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Treasure Island: Yet another in the endless number of versions of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic. This one is for television and has been made on location in Ireland and Puerto Rico. Young Jim Hawkins is played by Toby Regbo with Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver. Rupert Penry-Jones plays Squire Trelawney, Donald Sutherland is Captain Flint and Ben Gunn, the former crewman who’d been marooned on the island, is played by Elijah Wood and Philip Glenister is playing Captain Smollet. And Shirley Henderson is Meg Hawkins.
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Two little boys: The Duncan Sarkies novel started life as a screenplay before Penguin deciding to publish it as a novel in 2008. The novel is a black comedy about two friends who run over a Scandinavian backpacker on their road trip from Dunedin to Invercargill and go to some lengths to get rid of the body. The film version, directed by Robert Sarkies, brother of the author, changes the local a bit by having them drive from Invercargill to The Catlins. Filmed on location there, the two main parts are played by Bret McKenzie and Aussie actor Hamish Blake with Russell Smith, Maaka Pohatu, Lee Hatherley and Ian Mune supporting.
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Under the skin: Michel Faber’s novel is being filmed with Scarlett Johansson in the leading role as an alien in the Scottish Highlands who picks up and murders hitchhikers. Jonathan Glazer is directing this adaptation.
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W-Z

Walter the farting dog: Walter, the dog with flatulence, has been immortalised in the bestselling children’s series, seven novels from 2001 to 2007 plus one in Latin, by William Kotzwinkle. It might seem like a match in heaven to have the Farrelly Brothers, who made bad taste fashionable in all those comedies from There’s something about Mary, behind the film version. To make all this rectal gas more acceptable, the squeaky clean Jonas Brothers are playing musicians whose parents are asked to care for the dog by an aunt just before she passes away.
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A view from the bridge: Arthur Miller’s play was first produced in 1956 and was later made into a film in 1961 with Italian actor Raf Vallone as Eddie Carbone, an Italian immigrant in New York. The play examines the lives of Eddie, his wife and their orphaned niece who falls for an illegal immigrant named Rodolpho, making Eddie jealous and propelling the plot towards tragedy.
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What to expect when you’re expecting: A self development bestseller that is being turned into a fictional movie? It has been done before with the movie “adaptation” of the self help title He’s just not that into you so it must have been thought a good idea to take Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel’s bestseller, first published in 1984 and popular ever since, and concocted a tale of four couples preparing for parenthood. The cast includes Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Rock, Elizabeth Banks, Dennis Quaid, Anna Kendrick, Chace Crawford, Rodrigo Santoro, Joe Manganiello and Thomas Lennon .
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Winds of change: Salman Rushdie won the Booker back in 1981 for the novel generally agreed to be his best, Midnight’s children. A highly readable book that mixes history and magic realism in its picture of India both before and after the independence and partition of India in the 1940s. It features a narrator who is born at the very moment India attains independence. Canadian based Indian director Deepa Mehta is directing the film version with British born Satya Babha in the leading role and a large cast of Bollywood actors.
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The woman in black: Susan Hill’s 1983 novel has already been successfully translated into a stage play (and performed all around the world, including here in Christchurch) and now it gets the film treatment. The newly resurrected Hammer Studios are making it with Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, playing the main role of the young lawyer who is called to a remote rural spot to sort out a dead client’s affairs and is then haunted by a strange ghostly figure. Janet McTeer and Ciaran Hinds co-star and the director is James Watkins.
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World War Z: Yes, it’s zombies again. A researcher for the U.N. Postwar Commission interviews survivors of the flesh-eating zombie attack from all over the world in order to put together a post-mortem on a war that destroyed every country around the globe. This adaptation of the 2006 novel by Max Brooks (equally famous son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) is being made in Britain and Malta and has a cast led by Brad Pit, Mireille Enos (who comes from the cult Danish series The killing), James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox and Bryan Cranston and is directed by Marc Forster.
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World without end: The German/Canadian miniseries based on Ken Follett’s The pillars of the earth was a big success overseas so an adaptation of the 2007 sequel was a given. This one, set in the same town, Kingsbridge, but two hundred years later, features descendants of the original characters. The series has an international cast including Peter Firth, Miranda Richardson, Ben Chaplin, Indira Varma, Cynthia Nixon, Charlotte Riley, Megan Follows and David Bradley.
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Wuthering Heights: It seems hardly any time since the last adaptation of the Emily Bronte classic (the last one was a British T.V. version with Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy). The latest version is for the big screen and it is directed by Andrea Arnold, director of the very gritty realist dramas Fish tank and Red road. Kaya Scodelario plays Cathy with James Howson as Heathcliff. Nichola Burley is Isabella, James Northcott is Edgar and Oliver Milburn plays Mr Linton.
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