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Aug 19, 2024 · Here are the 30 best book-to-movie adaptations ever made, from classics like 'To Kill a Mockingbird' to series like 'The Hunger Games' to recent hits like 'Dune.'
Today we're going to list some of the best book-to-movie adaptations to date. Some remain faithful to the writer’s original book; some take the source material into previously unimagined areas.
- The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Book published: 2007. Movie released: 2011. Evoking graphic novels, picture books, flip books, and films, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is utterly brilliant.
- My Abandonment by Peter Rock. Book published: 2009. Movie released: 2018. Inspired by a true story and told through the vantage point of its teenage protagonist, My Abandonment is a tale of survival, family, and what it means to have a loving home.
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Book published: 2009. Movie released: 2011. This novel is one of the best historical fiction books ever written, and as far as books made into movies go, both have made an impact on readers and viewers alike.
- The Cider House Rules by John Irving. Book published: 1985. Movie released: 1999. Set in a Maine orphanage, this classic by John Irving is harsh and dark—and essential.
Jul 30, 2024 · 02 of 29. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln (2012) Daniel Day-Lewis in 'Lincoln'; 'Team of Rivals' book cover. David James/DreamWorks; Simon & Schuster.
- Strangers on A Train
- The Price of Salt
- The Blunderer
- The Talented Mr. Ripley
- Deep Water
- The Cry of The Owl
- The Two Faces of January
- The Glass Cell
- Ripley Under Ground
- Ripley’s Game
Highsmith’s debut novel, Strangers on a Train, was published in 1950, marking the start of her notable career. This reputation was bolstered the next year, when Alfred Hitchcock, known as the “Master of Suspense,” adapted the book to screen. In Highsmith’s novel, a fateful chance encounter between two disgruntled strangers on a train has deadly con...
While Highsmith is best known for cold-blooded crime novels filled with murders and deception, her 1952 romance novel The Price of Salt, about a forbidden love affair between a housewife and a shopgirl, is regarded as one of her masterpieces. Centering on the obsessive romance that develops between Therese Belivet, a set designer whose day job is w...
Mariticide—or at least the appearance of it—provides the drama for Highsmith’s third novel, 1954’s The Blunderer. Meek and bumbling lawyer and amateur writer Walter Stackhouse has had it with his high maintenance wife Clara after a decade of matrimony filled with her neuroses and demands. Triggered by Clara’s insinuation that he’s having an affair ...
Perhaps the most famous of Highsmith’s novels, The Talented Mr. Ripley introduced readers to the charming but psychopathic killer Tom Ripley, a character so compelling that Highsmith wrote four other novels about him. The novel begins when Ripley, a scrappy young man resorting to scams to survive in NYC, fakes a friendship with Dickie Greenleaf tha...
Highsmith returned to familiar themes of marital infidelity, jealousy, lust, and violence with her fifth novel, Deep Water. Suburban couple Vic and Melinda Van Allen have long established that their marriage is devoid of love, but in order to avoid the scandal of divorce, they’ve come to an agreement that seems to work: Melinda can have as many aff...
A divorcée’s wandering eye sets off a murderous chain of events in Highsmith’s eighth novel, The Cry of the Owl. Following an acrimonious split with his ex-wife Nikki, Robert Forester moves to the suburbs of Pennsylvania, where he becomes secretly obsessed with Jenny, a neighbor whom he spies on from the kitchen window. What Robert doesn’t anticipa...
Highsmith employs romantic and destructive passion to fuel a messy love triangle that turns murderous. American con man Chester MacFarland and his wife Colette are traveling in Greece, when they meet an American expat named Rydal Keener. After MacFarland accidentally kills a policeman, the trio hide from the law in a high-stakes evasion across the ...
Highsmith took inspiration from fan mail from a prison inmate who had read her novel Deep Water and John Bartlow Martin’s 1954 account of his time in the Michigan State Prison, Break Down the Walls to critique the prison industrial complex for her tenth novel, 1964’s The Glass Cell. In the book, Highsmith shows the far-reaching consequences of wron...
The sequel novel to Highsmith’s wildly popular The Talented Mr. Ripley and the second novel in her “Ripliad” series about Tom Ripley, focuses on the wily and sinister Ripley, who is now living a luxurious new life in France with his new wife Heloise, thanks to Dickie’s fortune, which Ripley bequeathed to himself by forging Dickie’s will. This forge...
In the third installment of Highsmith’s series about Tom Ripley, the murderous grifter’s affluent lifestyle in France is interrupted by a request for a hit job from a former associate in America. As much as Ripley tries to stay out of the fray, he finds himself drawn back into subterfuge and fatal violence after a petty act of revenge results in a ...
Apr 15, 2022 · This list of our favorite book-to-film adaptations is by no means exhaustive (there are a LOT out there), nor is it a list of films we consider to be most faithful to the book, but if...
Mar 3, 2021 · Here, we've gathered a list of the 15 highest-grossing book-to-film adaptations based on the cumulative box office figures for each franchise.
