This post could have been called Books to Movies till a few years back, but now there is so much work happening on streaming platforms, other web content that it just didn’t seem right – so here’s Books to Screen.
Like anyone who reads and loves a book – I too tend to approach movies (or series) based on them with caution. Subplots are dropped or modified to fit the transition to screen, storylines changed and the visuals just don’t match what you had imagined them to be. More often than not, the screen adaptations don’t do justice to the original content – partially due to the limited time they have to tell the story (in case of movies), and because they are competing with your imagination.
Having said that, you cannot deny the sheer reach that the screen adaptations bring to literature. It could be giving a physical incarnation of a character for those who would never read them. Or it could introduce a new author to someone who watched a fantastic movie and knew instinctively that it had to be based on a book.
The latter happened to me with Gone Girl. When I watched the movie (was it in 2014?), I hadn’t read any of Gillian Flynn’s books. The movie was fantastic and so was Rosamund Pike as Amy. It helps that David Fincher directed it, but the star of the movie is the screenplay written by Gillian. After the movie, I went on a reading spree of the disturbing world of her protagonists where almost everything is a murky grey.
Thus we arrive at Sharp Objects – a book that made my skin crawl. It was recently made into a series starring Amy Adams by HBO and I couldn’t imagine how the sense of dread that pervades that book could be depicted visually. But dreadful it is.
Which now brings us to Jean-Marc Vallée, its director and the other series he directed – Big Little Lies. A fantastic series starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and so many more (and is set to bring onboard Meryl Streep… Meryl Streep!!!) which subverts stereotypes, tackles serious issues like domestic abuse. And you watch this series and you wonder – is this based on a book?
Of course it is. And thus we meet Liane Moriarty – an Australian author who I hadn’t known before, but is now on my reading list.
Down the rabbit-hole, no?
re I was supposed to fly off to Europe, I got 3 new books and guess what… 2 days before my flight I had finished them all. Then my brother was gifted a Kindle for his b’day and I figured what the hell… how bad can it be and I got the Kindle with the special one day delivery, just in time to make my flight.
Operation Read More 
