What makes a great book to movie adaptation? It’s not always about a word to word translation. Some of the best movies, like The Shining, divert away entirely from the author’s original intent, but become classics in their own right. Moving from one creative medium to another takes a strong amount of imagination and confidence. Take
Dune, for example, which took not one, but three tries to get right due to the visual difficulties in creating futuristic technology so viewers will suspend disbelief instead of seeing it as silly special effects. David Lynch’s attempt at Dune vs. Denis Villeneuve’s show exactly how hard it can be to make an adaptation people will take seriously. Not only are filmmakers trying to lure filmgoers into their audience, they’re also trying to please a loyal fanbase of book-lovers who may not even see a point in a film adaptation.
Sci-fi isn’t the only genre to deal with the struggle to adapt material. Netflix’s Persuasion, starring Dakota Johnson, faced ridicule for its fourth-wall breaking approach to a classic romance novel. Do a book to movie adaptation right, and people will be talking about it for years to come (see a better classic romance adaptation with Emma), but do it poorly and you may scare future filmmakers from touching the book again.
Thankfully, 2023 looks like it’ll be an exciting year for book to movie adaptations. Already one of the year’s most lauded films, Women Talking, is in the running for Academy Awards. And as silly as it looks, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is causing conversation that will likely get people to pay money to see how A. A. Milne’s children’s characters will be turned hostile. Below, we’ve got all the most anticipated movies based on books coming out in 2023, and where you can watch them once they’re out.
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