Lazy movie studios

Roger Ebert

Hollywood studios turn so many notable novels into films at least in part because they're lazy. Anyway that was movie critic Roger Ebert's opinion.

In an article in a 2005 issue of Pages magazine, Ebert was quoted as saying, "But if a story's already gotten into hardcover, if someone in the very high-risk world of publishing has already shown a certain amount of faith in a story, then it must have some merit, right? I think that 'pre-approved' status is meaningful to a lot of studios and producers today. They might not ever actually read the book, you understand, but they're encouraged to hear that it was a book first."

If the book was a best-seller, that helps too. It already has title recognition. Those who loved the novel are likely to want to see it on the screen. Others know of the book but have never found time to actually read it. They want to see the movie version too.

Thousands of screenplays are written each year. Movie producers don't want to read all those screenplays anymore than they want to read all those novels, according to Ebert. But if a story became a published novel, it must have some merit, studio executives reason. Therefore it seems like a safer bet than an untested screenplay.

The problem is that while original screenplays are written to be made into movies, most novels are written just to be read as novels. Adapting a novel for the screen can be a huge challenge. Novels tell stories, while movies show stories, and it can be extremely difficult for a film director to show what novelists tell — what characters are thinking, for example.

Then there is the matter of style. A writer's style may be a big reason for a novel's success, but how does one put a literary style on the screen? A novel may be popular because of the way the words are put on the page. These words create mental images that a film director, who works with visual images, cannot possibly duplicate on the screen. A literary style is hardly the same thing as a visual style.

Directors usually find it impossible to fit an entire novel into a two-hour movie, meaning that characters and subplots must often be eliminated. Often the entire story must be drastically changed.

Consequently movies adapted from popular and classic novels regularly, though not always, disappoint audiences. Directors actually seem to have better success adapting more obscure novels which few people have read, allowing them to change the story at will without offending or disappointing anyone.