Top 20 Books That Should've NEVER Been Made Into Movies
#20: “The Cat in the Hat” (1957) Dr. Seuss
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After Jim Carrey’s turn as the Grinch, movie executives got a funny idea. So, you’ve got another well-known Dr. Seuss property like “The Cat in the Hat.” Surely, you can spin that character into some kind of feature-length something, right? Apparently not. While the Grinch has the benefit of character development, the Cat in the Hat is just an anthropomorphic feline with a stunning lack of boundaries or respect for property. In the role, Mike Myers is left at the mercy of an amazingly inept screenplay, uncomfortable jokes, and a threadbare plot. It’s not all bad, though. It convinced Audrey Geisel, Dr. Seuss’ widow, to put the kibosh on any future live action adaptations of her husband’s work. Not all heroes wear capes.
#19: “Eragon” (2002) Christopher Paolini
The first in the “Inheritance” trilogy focused on a simple farm boy and his pet dragon. While the book may not have reinvented the wheel as far as fantasy series go, it was a bestseller upon its 2003 release. A movie adaptation followed in 2006. The movie did well at the box office, but critics lambasted it for its lack of energy and confused world-building. Most of all, though, it seemed to highlight what detractors of the books had to say about it not being all that original a story. If it was meant to launch a new film franchise, it failed to garner the excitement or the fanbase of competitors like the “Harry Potter” series.
#18: “The Scarlet Letter” (1850) Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The 19th-century classic about adultery and Puritan hypocrisy has been adapted for the screen at least seven times. Some attempts to externalize the novel’s deeply internal conflicts are better than others. None of these attempts are quite as off the mark, though, as the 1995 feature starring Demi Moore and Gary Oldman. Instead of finding some way to dramatize the book’s personal turmoils, this movie decided to pitch a literary classic to its audience by adding gratuitous sex and violence to it. It alienated fans of the book from the start, and even the more open-minded viewers couldn’t get past the movie’s ridiculous and overwrought acting, dialogue, and music.
#17: “Percy Jackson & the Olympians” series (2005-09) Rick Riordan
Sometimes, fans can be particular about what a movie version of their favorite book leaves out. Even author Rick Riordan was not pleased with the first script for the “Percy Jackson” series. He would later publish emails featuring his unused suggestions for rewrites. Although “The Lightning Thief” deviated from the source novel, it was liked well enough to earn a sequel. The second installment, however, still did not learn from fan feedback of the first and took even more liberties. Given how both movies turned out, many think this was a series that was better left to the page. Here’s hoping the new Disney+ adaptation, helmed by Riordan himself, is more successful when it premieres in 2024.
#16: “The Giver” (1993) Lois Lowry
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The original book by Lois Lowry was written before the boom of young adult dystopian fiction, but the movie wasn’t made until after “The Hunger Games” became a hit. In response, the writers aged up the characters and added a romantic subplot between the protagonist and his friend that is little more than a footnote in the book. In essence, the movie covers a lot of the same ground, but this new focus on romance takes away from some of the story’s meatier themes. For a plot as unique as “The Giver’s” is, it’s ridiculous that the movie was pretty much indistinguishable from everything else that was put out around the same time.
#15: “The Queen of the Damned” (1988) Anne Rice
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“Interview with the Vampire” wasn’t perfect, but it definitely captured a certain amount of the magic of Anne Rice. This 2002 semi-sequel mashes together the book of the same name with another book in her “The Vampire Chronicles” series, “The Vampire Lestat.“ This makes sense. “Queen of the Damned” may feature some iconic images of the late Aaliyah, but it’s a mess of ideas and inspirations that the author was skeptical about from the start. After the movie was released and the critics savaged it, she did not mince words. The idea to collapse two epic novels into one was misguided to begin with, but the movie’s aesthetics don’t do the story any favors either.
#14: “Paper Towns” (2008) John Green
Novelist John Green specializes in stories that center young people and takes their youthful yet complex emotions seriously. When “Paper Towns” was greenlit for production, fans were eager to see what the makers came up with. On paper, the stories are pretty similar. What readers missed most, though, was the book’s sense of stakes. The protagonist spends much of the novel chasing after his crush, or at least the idealized version of his crush, with the fear that she may be in danger or even already dead. More than that, many readers complained the movie just missed the point. The screenplay robs the story of its complex themes about idealizing other people and instead takes a more straightforward approach to teen romance.
#13: “Battlefield Earth” (1982) L. Ron Hubbard
Hubbard’s original career as an author of science-fiction is often greatly overshadowed by his status as founder of the Church of Scientology. According to star and noted Scientologist John Travolta, Hubbard had wished for him to star in a potential movie adaptation in the early ‘80s. Nearly two decades after the book’s release, Travolta honored that wish. “Battlefield Earth” quickly became hailed as one of the worst movies ever made. It’s not all that surprising, though, given that many contemporary reviewers already thought the book was thin on story and interesting characters. These flaws were only magnified on screen.
#12: “My Sister’s Keeper” (2004) Jodi Picoult
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With its themes of medical ethics and familial bonds, this Jodi Picoult book struck a chord in millions of readers. It follows two sisters, one who is diagnosed with childhood cancer, and one whose parents conceive her to provide potentially life-saving blood donations for the older sister. When “The Notebook” director Nick Cassavetes adapted it to film, he angered many fans, and the author herself, by changing the ending. Although changes are sometimes necessary in translation, there was a consensus that the original conclusion was much more poignant and less overtly sentimental than the new one. Picoult was so upset that she’s since expressed regret for letting Cassavetes make the film at all.
#11: “World War Z” (2006) Max Brooks
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What made Max Brooks’ sprawling oral history of the fictional zombie apocalypse so compelling was its breadth and scope. Told from the perspectives of several different people from every corner of the globe, it’s a horrifying chronicle of a decade-long war that spans many years and many countries. It’s a macroscopic view of a catastrophic event, and survival is a group effort. This rich and detailed narrative is sidelined for the movie. Instead, it tells the story of one United Nations worker who almost single-handedly saves humanity. The book is about group effort and global cooperation, not the heroic exploits of one individual. A miniseries might not even do it justice, but a two hour movie was doomed from the jump.
#10: “Confessions of a Shopaholic” (2001) & “Shopaholic Takes Manhattan” (2002) Sophie Kinsella
We all love a good rom-com, but if the wit and cleverness of the writing can’t be executed in the script, then what’s the point of making it into a movie? That’s the question we were all asking ourselves after sitting through the 2009 Isla Fisher film version of “Confessions of a Shopaholic”. The movie was just a little too silly and doesn’t convey how smart the first two books of the “Shopaholic” series could be when it came to discussing consumerism, all while still being hilarious. The movie just felt dumbed down and because of that, it’s best just to read Sophie Kinsella’s books.
#9: “The Da Vinci Code” (2003) Dan Brown
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As a novel, “The Da Vinci Code” was a massive success among readers since it made the search for the Holy Grail into a gripping thriller. The movie tried to capture the spark of the novel, but somewhere along the way it fell flat, despite consistently incredible actors Tom Hanks and Ian McKellen at the center of the story. The book gave complex, sometimes dark, motivations to some of its characters that the movie left out and the storytelling felt too simplistic yet scattered, losing all the fun of mystery solving that the book held.
#8: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (1979) Douglas Adams
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In a book like this sci-fi classic, most of the fun of the reading experience comes from Douglas Adams’ tangents and one-offs that explore passages from the titular book within a book. This is exactly why the story doesn’t lend itself to successful movie adaptation. The 2005 version tried to capture the quirk of the book but in reality, many things from the story were left out for more streamlined storytelling. While the screenwriters tried to keep some of the magic of Adams’ original dialogue, it felt pretty clunky and confusing for viewers who weren’t familiar with the source material. If the movie can’t add anything to the story, it’s best to simply leave it to the page.
#7: “Beloved” (1987) Toni Morrison
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A truly unique book, “Beloved” is part slave story, part ghost story and way too psychological to be captured on-screen. It tells the story of Sethe, a runaway slave who is haunted by a ghost and meets a reincarnated version of the daughter she killed in order to save her from a life of slavery. Morrison’s book explores her psychology while playing with the reader’s expectation of how the story will unfold. The 1998 Oprah adaptation just felt like it was telling the story’s plot without really showing how harrowing the events of the book were for the main character. Audiences could see through this and it was a box-office bomb.
#6: “The Lovely Bones” (2002) Alice Sebold
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While there’s nothing inherently too complex about the story’s plot, the movie version of “The Lovely Bones” just felt…off. The book tells the story of Susie Salmon, a young girl who is murdered and watches her family deal with her death and discover who her killer was while she’s stuck in the “In-Between”. Even with strong performances from Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci, the movie jumped back and forth between being too dark and overly sentimental as Susie’s family figure out what happened to her. And while the depiction of the “In-Between” felt powerful in the book, it looked kind of silly in the movie.
#5: “Watchmen” (1986-87) Alan Moore
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Is it too pretentious to say that the story of “Watchmen” is too complex to be made into a movie? Regardless... it’s true. While most superhero movies have a more simple story with a clear good guy and bad guy dynamic, this graphic novel features more ambiguous characters and a satirical take on the whole superhero genre. While the movie tried to cram all that into its story, it really seemed to focus on style over substance, which made it lose the depth of the original plot. Creator Alan Moore feels the same, and famously said that he had no intention of seeing the film.
#4: “Cloud Atlas” (2004) David Mitchell
Author David Mitchell is an experimental writer known for breaking conventions in his compelling stories. This is exactly what he did with “Cloud Atlas,” a book of six interconnected stories that span a length of time and deal with deeper themes like reincarnation. It’s a beautiful story but one that makes little sense on-screen. The movie felt nonsensical with a hard to follow plot. It was jarring to jump from setting to setting, past to present. The Wachowskis co-directed the film with Tom Tykwer, and while it looked great and had an absolutely stacked ensemble cast including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Jim Broadbent, it’s a story better suited for a book.
#3: “The Dark Tower” series (1982-2012) Stephen King
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How do you take a series of eight books and condense them into a 95-minute movie? The correct answer is...you don’t. But that’s exactly what the 2017 movie attempted to accomplish. Talks of adapting the books have been in the works for years, and directors J.J. Abrams and Ron Howard tried to take a stab at it before it eventually went to the lesser-known Nikolaj Arcel. It seems like the studio would have gotten the hint that maybe there’s too much story for a movie. But they didn’t, and instead fans of the books were given something completely different from the source material, while people new to the series couldn’t understand the story. It was also a waste of Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey’s talent.
#2: “Eat Pray Love” (2006) Elizabeth Gilbert
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While memoirs can sometimes make for interesting on-screen stories, most of the time they’re too anecdotal and don’t really have much of a linear story. This is perfectly fine for a book, but the exact opposite of what you want in a film. They tried to give the 2010 Julia Roberts version a compelling narrative but honestly, it was just boring to watch a woman eat food and pray, no matter how good of an actor Roberts is. The strength of Elizabeth Gilbert’s story is how internal her journey was, and how connected readers felt to her on the page. That connection was missing and made for a movie that didn’t amount to much. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions. “Inherent Vice” (2009), Thomas Pynchon Pynchon’s Famously Dense Prose Makes an Accurate Translation Almost Impossible “The Golden Compass” (1995), Philip Pullman This Adaptation Was Accused of Watering Down the Book’s Anti-Religion Themes “Cross” (2006), James Patterson Fans Rejected Tyler Perry’s Razzie-Nominated Turn as the Literary Detective “The Goldfinch” (2013), Donna Tartt So Bad the Author Fired Her Agent & Refused to Sell Screen Rights to Her Work Again “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (2003), Audrey Niffenegger Fans Were None Too Pleased at Just How Much Was Cut From the Original Book
#1: “The Great Gatsby” (1925) F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Despite multiple valiant attempts, the true magic of this classic novel has never been fully captured on-screen. Particularly in the 1974 and 2013 adaptations of the book, the symbolism and themes of loneliness never seem to be adequately explored in the movies. Instead, both versions, particularly the Baz Luhrmann picture, get caught up in the excesses of the glamor of the world without thoroughly exploring the darker underside. In other words: both versions have no heart. And if heavyweight actors like Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Carey Mulligan can’t bring out the characters’ nuances, it’s safe to say no one can. Leave this one to required reading in high school English.
