What's the most successful film of a book?

[elpea]

I recently saw A Scanner Darkly and thought it was brilliant. I think the some of the best films from great books are: The Shining and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Most of the time the film is pretty dire compared to the book, IMHO.

[jeanette1976]

I would imagine it may be Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter...perhaps? Good question though! X

[jeanette1976]

Was STAR WARS ever a book?

[elpea]

Lord of the Rings, definitely, but not convinced with Harry Potter - I much prefer the books, and didn't want to see the last film (tho one day I'll see it on DVD probably). I heard recently that Shantaram is going to be made into a book... and I'm quite nervous about that, it could be disasterous!

[jno]

LOTR, deffo. Star Wars was a film first before it got novelised. Gone With The Wind was pretty good too. And I must say I enjoyed the latest Pride and Prejudice a lot.

[Grafixboy]

The Shawshank Redemption was a brilliant film, the same with The Green Mile - both were books written by Stephen King

[spudqueen]

There's an old black and white film of A Tale of Two Cities (by Charles Dickens) which is excellent. I agree about the Harry Potter films. Mr Spudqueen and I took the kids to see one of the HP films and afterwards I had loads to explain to Mr Spudqueen as a lot of things in the film only made sense if you'd read the book.

[saxy_jag]

I think it would depend how you define 'successful'. In terms of box office figures, you're maybe looking at Lord of the Rings. However, if it's personal opinion you're looking for, for me it has to be David Lean's 1946 adaptation of 'Great Expectations'. Not true to the book at all, but a wonderful piece of art in its own right. It would be followed closely on the list by 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

[dot.hawkes]

I would imagine a contender would be Maragaret Mitchell's book Gone With The Wind. It was an amazing best seller before the film was made and the anticipation of who would play the Lead female apparently was headline news.

[shaneystar2]

EM Forsters Howard's End was brilliant and Gone With the Wind was a brilliant adaptation of a book.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,The Talented Mr Ripley and of course good old Dr Zhivago...although the book was very tedious.The best adaption of a book I have ever seen ...although it was a television series rather than a film was Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.
Pride and Prejudice has been rehashed so many times now on film and TV it's become boring.I prefer the book and my own imagination.

[patc7641]

dot.hawkes is right, its def Gone with the Wind. Still a great movie and taking into account inflation would be the most successful film in movie history.

[jno]

shaneystar, what I think of as a 'good' adaptation is one that seems to put on screen what I had in my imagination before. That's why I loved LOTR - not because of the money it made but because everything looked just the way I felt it should. Compare it with that weedy cartoon version they did in the 1970s, for instance. As for P&P, there haven't been that many of them but Keira Knightley looked just like my idea of Lizzie, all feisty and giggly, and I thought their use of different houses for different ranks in society - from shabby manor houses up to Burghley - really brought the 18th century alive for me. Much better and livelier than Greer Garson (I never did see all the TV version 10 years back, so can't compare).

There's a rule of thumb, though, that truly good books make indifferent films (Catch-22 or the various War and Peacees, for instance) , while the best adaptations come from books that are okay but not real classics, like The Maltese Falcon. That's because the processes involved in producing, and consuming, books and films are different. But I thought LOTR was an exception to that rule: great book, great film.