Top 10 Hardest Books To Adapt Into Movies

The filmmakers that manage to turn these books into movies deserve all the awards! For this list, we’ll be looking at the most popular and acclaimed books and series that haven’t managed to get the big-screen treatment. Our countdown includes “At the Mountains of Madness", “Blood Meridian”, The Catcher in the Rye”, and more! What’s your favorite book that you wish was a movie? Let us know in the comments!

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[WatchMojo]

What’s your favorite book that you wish was a movie? Let us know in the comments!

[berserklover]

0:38 Ubik
1:30 Gravity's Rainbow
2:23 At the Mountain of Madness
3:10 The Wheel of Time
4:03 The Griffin and Sabine Saga
4:47 House of Leaves
5:38 Infinite Jest
6:19 Blood Meridian
7:10 The Catcher in The Rye
8:15 One Hundred Years of Solitude

[StevenCenname]

I’d imagine The Dictionary would be pretty hard to adapt.

[drsoe]

Blood Meridian is still the best piece of fiction that I've ever read, nothing comes close.

[PitFriend]

The main problem with adapting most Lovecraft stories to a movie is the fact that they would have to show the creatures and impossible geometries that are enough to drive people mad. And it’s very hard to visually present something more horrible and unsettling than whatever a reader imagines in their own mind while reading the stories.

[joermnyc]

Missed one, even though 2 of his works were adapted into films, “The Silmarillion” by J.R.R. Tolkien. The stories of the creation of Middle Earth, and then the tales of 1st and 2nd ages, with a bit of extra notes on the 3rd age as well. That’s thousands of years of history, and so many characters and fantastic creatures that come and go over time. I know Amazon is trying to do a show on the 2nd age, but it remains to be seen if it will be up to par with Peter Jackson’s adaptions.

[username]

I think almost every novel is better as a series rather than a movie. Because it really gives you time to develop everything just as they do in the book

[vitorpr]

I wanna live in a parallel universe where Coppola directed Blood Meridian instead of Apocalypse Now and put Marlon Brando as Judge Holden.

[ChocoKarry]

The Dark Tower Series, we need a TV show that ties certain things with movies as complements to do the series justice.

[fernandodecarlosmalcher]

I had to read 100 years of solitude in highschool and it was so so SO HARD, like there were so many characters with the same name that it really confused me, the teacher even said we should make schemes in order to keep track of what was going on

[AxioProductions]

At the Mountain of Madess, Shadow out of Innsmouth, and Call of Cthulhu isn’t that hard to adapt. Innsmouth, for example, can be in the 30-40’s era with a bit of amateur detective mystery.

[BigFella]

While I would want to see some of these books adapted into movies, sometimes it’s better to leave it as it is rather than ruin it in a feature length film

[joaovitorfarinabraga]

3:01 the lack of a love story telling and Grimm finale…

A) why the fuck is a love story so important ?! I’m an aromantic person and I don’t get it, why the need to shove romance in every single story…

B) it’s not even such a Grimm finale, and even if it was Is a goddamn horror story, what did you expected ?

Never show those guys any A24 movies or else they will have a stroke…

[BrokeredHeart]

As a teen, I loved the series by Garth Nix called The Old Kingdom series. It's 5 books (now 6) that deal with necromancy and magic, and the protagonist is a young girl whose lineage and calling is to send dark beings back to the realm of Death. This is set in a world where the magical country has physically been walled off from more modern society in an attempt to contain the spirits and creatures within, and as she is the only living person who can cross between the border of life and death, she must prevent the world from being overrun with dead spirits and magical creatures. The books follow various young women throughout the series across various generations, and they are vibrant and descriptive. I think having it done in a series similar to His Dark Materials or Game of Thrones would make for some very compelling tv, and it's another high fantasy book series that could draw a lot of attention. It would need a high budget to render the fictional settings, and to give the dark creatures and the Realm of Death some realism, but I would love to see the books adapted to the small screen.

[Destructocorps]

I think something like Hyperion would be pretty tough to do well as an adaptation

[Lukac]

Surprised nobody has mentioned Paradise Lost.

On a similar note, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as a whole. There’s only ever been adaptations of Inferno, and the most direct adaptation of that was more than a hundred years ago.

[egb]

I want a film adaptation of Gadsby by Ernest Wright, the novel without the letter 'E'. They have to omit anything and everything that has 'E' in the film.

[cheritripp]

Had the pleasure of talking with Robert Jordan at a con. He was a nice man.

Recently saw the ads for the Foundations trilogy TV cable adaptation. My first thought was 'Are you out of your mind?!'. Borrowed the books from my library as a teen. They were so large that I had to renewed them to finished reading the series.

From what I recalled, it's mostly talking heads, even though it covers the rise and fall of a planets sprawling Empire. The only actual action was the battle against The Mule in the second book. I hope they know what they're doing. (No telling how long it will take to adapt the trilogy.)

[bartoltolic]

I’m shocked that Neuromancer by William Gibson hasn’t recieved movie adaptation yet.

[caronstout]

I hope I live long enough to see Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" adapted to a movie with Jared Leto as Valentine Michael Smith.