Best Book-to-Screen Adaptations to Read And Watch This Year

Jan 12, 2024, 09:00 IST

Zeba Khan

If you are someone who loves watching their favourite books turn into cinematic gems, then this list is for you. This year, there is a jam-packed slate of upcoming movies and TV series based on bestselling books – from Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards to Paper Girls.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Rick Riordan’s young-adult fantasy book series consists of five novels and follows Percy as he finds out his father is a Greek god, making him a demigod. He and his friends are given the task of finding and returning Zeus’s lightning bolt as monsters from the Underworld attempt to stop them.

Killers of the Flower Moon

David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon depicts a series of murders in the Native American Osage Nation in the 1920s and the investigation into the string of brutal crimes by the FBI.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Hunger Games prequel takes place in the dystopian world of Panem during the tenth annual Hunger Games. It follows the story of Coriolanus Snow who later becomes the tyrannical President Snow depicted in the original series.

American Prometheus

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer traces Oppenheimer’s life starting with his time at Cambridge, where he earned a reputation as an intellectual prodigy, to his role in developing the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Lessons in Chemistry

This period drama by Bonnie Garmus follows Elizabeth Zott, an extraordinary chemist in 1960 who’s constantly overlooked because of her sex. But things take a turn when she meets a famous male scientist and he actually takes her research seriously.

Poor Things

The film is a story of “love, discovery and scientific daring” set in the Victorian era, based on an adaptation of Alasdair Grey’s novel of the same name. It follows a Frankenstein-like woman who is brought back to life after her brain is replaced with that of her unborn child. Stone stars opposite Willem Dafoe, who plays the brilliant, yet unorthodox, scientist who resurrects Belle from the dead.

Elvis and Me

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla starring Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny is based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir detailing her tumultuous relationship with the rock-and-roll legend.

Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine

Michael Mann’s Ferrari, starring Adam Driver, is based on Brock Yates’ biography on the man behind the motorsports empire.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

In Wonka, Timothee Chalamet plays the younger version of the titular chocolatier, tracking how he came to create the fantastical factory at the centre of Roald Dahl’s 1964 book.

Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir

Selena Gomez is reported to play Linda Ronstadt in an upcoming biopic on the iconic singer. In this memoir, iconic singer Linda Ronstadt weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s.

The Shards

From the bestselling author of American Pyscho, Bret Easton Ellis’s novel follows a group of affluent Los Angeles teens in the early 1980s as a serial killer strikes across their hometown and becomes eerily close to their tight-knit group. 

Red, White & Royal Blue

This is an adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s 2019 best-seller which centres on a star-crossed power couple — the Latiné character of Alex Claremont-Diaz, the son of the president of the United States, and his relationship with Prince Henry, grandson of the Queen of England. 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

This bestseller is being adapted into a movie for Netflix. The book tells the secret story of the reclusive Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo as told to an unknown, young magazine reporter Monique Grant. Hugo’s stories of Tinseltown in the 50s, 60s and 80s change Grant’s perspective.

Wool

Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Robbins are set to star in Apple’s series adaptation of Hugh Howey’s beloved sci-fi trilogy. In “Wool,” all of humanity (the remnants that exist of it anyway) lives underground in a single silo. The story follows Juliette, a woman from the underground who struggles with her newfound power after being inexplicably promoted to the head of law enforcement.

Paper Girls

Paper Girls centres around four young girls who, while out delivering papers on the morning after Halloween in 1988, become unwittingly caught in a conflict between warring factions of time-travellers, sending them on an adventure through time that will save the world.

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