Movies Based On Books

[peanutbutter12]

I am now halfway done writing a screenplay for a movie based on a book and I am coming to understand the differences between the two and why the book is 99% of the time better than the movie.

When you are trying to turn a book into a movie, it's very hard to give all the details from what the author was trying to explain about the character. Such as "so and so remembered the time that..." When doing a movie, you can't always do flashbacks or another one is if they are on some quest and meet someone new along the way, they explain to them the quest. The curren screenplay I am working on, the characters are constantly filling others in on events that happened that they already saw in the movie. To explain it 10 times to 10 different people would use up a lot of time and get really boring. So the screenwriter has to make subtle changes to the story to skip some parts that would just drag the movie along.

Any thoughts?

CJ

 

[Blessed-one]

absolutely, and the intricate inner emotions and thoughts can't be completely expressed in movies. When you tie a movie to a book, the movie might look good for some viewers, but for those who have read the book.. movies just don't stand the chance.

 

[Argon88]

Any thoughts?

CJ

On what? No one who knows knows anything about filmmaking can disagree.

 

[Jeremiah the Bullfrog]

I read The Eiger Sanction and saw the movie. I thought that the movie was better.