Some of the best moving-picture show of all fourth dimension have been based on great books . Whether it isFrom Here To Eternityby author James Jones or , more lately , No Country For Old Menby Cormac McCarthy . Great books render wonderful source material for screenwriter and theatre director to develop into film . However , some of the best Good Book of all sentence — both vintage novel and more contemporary title — have never been made into a picture show . Sometimes this is because an author pass up to trade the rights to the rule book . Other times it is because a novel is deemed to be unfilmable . But , whatever the understanding , it is a shame that many great books have not been sprain into motion picture . Here are 10 Book that we cogitate merit to be take .
10. The Dark Tower Series (Stephen King)
Considering that nearly every Stephen King Christian Bible has been turn into a picture show — fromCarrieandCujotoFirestarterandMisery — it is surprising that his self-aggrandizing creation , The Dark Towerseries has never been developed into a motion-picture show or film dealership . Even Stephen King ’s short stories have made it to the big screen door , includingStand By MeandThe Green Mile . However , the reasonThe Dark Towerseries has not been turned into a moving picture yet is because it is deemed to be too big , expensive and technically daunting . The serial , which centers on Roland Deschain , the last gunslinger , who is on a quest to catch “ the man in black ” across a Brobdingnagian desert , cross a total of eight novels that together make up 4,250 pages . Director Ron Howard tried to develop the serial publication into a number of feature cinema and made - for - TV film tie - ins several years ago , and actor Javier Bardem was attached to play Roland the Gunslinger . But in the terminal , movie studios bulked at a monetary value tag of more than $ 300 million to produce it .
9. The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen)
Jonathan Franzen ’s National Book Award winner about a nonadaptive family is queer , hearfelt and comprise a great good deal of accuracy to it . With so many other family - centerd books being adapted into movies , one would take over thatThe Correctionswould also make it to the big screen . But not yet . HBO had been work to conform the book into a boob tube serial asterisk Anthony Hopkins as the family patriarch , but unfortunately that never work out out . The book follows the lives of multiple family members , so its occasional nature lend itself well to television , but it could also work well as a film . Scott Rudin optioned the right to produce the photographic film in 2001 , but so far nothing has hail of it . In 2002 , author Jonathan Franzen wrote that he ’d enjoy to see the movie star Gene Hackman as the family patriarch Alfred . But to date , no moving picture has materialized .
8. A Wrinkle In Time (Madeleine L’Engle)
Published in 1962,A Wrinkle In Timehas never been out of print . And the book , about a young female child whose founding father , a administration scientist , goes missing after working on a cryptical project called a Tesseract , has won legion awards , include a Newbery Medal and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award . However , it has yet to be bring about as a major motion picture . Disney did make a TV movie based on the Word of God in 2003 , but it fit for the most part unnoticed and was rail by fans of the book who claim that Disney left out many of its grownup theme in an sweat to turn it into a children ’s TV motion picture . This science fiction rescue chronicle that arrest wonderful planet and alien beings , would make a great picture show . But there ’s impenetrable cloth included in the book too , let in quantum physics that has kept producers and directors at bay so far .
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
One of the most famous works ever in Romance American lit , and one of the most influential works of magic realism , Gabriel Garcia Marquez ’s bookOne Hundred Years of Solitudespans generation of one family and follow the creation and eventual death of the metropolis of Macondo . The novel generalise the use of wizardly realness , a style where seemingly impossible or even supernatural result are depicted in a mode that makes them seem believable . And although the novel is universally loved , it has been deemed too unmanageable to film because of its fantastical style . However , some citizenry palpate that a movie version could be made in the vein of other films that apply magic reality such asAmélieandChocolat — both of which won Oscars . However , it may all be for naught as Gabriel Garcia Marquez has not yet allowed any production society to purchase the rights to adjust his much heralded novel .
6. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
Many critic consider the epical westerly novelBlood Meridian , published in 1985 , to be Cormac McCarthy ’s best . However , while some of McCarthy ’s more recent book such asThe RoadandNo Country For Old Menhave been made into great movie , this one has not . Speculation is that the story , which follows a adolescent known only as the Kid who takes up with a gang of scalp hunters and Indian killer , is too vehement and antiblack in tone to become a commercial motion picture . Plus , the oral communication used in the book is passing dense and hard . And , while believed to be historically accurate , the novel about a gang that massacre Native Americans along the U.S.-Mexico border around 1850 has work off most producers and directors who wonder if a movie about it would find an audience .
5. The Stand (Stephen King)
Another Stephen King novel to make this tilt , The Standis considered to be the author ’s masterwork . And it was made into a jolly high-risk TV miniseries in 1994 starring Gary Sinise and , believe it or not , Molly Ringwald . Yet King fan have been clamor for a feature film adjustment of this book since it was first published in 1978 . A post - apocalyptical horror and fantasy novel , The Standis a monster of a book at 823 page . Yet the tale it tells of good versus evil amid the survivors of a infestation that wipes out most of Earth ’s universe is a classic and much dear by readers . There have been many attack , and rumoured attempts , to makeThe Standinto a feature film over the years . to begin with this twelvemonth , there were rumors that Warner Bros. was go to make the picture with conductor Josh Boone ( The Fault In Our virtuoso ) at the helm . But , to date , nothing has been made official . Many in Hollywood consider the book just too big to conform into a movie — even a four hour long one might not be enough .
4. A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize , and widely consider one of the funniest Word of God ever written , John Kennedy Toole’sA Confederacy of Duncespublished in 1980 is about Ignatius J. Reilly , a bigger - than - sprightliness idiot initiate , who is out of time with his immediate worldly concern and has many misadventures around New Orleans . Many directors have tried to adapt this picaresque novel , including Harold Ramis , John Waters , Stephen Fry and Steven Soderbergh . But none have succeeded . Soderbergh get close with his film interpretation when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and scuttled plan to start filming on location there , leading Soderbergh to comment that he throught a film adaptation ofA Confederacy of Dunceswas cursed and doomed to loser .
3. Roger’s Version (John Updike)
John Updike ’s novelThe Witches of Eastwickwas a big sieve bash when it was adapted by director George Miller with Jack Nicholson in the deed of conveyance theatrical role at the end of the 1980s . So it is a bit surprising that more of John Updike ’s novels have n’t been given the cinematic green light and turned into movies . And the consensus is that the novelRoger ’s Versionwould make for a wild movie , as it has as its motif middle eld disenchantment , intimate attraction to a younger womanhood and questions about the existence of God . Yet to date , nobody has made this book into the striking , Oscar caliber film it could potentially be . The rights to it were quickly optioned when the book was first issue in 1986 . But it has never made it into film production .
2. Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
We are not talking here about the sci - fi novelThe Invisible Man . That has been made into numerous film adaptation . rather , we are speak about the brilliant first novel by Ralph Ellison that is considered one of the most authoritative script of the twentieth Century . Published in 1952 , it tells the taradiddle of an anonymous teller who is black and considers himself to be unseeable because other people refuse to see him . The book , which pull ahead the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953 , tint on issues of subspecies coition , smuggled nationalism and individual identity . consider an important study and historical document , director Spike Lee has purportedly been trying to make a movie from the novel for years . However , some citizenry finger that the book is too intellectual to be made into a motion-picture show . Others feel it is now outdated given that there is a black president in the White House .
1. The Catcher In The Rye (J.D. Salinger)
Arguably , the most famous leger to never be made into a movie , J.D. Salinger ’s classical 1951 novelThe Catcher In The Ryehas been assay after by a who ’s who of Hollywood directors — from Martin Scorsese to Sophia Coppola . But to engagement , there has never been a film adaptation of the book about disillusioned teenager Holden Caulfield . Salinger refused to sign over the rightfulness to his most famous book . And I guess this micturate sensory faculty considering that the novel ’s central character does a in effect stack of quetch about Hollywood phonies and how the movies are unrealistic . Nevertheless , that has not stop everyone from Jerry Lewis to John Cusack from trying to get their hands on the rights toThe backstop In The Rye . There was hope that the office might change after J.D. Salinger died in 2010 and the rights to the book might in the end become available . However , that opinion was quickly subdue by Phyllis Westberg , Salinger ’s retentive time factor , who issued a command tell that nothing has changed in terms of licensing film , television or phase rights to J.D. Salinger ’s work . She also noted that J.D. Salinger himself always think that a picture adaptation ofThe Catcher In The Ryewould finish up being “ contrived . ”
