Hollywood relies on novels for hits

The stories have character depth and built-in
audiences, says one expert.

By SEAN P. MEANS

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Of the 79 movies to win the Oscar for best picture, just over half — 40, from “All Quiet on the Western Front” to “Million Dollar Baby” — were based on books.

And as Hollywood trots out its big prestige pictures this holiday season, book adaptations are taking the lead.

At least 14 movies opening by the end of the year for Oscar consideration are adapted from books, but in genres that range from classic literature to children’s stories, and from nonfiction war stories to science fiction.

“It’s so hard to write a really good original that has complexities of character,” said William Siska, professor of film at the University of Utah. “I think that’s why they rely on novels, because it’s pre-sold. . . . It’s got a built-in audience. And it gives them depth of character to work with.”

Some of the holiday season’s most anticipated movies come from acclaimed best-sellers.

The Coen brothers have turned Cormac McCarthy’s Texas murder mystery “No Country for Old Men” into a chilling drama. Marc Forster (“Finding Neverland”) adapted Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” which traces 30 years of Afghanistan’s history through the experiences of two friends.

Cecelia Ahern’s romantic tale “P.S., I Love You” becomes a vehicle for Hilary Swank. And the adaptation of Ian McEwan’s “Atonement,” starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy as lovers separated by war and class, is an early favorite in the Oscar race.

Some adaptations go farther back in the shelves: Movies based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1985 epic “Love in the Time of Cholera” and the 11th-century Viking epic “Beowulf” are in theaters currently, while Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” takes as its source material Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel” Oil!”

Science-fiction fans get Will Smith in an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend” that they hope will improve on the last movie version, the campy 1971 Charlton Heston vehicle “The Omega Man.” They also get “The Mist,” a “Twilight Zone”-ish thriller based on a Stephen King novella.

Children’s literature is well represented. The fantasy “The Golden Compass” is based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, while Dick King-Smith, who wrote “Babe, the Gallant Pig” (the basis for “Babe”), gets another book, “The Water Horse,” turned into a movie.

“Charlie Wilson’s War,” adapted from George Crile’s book, chronicles a Texas congressman’s misadventures in bankrolling the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the ’70s.