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Even if you watch movies more than you read books, you’re probably aware that the likes of Dune, The Lord of the Rings, and IT (among many, many others) are based on books. Books have long been a source of stories for cinema, ever since movies first became a thing, and it doesn’t really feel like movie adaptations will ever go away. Not any time soon; not ever. That’s not the worst thing in the world, though, because they can be done right.
The following films were indeed instances of adaptations going right, but also, these movies eclipsed their source material either upon release, or eventually, some years on from first coming out. It’s not necessarily the case that all these adaptations are better than the source material by default, but they are more well-known, to the extent that you might well be surprised some of these movies were even based on books in the first place.
10
‘Drive’ (2011)
2011’s Drive is very cinematic, as are all the movies here, but it’s got a style over substance thing (arguably) going for it, which means it’s particularly hard to imagine as something other than a film. The movie itself is probably a cult classic in the overall scheme of things, and so that makes the book it’s based on technically even more obscure, and… well, “whatever the book equivalent of a cult classic is” was about to be typed, but books can probably be cult classics, too.
Lots of Drive is hard to imagine without the music, but if you’re reading the book it’s based on, and you don’t pull up that soundtrack and score separately, you do have to go without it. As for the book itself, it had the same name and was written by crime writer James Sallis, with the movie ultimately being a fairly faithful adaptation of the book in question, certainly in spirit, and then also, to some extent, on a narrative front.
9
‘One Battle After Another’ (2025)
Thomas Pynchon is an author known for being a postmodernist author, and having a knack for writing challenging books that don’t really feel all that adaptable. That hasn’t stopped Paul Thomas Anderson from doing so twice, with Inherent Vice being the slightly more obvious adaptation of the two, just because the book and movie share a title, and also because the movie of Inherent Vice kind of follows the plot of the book (which is digestible/comprehensible by Pynchon’s standards).
One Battle After Another, though, is a looser adaptation, to the point where it’s probably more accurate to say that it was inspired by Vineland, rather than being something that adapted Vineland. They’ve got the different titles and all, and One Battle After Another, while being offbeat at times, isn’t hard to follow, and feels a bit more exciting and crowd-pleasing overall.
8
‘Forrest Gump’ (1994)
Forrest Gump can be included here just because the movie was so monumentally popular, and really overshadowed the Winston Groom book of the same name. As is the case with movie adaptations, the book did get a bit more attention once the film came out, but even then, never to the extent that it came close to matching the movie’s popularity, and that’s a factor in Forrest Gump ever being a book proving surprising.
Forrest Gump was more a flawed book reshaped into a… well, not a movie everyone loves, and it’s still flawed as an adaptation, but it’s not too hard to see why it was liked.
There was also a sequel to the book published one year after the movie came out, called Gump and Co., but that never became a film, obviously. Look, Forrest Gump (1994) is one of those cases where a movie took a book and improved it, Jaws-style, but unlike with Jaws (a decent book made into a great movie), Forrest Gump was more a flawed book reshaped into a… well, not a movie everyone loves, and it’s still flawed as an adaptation, but it’s not too hard to see why it was liked, and why it still might be liked.
7
‘Zodiac’ (2007)
This might not be the best example, since Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac is a decently well-known book, and David Fincher’s Zodiac is kind of underrated (though not entirely overlooked, because it’s picked up acclaim and attention in the nearly 20 years since it came out). But the Zodiac book and movie are worth mentioning here because the movie so totally overshadows the book in quality, and also finds a more interesting angle to explore.
Graysmith’s more of a character in the movie, while he’s less introspective in the book, being somewhat of an insider during the whole Zodiac Killer investigation, but not being as insightful about the whole thing as he probably thought he was. Zodiac (2007) does follow some of his book, but then becomes more interesting as a psychological drama/thriller sort of thing in its back half, unpacking obsession and the way a lack of answers about certain things can lead to potential madness.
6
‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999)
Stanley Kubrick adapted so many books throughout his filmmaking career, which isn’t odd for filmmakers generally, but it’s surprising to realize for a filmmaker like Kubrick, just because most of his movies feel so distinctly his own. He was one of the all-time great auteurs, after all, so he definitely knew how to take stories written by others and make them Kubrickian, for lack of a better word.
Adaptations like The Shining and (to a slightly lesser extent) A Clockwork Orange were based on well-known works of literature, but Eyes Wide Shut? Not so much. It was based on a 1926 novella called Traumnovelle (by Arthur Schnitzler), which translates to “Dream Story,” and that sounds about right, considering the fairly nightmarish mood Eyes Wide Shut has for much of its runtime.
5
‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (2000)
Up there among the best martial arts movies ever made (as far from hot as takes get, really), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a bit like Drive in the sense that it feels inherently cinematic, but surprise, it’s here, on this ranking, and so it’s not. It’s based on the fourth part of the Crane-Iron Series by the Chinese author Wang Dulu (well, that’s his pseudonym, with his real name being Wang Baoxiang).
So, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is technically based on a sequel, but the movie stands alone, and since it felt like a gateway martial arts movie for plenty of Western viewers, it probably goes without saying that it also sort of “introduced” those same viewers to that series. But if you’re not familiar with Crane-Iron, and don’t see the “based on” credit, it’s pretty easy to assume Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is just its own thing.
4
‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984)
There was a book called The Hoods (by Harry Grey) that was the basis for Once Upon a Time in America, but it’s stuck in obscurity compared to the movie. And the movie itself was underrated for a while, and might remain a bit more challenging and daunting than some other iconic gangster movies, admittedly, though it would be a stretch to call it properly overlooked 40+ years on from its release.
The book’s noted for being semi-autobiographical, but not to the extent that Once Upon a Time in America can be called a biopic. It’s also an instance where, sadly, the book was fairly obscure at the time of the author’s death, as Grey passed away four years before he might’ve received even a little more recognition for Once Upon a Time in America. Then again, director Sergio Leone passed away only five years after Once Upon a Time in America, so he arguably never received the recognition he deserved for it either.
3
‘Vertigo’ (1958)
Like Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock was a director who seemed very capable of taking stories originally written by other people and making them forever associated with him and his style. Psycho is a decent example of this, but the book Vertigo was based on is probably even more obscure, and the Kubrick/Eyes Wide Shut connection comes up again because it was a book written originally written in a language other than English.
The book was called D’entre les morts, with the English title being The Living and the Dead. That makes things sound a bit more in line with the horror genre than the story ends up being, though Vertigo definitely has its surreal and nightmarish moments, all the while having a certain notoriety for being one of Hitchcock’s darkest and most (potentially) introspective movies.
2
‘Schindler’s List’ (1993)
Jaws was mentioned earlier as a film that was better than the book, and Steven Spielberg sort of did the same with Schindler’s Ark, though it’s not the fairest comparison, because Schindler’s Ark is still an incredibly impressive and important work of nonfiction. Thomas Keneally wrote the original book, and did frame the events covered as a narrative to a greater extent than most nonfiction.
Like, Schindler’s Ark is not dry, and it does take some historical liberties when it comes to the writing of conversations that there are no direct records of. But Schindler’s List, the movie, did find more success, and was slightly more dramatic, in terms of giving Oskar Schindler a bit more of a definable (and pronounced) character arc the way you’d expect to see in a film, albeit not without straying too far from the reality of the story (and not in a way that proved disrespectful or dishonest).
1
‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
The book Goodfellas was based on was called Wiseguy, with the title having to be changed between its publication and the movie coming out. The book was a 1985 release, and the movie came out in 1990. In that time, there was a TV show called Wiseguy, which began airing in 1987 and continued running until 1990, so there was a need to make sure people didn’t get everything all mixed up.
But if you read Wiseguy after watching Goodfellas, it’s uncanny how much it feels like watching Goodfellas, or at least a slightly longer version of Goodfellas that has more time to go off on a few more (still interesting) tangents and name-drop a few more figures within the whole organized crime world that gets explored. The Martin Scorsese movie is technically more exciting, but Nicholas Pileggi’s source material is also a gripping and difficult-to-put-down book, with it benefiting immensely from having so many words straight from the mouth of Henry Hill (who’s like an interviewee in the book, and then, memorably, is the central character – played by Ray Liotta – who narrates much of the movie).
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https://collider.com/best-movies-actually-based-on-books/
Jeremy Urquhart
Almontather Rassoul
