23 Controversial Film and TV Book Adaptations That Rankled Their Audiences and Authors

“Mary Poppins” (1964)

One can only imagine what P. L. Travers might have thought of “Saving Mr. Banks”: a 2013 Disney-produced historical drama that softens — and audaciously fictionalizes — the Australian-born author’s disturbed reaction to the 1964 musical movie adaptation of her work. With Emma Thompson playing Travers opposite Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, “Saving Mr. Banks” thoughtfully considers the themes of “Mary Poppins,” as well as their relation to Travers’ own troubled childhood, before injecting a happy ending that never occurred (all while further propping up their now-streaming-on-Disney+ classic IP. Dastardly!) Contrary to “Saving Mr. Banks,” Travers famously despised the final “Mary Poppins” product, with particular ire for its animated sequences. She reportedly demanded Walt Disney remove them from the film even after a widely attended premiere, but of course he’d secured final cut approval long before. —AF

“The Handmaid’s Tale” (2017-present)

To say Hulu’s serialized take on Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” has gone off the rails would be an embarrassing understatement. (An actual train mowed down half the supporting cast in Season 4!) The Emmy-winning show enjoyed the author’s support in Season 1, but Elisabeth Moss’s exhausting hero and her increasingly ridiculous plot developments left the author nonplussed.

“I’ve done some yelling, but it was fairly effective yelling,” Atwood told the New York Times in 2019. “I think it’s a bit of a problem for people that know about real totalitarianism that some of these characters have survived for as long as they did. Surely they would have been shot by now. Quite a few too many people know what June has been up to.”

Atwood was similarly not a fan of the regularly forgotten 1990 movie adaptation, starring Natasha Richardson, citing its lack of narration as a particularly obvious missed opportunity: a mistake the show wouldn’t repeat. —AF

“My Foolish Heart” (1949)

There’s a reason you don’t see any “Catcher in the Rye” adaptations floating around. J.D. Salinger’s work tends toward the unfilmable (and his estate is precious about the material, anyway). So Mark Robson’s 1949 romantic drama about an unhappily married woman (Susan Hayward) reminiscing about her first love (Dana Andrews) surely wasn’t going to work either. For one, the story is all dialogue, which doesn’t prove great groundwork for a cinematic adaptation. Salinger reportedly had an acidic reaction to the movie, as explained in the oral biography of the author, “Salinger”:

“He was furious. And that pretty much took up that evening because he was furious. He didn’t understand how intelligent people — of course he’d decided that once you hit the California border there wasn’t a brain left — but how anybody could take his story and make such sentimental hash out of it. He felt it had nothing to do with this story, which of course had such a different message. It was trash, and he didn’t want anything to do with it.”

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961)

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is one of those movies you’ll always stay for (as of this writing, I’m already inclined to go stream it) because of Audrey Hepburn’s flinty, quirky performance as flaneur Holly Golightly and the big romantic swoon of the film’s knockout ending. But, as if it weren’t already problematic enough due to the long and rightfully despised casting of Mickey Rooney as a Japanese man, author Truman Capote wasn’t a fan of the movie. It was, after all, based on his much darker and more morally ambiguous novella, which cast Holly as a straight-up escort, and also a pot smoker. 

“The book was really rather bitter,” he told Playboy in 1968, “and Holly Golightly was real—a tough character, not an Audrey Hepburn type at all. The film became a mawkish valentine to New York City and Holly and, as a result, was thin and pretty, whereas it should have been rich and ugly. It bore as much resemblance to my work as the Rockettes do to Ulanova.”

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975)

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, but not for author Ken Kesey, who penned the generation-defining source material. Word has it he wasn’t happy that the film wasn’t told from Chief Bromden’s perspective, but word also has it he never actually saw the film. That’s because, in pre-production, there were major snafus. Here’s how Michael Douglas describes what happened with Kesey:

“My producing partner, Saul Zaentz — the owner of Fantasy Records and a voracious reader — felt an affinity with Kesey. After Larry and I made a first attempt, Saul asked Kesey to write a screenplay and promised him a piece of the action. But like a lot of novelists trying to adapt their own material, it didn’t work out. We fell out with him after that. It was our only longstanding, painful issue. We got in to a financial dispute — it was silly, but maybe it was his way of defending his ego.”

“Myra Breckinridge” (1970)

As Gore Vidal himself put it about this sleazy adaptation of his 1968 novel, “’Myra Breckinridge’ is in many ways considered the worst film ever made — for which I often get credit, though I had nothing to do with it.” Despite a wild cast featuring Raquel Welch, Mae West, John Huston, Rex Reed, and Farrah Fawcett, this story of a trans woman (played by Welch) thudded upon arrival, with Time magazine calling it “as funny as a child molester.” Of the film, Vidal said it was “not just a bad movie, it was an awful joke.”

“A Clockwork Orange’ (1971)

The legacy of “A Clockwork Orange” is unimpeachable at this point, but Anthony Burgess, the author of the book Stanley Kubrick adapted, wasn’t so keen on the film after it began to draw criticisms for its heightened violence in 1971. According to Robert Hofler’s book “Sexplosion,” Burgess said, “I realized, not for the first time, how little impact even a shocking book can make in comparison with a film. Kubrick’s achievement swallowed mine, whole, and yet I was responsible for what some called its malign influence on the young.”

In 1987, Burgess adapted his dystopian 1962 novel to the stage, and included this telling stage direction: “A man bearded like Stanley Kubrick comes on playing, in exquisite counterpoint, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ on a trumpet. He is kicked off the stage.”

“The Shining” (1980)

Stephen King’s disdain for what he felt was Stanley Kubrick’s butchering of his novel “The Shining” is Hollywood lore by now. The author likened the film to a “big beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it.” He also thinks that Kubrick (and Jack Nicholson) botched Jack Torrance’s tragic character arc as an abusive alcoholic who loses his marbles, instead turning him into a cold psychopath. He also thinks the film reduces Wendy (Shelley Duvall) to a shrieking victim. Reviews were mixed at the time but its stature is colossal at this point. King prefers the cheesy 1997 miniseries spin starring Rebecca De Mornay and Steven Weber.

“Dune” (184)

“Dune” has eclipsed its original reputation to become something of a cult entry in director David Lynch’s vast filmography, but the filmmaker has famously, repeatedly excoriated his own movie. Alejandro Jodorowsky, who tried to mount the movie in the ’70s, has similarly decried both Lynch’s version as horrid and the book by Frank Herbert as unfilmable. Denis Villeneuve has big (and so far unfilled) shoes to fill with his version finally coming out in October.

“The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1990)

The trainwreck making of Brian De Palma’s ’80s Wall Street time capsule “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” based on Tom Wolfe’s tome, was such a disaster that it inspired another book, “The Devil’s Candy: ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ Goes to Hollywood” by Julie Salamon. A box-office implosion, this was a case of studio meddling, actors’ musical chairs (De Palma intended almost every role for a different actor), and a movie that resulted as a crude caricature of the milieu it intended to satirize.

“The Scarlet Letter” (1995)

“The Mission” and “The Killing Fields” director Roland Joffé didn’t score with this adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s scorching classic, which earned seven Razzie nominations, winning for Worst Remake or Sequel. This story of Puritan life in a Massachusetts Bay Colony was derided for the clunky script and performances from Demi Moore, Robert Duvall, and Gary Oldman, plummeting at the box office and earning horrid reviews.

“American Psycho” (2000)

Bret Easton Ellis’ eyeroll-inducing comments about how “women can’t direct” (which he tweeted after seeing Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank”) aside, Mary Harron’s “American Psycho” is a brilliant adaptation of his twisted novel about an investment banker turned psycho killer. But Ellis has been dismissive of the film for other reasons, telling Film School Rejects, “The movie is fine, but I think that book is unadaptable because it’s about consciousness, and you can’t really shoot that sensibility.” Eliis criticized the film for confusing audiences as to whether Patrick Bateman’s (Christian Bale) murders were all in his head or not.

“Battlefield Earth” (2000)

It’s no secret that Roger Christian’s adaptation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 1982 sci-fi novel is widely known as one of the worst movies ever made. Scathing reviews and bad word of mouth amounted to a costly box office flop. Screenwriter J.D. Shapiro told the New York Post, “The only time I saw the movie was at the premiere, which was one too many times.” The movie went on to sweep the Razzie Awards, with seven wins including Worst Picture and Worst Actor for John Travolta.

“The Time Machine” (2002)

H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic was much better adapted to the screen with George Pal’s 1960 version, whose screenplay served partly as the basis for H.G.’s great-grandson Simon Wells’ 2002 version. Though it received a decent box office return and even an Academy Award nomination for Best Makeup (losing to “Frida”), the film was despised by critics, who found the story’s transplant from London to New York, and the injection of a mawkish romantic subplot unsatisfactory.

“The Lovely Bones” (2009)

Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” is hardly the most adored film in Peter Jackson’s filmography. It reduces the lyrical and haunted imagery of Alice Sebold’s hugely beloved bestseller to a candy-colored vision of the afterlife. (The story is, after all, about a young girl who is raped and murdered and then proceeds to watch her family grieve from heaven.) Originally, Lynne Ramsay (an edgier choice) was set to direct the book, but stepped away due to creative disputes.

“I think that book was a bit strange, because I saw a few chapters before the book was finished, and thought this was [a] super interesting idea, and then the book came out and became so big that I almost couldn’t change it, and I was going in a way that was quite different,” Ramsay said. “People would expect it to be exactly like the book. I wasn’t sure if that was going to make the best film. The idea was fantastic and I’ve done a few drafts and even if you don’t make something, you learn from that.”

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (2012)

Peter Jackson’s mounting of J.R.R. Tolkien’s original “Hobbit” novel (ultimately into three disparate parts) has its loyalists, but the movie’s 3D Red Epic-shot visuals at a 48 fps frame rate turned off a lot of viewers. The film trilogy grossed nearly $3 billion at the box office, sure, but its eminence came nowhere near the wildly successful “Lord of the Rings” trilogy that preceded it. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote, “After 170 minutes, I felt that I had had enough of a pretty good thing. The trilogy will test the stamina of the non-believers, and many might feel … that the traditional filmic look of ‘Lord of the Rings’ was better.”

“The Giver” (2014)

What could’ve been the start of a franchise based on Lois Lowry’s beloved dystopian young adult novel ended up sputtering at the box office and with critics. Even a director like Phillip Noyce, and stars including Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgard, Katie Holmes, and (yes) Taylor Swift, couldn’t wrest this flat adaptation from doom, leaving many of the novel’s provocative ideas on the cutting room floor.

“The Girl on the Train” (2016)

A film about Emily Blunt as a boozy divorcee who drunkenly spies on people during her commute sounds compelling enough, but Tate Taylor’s adaptation fails to capture the lurid pull of Paula Hawkins’ bestseller. It isn’t confidently trashy enough to embrace the book’s more tawdry aspects, nor well-made enough to pull off its solemn, self-serious vibe as a bidding Oscar contender. Though there is a great scene early on of a very soused Blunt delivering a lacerating monologue to herself in the mirror, vowing to smash her husband’s lover into the floor. It’s a psychotic and committed performance in a dour movie.

“The Goldfinch” (2019)

Adapting a Donna Tartt epic is a daunting task — you don’t see any “The Secret History” movies or miniseries anywhere, do you? — and “The Goldfinch” turned out to be a two-and-half-hour casualty of those futile efforts. Director John Crowley is competent enough, having previously delivered the Best Picture-nominated “Brooklyn,” so what went wrong here? The movie is inert, flattening the Bildungsroman journey of Theo Decker (Ansel Elgort) into a saccharine opus that lurches ever onward through overwrought craft and performances, right down to Nicole Kidman’s wig. It landed with a thunderous splat at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.

“Game of Thrones” Finale (2019)

Two years after the series finale, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” continues to generate controversy over where its characters and storylines headed in the last episode, “The Iron Throne.” Those bummed about the conclusion to the eight-season show include George R.R. Martin, author of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” source books. Martin has been public about feeling left in the cold by the series’ ending, which wrapped in 2019 while his version of the story is, in fact, not over: He’s still churning away at the sixth book, “The Winds of Winter.”

“Looking back, I wish I’d stayed ahead of the books,” Martin said. “My biggest issue there was when they began the [TV] series, I had four books already in print, and the fifth one came out just as the series was starting in 2011. I had a five-book head-start, and these are gigantic books, as you know; I never thought they would catch up with me, but they did. They caught up with me and passed me.”

Still, he’s optimistic about the prequel series “House of the Dragon,” which should ease any bad blood between the author and HBO. “The writing, the directing, the acting all look terrific,” he said of recent rough cuts.

“Into Thin Air: Death on Everest” (1997)

Intrepid writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer is feeling some page-to-screen redemption with the ongoing FX adaptation of his true-crime nonfiction tome “Under the Banner of Heaven.” But the author recently told IndieWire that he felt “burned” by the 1997 ABC straight-to-TV movie “Into Thin Air: Death on Everest,” an adaptation of his famed retelling of his disastrous 1996 experience climbing Mount Everest. “They asked me to be a consultant and they didn’t listen to any of my consulting and it was awful. It was sickening. It was not trusting the intelligence of the viewers, having to overwrite everything and just beat you over the head with it,” he said. He told the LA Times, “It’s total bull … Anyone who goes to that movie and wants a fact-based account should read ‘Into Thin Air.’”

“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971)

Roald Dahl may have made peace with Mel Stuart’s beloved, candy-colored classic musical “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” by the end of his life, but he notoriously hated the movie at the time. While the author was paid a cool $300,000 to write the film and retained full screenwriting credit, the script underwent major rewrites at Paramount with scribe David Seltzer, uncredited. Dahl also felt the movie focused too heavily on loopy chocolatier Wonka (Gene Wilder), understandably because his original 1964 children’s book was called “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Dahl also felt frustrated with the casting of Wilder, an American actor whom he felt didn’t portray the very British eccentric imagined by the author. Dahl wanted an idiosyncratic British actor more along the lines of Spike Milligan or Peter Sellers.

“The Time Traveler’s Wife” (2022)

Here’s a case where the readers/viewers and the author disagree. In the post-lockdown, too-much-TV deluge, HBO’s “The Time Traveler’s Wife” was so forgettably bad that it barely registered as worth discussing. (The acting, the dialogue, the pacing, a mess!) But while disappointed fans lambasted the swing-and-a-miss limited series — with many citing the inherent creepiness of a naked time-traveling man meeting with a child in a field as something at least somewhat better addressed by the 2009 movie, starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana — author Audrey Niffenegger stands by the Rose Leslie and Theo James-led series.

“You can never exactly replicate a book,” Niffenegger told Forbes, praising creator Steven Moffat’s ambition and understanding of her work. “You can’t just breathe it on to the screen. But I feel like they really gave it their all. It’s edgy, it’s odd, but they’ve done their absolute utmost to make it great.” —AF