There is a recent rising trend of novels being adapted into movies.
A few recent examples of this trend include The Maze Runner by James Dashner, The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and the list seems to be endless.
Adding to that list are authors Marie Lu and Robert Paul Weston, who were both recently at the Vancouver Writer’s Festival and who have both recently had their novels optioned for films.
Lu is the author of the Legend series, a trilogy, and has recently released the first novel of a new series titled The Young Elites.
Weston has also released his new novel, Blues for Zoey, earlier this year.
Lu’s novel Legend, which is the first in a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic time period, and Weston’s Zorgamazoo, a fantasy adventure novel that rhymes, are adding to this trend.
Lu says that she thinks the trend is a good thing and “the goal is to get more people to read.”
Weston agrees and says “it’s good to kind of marry those things, literature and film, together.”
“My agent always calls movies two hour commercials for your book,” Lu says.
This trend is acknowledging novels to the rest of the world, to people that may not have known about the novel before the film, or vice versa. People can learn about the movie because of the book, or people can learn about the book because of the movie.
In regards to their own book-to-film adaptations, they know that it’s exactly that, an adaptation. They’re writers, not filmmakers, and novels and films are two different mediums.
“I kind of put my faith in the people who know what they’re doing and I’ve always told them that as long as the characters stay intact and are true to themselves and then you know the plot, I know, sometimes needs to change in order to fit the visual medium more,” says Lu, and “at that point, it’s not my baby anymore it’s someone else’s.”
“I want to like the film, but that’s different from wanting the film to be identical to the book,” says Weston.
The rights to Zorgamazoo have been bought by one of the producers of Shrek and Weston says that he wants “the spirit of the book to be intact.”
Contrary to what some people believe, the author doesn’t have any control over casting, no matter how devoted their fan base is.
A movie is probably never going to be exactly like the novel and everyone who has read the book will have their own interpretation of the characters imagined in their heads, but this is a trend that seems to be sticking.
So, even though the movie may not have been exactly what you imagined while reading the novel, but the movie will only ever be an adaptation of that novel.
Written by: Nicky Toor
