I watched the adaptation of “The Thursday Murder Club” today and I was astounded by how bad it was. Major plot lines were abandoned, the writing was terribly simplistic with none of the nuance that the book had, the characters seem absolutely caricature-ish and the screenplay itself was riddled with flaws in every way imaginable.
The movie had an incredible cast. Absolutely perfect. So presumably they had a good budget to work with as well. They had good source material. I’m not saying that the book doesn’t have flaws, but the movie seemed to amplify them a hundred fold.
This got me to thinking and I realised that most book adaptations (with a very small number of exceptions like LOTR or Slow Horses) are absolutely terrible. Why is this? Why do production companies insist on changing the source material when the source material is what made the book popular enough to warrant an adaptation in the first place? I’m honestly dumbfounded by this conundrum so if anyone has any experience in filmmaking- especially book adaptations – I’d love to know the reasons
by Depressed-Erudite