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The Art of Adaptation
Taking a story from the page to the screen (or stage) isn’t as simple as it might seem.
Among the absurdly many Facebook groups I belong to, there is one for fans of my favorite book. I’m not sure if it originally began as a fan project or if the author created it, but the author invited me, and I was happy to join — and I’m still happy to be there. These fans are some of the loveliest people in the world.
But, if there’s one thing I’ve garnered over the last few years — as the prospect of a film adaptation of this novel has gone from long-awaited and hoped for to a certain reality — it’s that many of my fellow fans are pinning a lot of their expectations on having every last detail of the novel carried over into the adaptation, and how upset they’ll be if any minor detail — like the color of the main character’s eyes — isn’t perfectly rendered in the adaptation.
This isn’t a phenomena unique to the fans of the book I’m talking about, by the way — even though I’m picking on them because they’re the impetus for this story. It happens just about any time a popular IP is adapted for the screen.
My first major experience with adaptation was — of course — The Lord of the Rings, and there are still some Reddit-dwelling fanboys who get salty when you mention Peter Jackson’s name.
