With the exception of a few films, including The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Green Mile , many of last year's book adaptations were, at best, modest performers. Recent films based on more obscure novels, such as The Beach and Fight Club , fared no better. Hollywood will always turn to books for ideas, but with the recent poor box office results and with Hollywood slashing development budgets, their role is being scrutinized. Then we started selling from manuscripts. Moviegoers shunned Beloved , the 1998 film adaptation of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that starred Winfrey as a former slave.
Movies are terribly literal.
It is very difficult to achieve poetry in the adaptation of a literary novel. Movies that are really going to have any type of popular audience are going to have a strong narrative line and characters people can relate to. You have to be careful when you have a complex book. And then there is the temptation to Hollywoodize books by making them more upbeat. Although the idea was dismissed, some Warner Bros. executives suggested giving The Perfect Storm a happier ending.