Some novels make good films.
Some novels don't. One good predictor of whether a novel will make a good film is how much the novel depends on the inward lives of its characters. David Copperfield , full of incident and activity, could make a good film. So could Gone With the Wind , or The Hunt for Red October , or Taipan . Ulysses , in which the inward voice of the author and the details of the central character make the trivial heroic, probably could not make a good film.