Brought to you by Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
What do John Grisham, Roddy Doyle and J.K. Rowling all have in common?
Apart from their monthly celebrity mud-wrestling league membership, of course.
That’s right, they’ve all had their much-loved books adapted into equally-loved films including The Firm, The Commitments and the magical Harry Potter series.
Step forward Lee Child, author of the world-renowned Jack Reacher books, and now the latest writer to have his literary series spawn a popular movie franchise based around the badass anti-hero .
Check this out…
Clip via Paramount Pictures
With the imminent release of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back in Irish cinemas on 20 October, we’ve picked out some of the most popular and controversial book adaptions in the history of film.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Published: 2005
Author: Steig Larsson
Film adaption: Swedish version, 2009. American version, 2011.
In both the Swedish and American adaptation of the first of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium books, Lisbeth Salander is a genius hacker with anti-social tendencies.
Like a prototypical Mr Robot, she’s good with computers and you’d really be better off not getting on her wrong side.
She teams up with a journalist called Mikael and the two set about on the trail of some seriously slimy Scandinavians.
The three books (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest) have been adapted into films in Swedish and the first of the trilogy was remade by David Fincher in 2011.
To date, the films have grossed $444 million worldwide.
Clip via Sony Pictures Entertainment
Jurassic Park
Published: 1990
Author: Michael Crichton
Film adaption: 1993
Michael Crichton first had a go at high-concept funfairs in his 1973 film, Westworld, (which has since been remade into a terrific new HBO show). Two decades later, Crichton still hadn’t slipped his theme park paranoia so in 1990 he published the sci-fi-dino adventure story.
When the movie was released in 1993 it was an absolute game-changer in terms of spectacle and entertainment. The fact that Spielberg made Jurassic Park AND Schindler’s List in the same year is a feat of film-making that’s never really been equalled.
Jurassic Park immediately became a pop-culture touchstone while selling enough merchandise to find a cure for death.
Clip via Jurassic1993Park
The four films in the series have since made over $3.5 billion worldwide. The most recent addition to the franchise, Jurassic World, entertained audiences worldwide and wonderfully contained this moment of comedy genius.
That’s right, it’s a man taking the time to rescue his two Margaritas, right in the middle of a deadly flying dino attack.
Jurassic World 2 should follow this man and only this man.
The Jack Ryan Franchise
Published: 1984
Author: Tom Clancy
Film adaption: 1990
Tom Clancy, the patron saint of people buying novels in airports, first introduced the world to CIA agent Jack Ryan in his 1984 thriller, The Hunt for Red October.
A film adaptation followed in 1990 starring Alec Baldwin as Ryan.
He was then replaced by Harrison Ford for Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger, both of which were big hits.
The noughties saw two attempts to revive the character, first with Ben Affleck in The Sum Of All Fears and most recently with Chris Pine in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
While neither reboots set the world on fire, the movie franchise is still a lucrative property that has grossed $922 million to date.
Ryan will soon be making another comeback in a limited series for Amazon starring John Krasinski AKA Jim from The Office’s as the super-spy himself.
Clip via isthemoviegood
Twilight
Published: 2005
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Film adaptation: 2008
The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer was a publishing sensation when the books first started flying off shelves in 2005.
You may have seen the covers for the book, posters for the film adaptation or watched the below above and thought, “what in the name of holy hopping heck is this thing about?”
Unless we’re mistaken (and the resident young person at the JOE desk is telling us that we most certainly are), Twilight is the story of a human girl called Bella and her forbidden love affair with a vampire man named Edward. The werewolves aren’t happy about this coupling and challenge Edward and his fanged friends to a thrilling game of zero gravity baseball.
Whether you’re a fan of the franchise or not, the five films of the series grossed $3.45 billion.
This is especially impressive when you factor in how boring the films become and how bad the acting gets as the series progresses.
Still, there’s enough entertainment value in the first film for a nice, stress-free night in with your sweetheart (unless they’re supernatural and 100 years older than you).
Clip via Official Twilight Film
50 Shades Of Grey
Published: 2011
Author: E.L. James
Film adaption: 2015
The book it’s almost impossible to not see on public transport is a necessary addition to this list. It’s hard to remember what life was like before E.L. James self published her erotic thriller back in 2011.
The synopsis grabbed the imagination of readers everywhere. Literature student Anastasia Steele’s life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire, Christian Grey.
The two have an affair that sets aflutter the hearts of hopeless romantics and latent S & M enthusiasts the world over.
The book started life as Twilight fan fiction before morphing into one of the biggest and stickiest literary hits in years. The big screen version starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan made a staggering $571 million worldwide.
The sequels have already been filmed back-to-back and will be released in 2017 and 2018.
In the meantime, here’s the cleanest clip of the film we could find.
And the official trailer…
Clip via Universal Pictures UK
Harry Potter
Published: 1997
Author: J.K. Rowling
Film adaption: 2001
Impoverished single mother J.K. Rowling wrote the first chapters of Harry Potter’s story in a cafe in Edinburgh, using the building for heat because her own flat was freezing.
She wrote across the road from the Greyfriars Graveyard where she’d occasionally stroll about when looking for inspiration.
The magic and intelligence of Rowling’s writing quickly found a large and enthusiastic audience upon being published in 1997.
The story of the bespectacled pre-teen wizard cast a spell over Planet Earth and a literary sensation was born. Hollywood came calling and so did some ill-fated premises; Steven Spielberg wanted to relocate the action to the US and cast The Sixth Sense’s Hayley Joel Osmont.
The task eventually went to Christopher Columbus, the writer of Gremlins and the director of Home Alone. He deftly shaped the world of Hogwarts and cast three talented unknowns as his three leads.
The eight films in the series have the rare distinction of increasing in quality as they go along and, rarer still, proved a hit with both critics and audiences alike.
The eventual tally of $7.7 billion and the enduring popularity of all things Potter means that we definitely haven’t seen the last of Hogwarts on the big screen.
Clip via Movieclips Trailer Vault
The Exorcist
Published: 1971
Author: William Peter Blatty
Film adaption: 1973
“Somewhere between science and superstition there is another world, a world of darkness…”
There were other scary stories before The Exorcist, but none had its psychological and religious impact.
Author William Peter Blatty based the novel on allegedly real events in Georgetown where a boy was possessed by a demon.
Boys and their demons, eh?
The 1971 novel of The Exorcist scared the hell out of readers all over the world. It proved to be an instantaneous classic with readers and critics worldwide.
“Poe and Mary Shelley would recognize [Blatty] as working in their ambiguous limbo between the natural and the supernatural,” wrote Life magazine at the time of the book’s publishing.
The film adaptation was released in 1973 to huge acclaim. It it was a genuine sensation.
People queued, freaked out and fainted during its theatrical run with both believers and non-believers alike. The film won two Oscars and made $957 million.
When asked about the enduring enthusiasm for his film, director William Friedkin said, “it’s a real house on a real street in a real town with real people in it. And on the third floor of that house there’s a real little girl and she is possessed by a demon.”
To paraphrase Brian Clough, The Exorcist mightn’t be the scariest film ever made, but it’s certainly in the top one.
Hope you have some clean underpants handy, because things are about to get a whole lot scarier…
Clip via Warner Bros.
Gone With The Wind
Published:1936
Author: Margaret Mitchell
Film adaption: 1939
The original blockbuster, Gone With The Wind, has the distinction of being the biggest box office smash of all time. This is hardly surprising when you factor in that the 1936 book by Margaret Mitchell was read by anyone with eyeballs.
The story follows Scarlet O’Hara, a spoiled Southern belle played by Vivien Leigh.
Scarlet is super-humanly selfish and vain, but also smart and self sufficient.
She’s got romantic problems. Don’t we all, love?
The guy she loves is called Ashley and he’s bequeathed to his cousin. Despite this murky detail that no one chooses to talk about, she declares her love to Ashley who isn’t interested.
However, her declaration is overheard by cad-about-town, Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable. There’s three hours of verbal sparring interrupted by the oddball or burning of a city. The film’s lavish look and old school cool have lost none of their impact almost 80 years on.
Plus, it also has one of the coolest lines in film history…
Clip via BFITrailers
The Godfather
Published: 1969
Author: Mario Puzo
Film adaption: 1972
The sprawling crime opera The Godfather is probably the most popular fictional story of the 20th century. It tells the tale of Don Vito Corleone’s odyssey from lowly Sicilian immigrant to organised crime boss, and the toll that this journey takes on his soul and that of his family.
His son Michael, a college student and soldier who has purposely distanced from his father’s business, finds himself dragged into the fold when the Corleone’s find themselves at war with a rival family.
Mario Puzo’s novel is dense and contains some of the best dialogue this side of Raymond Chandler. The book was an instant hit upon its release and the film rights had been snapped up a few years earlier by producer Robert Evans.
Puzo wrote the screenplay with director Francis Ford Coppola. The film, like the book, was a huge commercial hit. It dominated the 1972 Academy Awards and had such impact on the culture that real-life Mafias began incorporating the film’s dialogue into their everyday criminal vernacular.
The Godfather Part II followed in 1974. It was the rarest of breeds; a sequel to a classic that’s even better than the original.
The less said about The Godfather Part III, the better.
Clip via Watch All Your Movie Trailers™
The Lord Of The Rings
Published: 1954, 1955
Author: J.R.R. Tolkein
Film adaption: 1978 (animated), 2001, 2002, 2003 (live action)
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings refined the fantasy genre and inspired damn near everyone who cracked its considerable spine.
It shaped a generation of writers including George R.R. Martin. Musically, Led Zeppelin’s lyrics are 70% Tolkein. The Beatles loved it so much that they wanted to make a live action film and asked Stanley Kubrick to direct it (he declined).
Fans of the book would have to wait a few decades before the technology and vision was available by way of New Zealand auteur Peter Jackson and his Weta studio.
Jackson had tried to get the franchise off the ground for the better part of a decade which included lots of frustrating conversations with the original producer Harvey Weinstein, who wanted the three books to be combined to make two films.
Newline eventually came to the rescue and the three movies were simultaneously green-lit, one of the biggest gambles in cinema history. The films cleaned up at both the box office and award ceremonies, earning $3 billion and multiple Oscars.
The third film of the series, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, also has the distinction of having the most false endings for a film ever.
Clip via Movieclips
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is released on 20 October.
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