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How much artistic license should a director take when adapting a novel into a film?

There are multiple different types of film adaptions of novels from faithful, to loosely based on, to only using the same title to draw in an audience. How accurate does the film need to be to the source text and how much artistic license should a director take for an adaption?

  • I think this would be a very interesting article to write as people are often very disappointed with films when they do not follow the plot of the novel and introduce new characters etc. Perhaps highlight the fine line between a director who is filming his own interpretation of a novel and one is using the skeleton story as the structure for their film, allowing them to include what audiences like (more action, more romance etc) – mpill13 8 years ago
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  • The author should also remember that being 100% accurate isn't always the best either. Changing mediums means drastic changes to content. Thats one of the many reasons the A:TLA movie was so awful, it tried to follow a season of the show in just over 2 hours of movie. – Cojo 8 years ago
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  • Derek Landy, author of Skulduggery Pleasant, once said that books don't make good films, films make good films. It's worth exploring that side of things as I do believe that he is quite right. Books and films, being two different forms of media, have different rules and expectations after all. – mattdoylemedia 8 years ago
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