I love reading books! Some may say it's a dying art form - with the internet and all - but the pleasure you get from reading is hard to experience in any other, perhaps more modern, form. And the pleasure is doubled when a favorite book is adapted to the big screen!

While some of the most engrossing films are based on original scripts, there are some equally awesome movies based on adaptations of some of today's best-selling novels and non-fiction books. In this feature, we listed 50 of the most anticipated book-to-movie adaptations for 2008 and beyond.

The list is quite diverse: thrillers, horror, coming-of-age, fantasy, adventure, classics, romance, crime and drama. Some of them are currently 'works in progress' and soon to be released, while some are still being optioned by various extremely excited filmmakers and producers.

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Special Report by Jed Medina

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The main characters are Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, two 12-year-olds who watch as the light of Ember flickers and they have to race to discover a way out. An ecstatic review of the book telling some intro to the story comes from @ Amazon:

"It is always night in the city of Ember. But there is no moon, no stars. The only light during the regular twelve hours of "day" comes from flood lamps that cast a yellowish glow over the streets of the city. Beyond are the pitch-black Unknown Regions, which no one has ever explored because an understanding of fire and electricity has been lost, and with it the idea of a Moveable Light. "Besides," they tell each other, "there is nowhere but here" Among the many other things the people of Ember have forgotten is their past and a direction for their future. For 250 years they have lived pleasantly, because there has been plenty of everything in the vast storerooms. But now there are more and more empty shelves--and more and more times when the lights flicker and go out, leaving them in terrifying blackness for long minutes. What will happen when the generator finally fails?"

Film Version: Fresh from the success of Atonement, awesome young actress Saoirse Ronan and another hot newcomer Harry Treadaway lead the ensemble cast of this highly-anticipated fantasy-adventure film. The movie also stars Bill Murray as the Mayor of Ember, Tim Robbins, Mackenzie Crook, Martin Landau, and Toby Jones. Directed by English filmmaker Gil Kenan.

[ IMDb movie details ] [ Author's official website ]

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"In Twilight, an exquisite fantasy by Stephenie Meyer, readers discover a pair of lovers who are supremely star-crossed. Bella adores beautiful Edward, and he returns her love. But Edward is having a hard time controlling the blood lust she arouses in him, because--he's a vampire. At any moment, the intensity of their passion could drive him to kill her, and he agonizes over the danger. But Bella would rather be dead than part from Edward, so she risks her life to stay near him, and the novel burns with the erotic tension of their dangerous and necessarily chaste relationship. "

Film Version: After talks with a number of film studios, author Stephenie Meyer has given the go-ahead for the film version of her book. Many of the book's fans have speculated on which actor might play Edward. Among the most popular choices were Gaspard Ulliel and Tom Sturridge, but the role has been given to a newcomer, whose most important film credit to date is a supporting role in the Harry Potter series - Robert Pattinson. For the role of Bella, fans rejoiced when Kristen Stewart was selected.

Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) is directing the film, which is set to go into production in early 2008, from a script by Melissa Rosenberg (Step Up). It was also reported that Meyer's best-selling young-adult novel is just the start of a planned film franchise from Summit Entertainment, the producers of the movie.

[ IMDb movie details ] [ tMF feature on Twilight - Robert Pattinson | Kristen Stewart ] [ Author's official website ]

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"Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because when he was twenty-one, Jacob ran away and joined the circus. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was due to sit his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they had left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams but didn't write a single word. Instead, he walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train.

Film version: There is a bit of 'secrecy' at the moment, as negotiations are currently on-going. Andrew R. Tennenbaum is reported to be writing the movie adaptation, to be produced by California-based Flashpoint Entertainment.

[ IMDb movie details ] [ Author official website ]

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"The year is 1808, the place Burgundy, France. Among the lush vines of his family's vineyard, Jodeau, 18 years old and frustrated in love, is about to come face to face with a celestial being. But this is no sentimental "Touched by an Angel" seraph; as imagined by Elizabeth Knox in her wildly evocative and original novel, Xas is equipped with a glorious pair of wings ("pure sinew and bone under a cushion of feathers") and an appetite for earthly pleasures--wine, books, gardening, conversation, and, eventually, carnal love.

The fateful meeting between man and angel occurs on June 27. After an evening during which Sobran spills all his troubles and Xas gently advises him, the angel promises to return on the same night next year to toast Sobran's marriage. Thus begins a friendship that will last 55 years, spanning marriages, wars, births, deaths, and even the vast distances between heaven, earth, and hell. In addition to the wonderfully flawed Sobran and his mysterious angel, Knox brilliantly limns secondary characters who are deeply sympathetic--from Sobran's unstable wife, Celeste, and his troubled brother, Leon, to his dear friend and confidante, the Baroness Aurora. Love, murder, madness, and a singular theology that would make a believer out of the most hardened atheist all add up, in The Vintner's Luck, to a novel that will break your heart yet leave you wishing for more. " Review by Alix Wilber.

The book is written by acclaimed author Elizabeth Knox.

Film version: To be adapted by award-winning film director and screenwriter Niki Caro (Whale Rider, North Country), starring Keisha Castle-Hughes ( the young lead actress in Whale Rider), Vera Farmiga Gaspard Ulliel and Jeremie Renier. With an anticipated release in 2008.

[ tMF feature on The Vintner's Luck ] [ IMDb movie details ] [ NY Times Book review ] [ New Zealand Film Commission press release ]

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In the late 1970s, NBC had plans to bring Atlas Shrugged to television as one of the multi-part mini-series popular at the time. Ayn Rand wanted Farrah Fawcett to star, but the project never materialized

Says the Atlas Society (a site dedicated to the exploration of Ayn Rand's ideas):

"Since it was published in 1957, Rand’s epic novel has attracted legions of admirers, sold many millions of copies, and become a landmark of American fiction. Yet adapting it for the screen has proved to be a challenge of equally epic proportions. Atlas Shrugged is one of the few major novels of the 20th century that have never been filmed.

The adptation now underway is a joint effort of Baldwin Entertainment ("Ray"); TAS board member John Aglialoro, who holds the screen rights to the novel; and Lionsgate ("Crash"). "

[ IMDb movie details ] [ Atlas Society dedicated page ]

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The film was cast through open casting sessions in Manchester and Oxford, UK. Actors could submit their details through the official website before being asked to audition. The director and Philip Pullman both agreed they wanted new and unknown actors to play the lead roles "Chris" and "Jenny". Chosen to play Chris is newcomer Duncan Stewart while Jenny went to Jessica Blake.

The author has this to say about the upcoming film:

"Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm night in early June, when one of the colleges in Oxford was holding its summer ball." A chance meeting with Jenny at an Oxford party leaves seventeen-year-old Chris with hope for a summer romance - and no premonition of trouble. Busy with his job and soon in love with Jenny, whose cheerful surface belies the dark uncertainty of her past, Chris misses all the signs of danger. Before he knows it, he's caught in the sinister web of a criminal whose desire for revenge crushes those who stand in his way."

[ IMDb movie details ] [ Official movie site ] [ Author's official website ]

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"Brooks, the author of the determinedly straight-faced parody The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), returns in all seriousness to the zombie theme for his second outing, a future history in the style of Theodore Judson's Fitzpatrick's War. Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace. Despite its implausible premise and choppy delivery, the novel is surprisingly hard to put down. The subtle, and not so subtle, jabs at various contemporary politicians and policies are an added bonus. "

Film Version: IMDb reported that there was a bidding war between Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio's production companies (Plan B and Appian Way respectively) for the film rights to Max Brooks' unreleased book, Paramount came out the winner and Plan B will be producing the movie. No casting news yet.

[ IMDb movie details ] [ Author's official website ] [ Youtube video of unofficial WWz trailer ]
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8. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is a 2008 fantasy film based on Prince Caspian, the second published novel in C. S. Lewis' children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. It will be the second film in The Chronicles of Narnia film series from Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, following The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).

The four Pevensie children return to Narnia to aid a young prince (Ben Barnes) in his struggle for the throne against his corrupt uncle King Miraz (Sergio Castellitto).

"One year has passed in our world since the first adventure ended, but in Narnia, almost 1,300 years have passed, and now it is time for the Pevensie children to return and make history. The villainous King Miraz prevents the rightful king, his young nephew Prince Caspian, from ruling the land of Narnia. Caspian uses Susan's magic horn that was left in Narnia to summon the four Pevensies to help him and a small army of Old Narnians reclaim his rightful throne."

Ben Barnes, the actor chosen to play Prince Caspian, was previously engaged in the theatrical play, The History Boys. Upon being selected for the role, the actor left the play, leaving the production and its producers in crisis. Issues were raised but was finally resolved without having to go into any legal proceedings.

[ Official movie site ] [ IMDb movie details ]

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“In Christopher Buckley's hilarious fourth novel, Washington, D.C., is naturally enough a place of sex, lies, and videotape. Unfortunately for Little Green Men's pundit protagonist, John Oliver Banion, it is also the HQ of Majestic Twelve, a very, very covert government project. Since "that golden Cold War summer of 1947," MJ-12 has had a single mission--to convince taxpayers that space invaders are constantly lurking below what's left of the ozone layer. "A country convinced that little green men were hovering over the rooftops was inclined to vote yea for big weapons and space programs," the author thoughtfully explains. But one disgruntled operative wants out. Nathan Scrubbs is fed up to the back teeth with the art of alien abduction--not to mention his cover as a Social Security flunky--so when his request for a transfer is quashed, he drunkenly decides to take it out on ubiquitous ultra-prig Banion, who happens to be on TV at the time. The ensuing high-tech kidnap, at Maryland's Burning Bush Country Club, is only one of the thousands of convulsively funny scenes in Little Green Men. Not that the novel isn't a skewed morality play of some sort: as Banion comes to believe in Tall Nordics and Short Ugly Grays, he is quickly removed from every A-list in town. But oddly enough, social and political disaster turns out to be as liberating as the finest alien probe. Let's just say that long before Banion and Scrubbs have a close encounter at the Millennium Man March on Washington, this Beltway barrel of monkeys attains a truly extraplanetary level of amusement.”

Film Version: John Malkovich and Peter Saarsgard are reported to be attached to the film, to be directed by Whit Stillman. The film is to be produced by Edward Pressman Film.

[ IMDb movie details ] [ The Salon book review ]

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10. The Lovely Bones: The Lovely Bones is a 2002 novel by Alice Sebold. It is the story of a teenage girl who, after being brutally raped and murdered, watches from heaven as her family and friends go on with their lives, while she herself comes to terms with her own death. The novel received a large amount of critical praise and became an instant bestseller.

The novel's title stems from a line towards the end of the novel, in which Susie ponders her friends and family's newfound strength after her death:

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life. "

Film Version: The film adaptation of the novel is currently in preproduction and will be directed by Peter Jackson, who personally purchased the rights. The film will star Irish actress Saoirse Ronan as Susie with Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg as her parents.

[ IMDb movie details ] [ tMF feature: Casting news: Ryan Gosling ]

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[ Read more: Part 2 ]

Comments (18)

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written by Shannon, February 29, 2008

I love twilight but where's Harry Potter?

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written by uherenye, February 29, 2008

i don't understand why twilight is number 2 when i've never even heard of the number 1 book. how can a book no one knows about be more highly anticipated than an incredibly popular one?

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written by Lea, February 29, 2008

Yeah but there are tons of people that don't know what Twilight is and would wonder why it's even at number 2. Just depends what crowd you're in, reading wise. I read the City of Ember (and it's two sequels) a while ago. It should be very good and I'm not surprised it's at number one. It has a VERY interesting twist to it that will be great to see on screen.

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written by Ginnie, March 01, 2008

I can't wait for Twilight

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written by Raine, March 01, 2008

I think Twilight should have been #1, but I can understand why he's excited about City of Ember. It looks like a fantastic book, and it has Bill Murray starring in it and TOM HANKS producing it.

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written by Beatrice, March 15, 2008

LOVE Twilight

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written by Jocelyn, March 17, 2008

TWILIGHT

50 Most Aniticipated Book to Movie Adaptations (part one)
written by Tami, March 29, 2008

I can't wait for "Twilight" the movie, Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse is some of the best books that I have read and I have read a lot of books. I am glad to see that it is #2. I would like it to be #1. Good for "Twilight" for making it into the top 5.

Excited for Twilight
written by Kim, March 29, 2008

There is a lot of excitement for Twilight becoming a movie, just look about the internet…December can’t come soon enough!!!

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written by Joanna, March 31, 2008

T W I L I G H T

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written by Ann, April 19, 2008

Water for Elephants is an amazing read! Such a dark, tragic story set in such a colorful venue! I'm really looking forward to the movie!

Twilight, of course, is going to be huge, but I really hope it does the books justice!

I just recently finished reading The Vintner's Luck, and I'm very very interested to see how it will be adapted to the big screen. Such a complex story that spans a lifetime!

I read The Lovely Bones a few years ago and it was such a powerful novel! It makes me a little nervous that such big names are slated to star in and direct this film, since the novel is so delicate and contemplative, yet so captivating. I hope they stay true to the feel of the book and don't "hollywood" it too much.

I'm also looking forward to the next Narnia movie. The first one was beautiful to watch and did a pretty good job sticking to the book, and I think this one looks even better!

Wow! I can't wait for these movies! What a great list! Thanks for the article!

Thanks! Books can really move you!
written by jedmed, April 19, 2008

Hi Ann,

thanks for the comments! Aside from Twilight, the book that really moved me in such powerful way is The Vintner's Luck. I read it after reading Hoseinni's The Kite Runner, a good book for me, but it failed to impress. Vintner's Luck is such a complex and interesting book, I simply can't wait for the movie. Niki Carro is a fantastic director and with Gaspard Ulliel and Jeremie Renier in the leads, how can it go wrong?

Water for Elephants isn very much a tragedy. I find the experience of reading it very hard for me. I tend to get a bit emotional, and this one really hit hard.

good choices
written by joeyli87, May 06, 2008

mmm, all of these books have been mentioned many many many times that i ALMOST wish sometimes nonpopularized books would become movies (though some of those books above are TERRRific, ANYWAAYY...

Atlas Shrugged is by far my GREATEST anticipation. I am VERY anxious to see who is going to be Francisco d'Anconia, as he's my favourite character. =)

I don't like angelina jolie and therefore do not support her role in this movie (but i could be biased =) )
Anyway, i heard brad pitt MIGHT be john galt, i hope this rumour is wrong, as i don't really think he's fit for the role, i don't imagine the brad pitt NOW to be john galt, ALTHOUGH if he were in his Meet Joe Black days (which i think is very galt-ish) i would willinging accept him.

I'm also very much anticipating Vitner's Luck and Twilight =)

I really didn't like the first Narnia movie....it was so bad i actually don't even remember why...i guess im going to stick to the books, but i'll watch the new one..

wow, great comments!
written by jedmed, May 06, 2008

I find Meet Joe Black quite a fascinating film! I love the way Anthony Hopkins played his role and yeah, Pitt was simply awesome- his elegant and confident posture, his delivery of his lines, his stares... yeah very John Galt. But for the role of Galt, I would prefer a younger actor. Hard to come up with a name right now...

I read Atlas Shrugged right after the Fountainhead, so I was an Ayn Rand fanatic during those times, still is until now. Rand's ideas are quite simply revolutionary. I know that is debatable, but for a young impressionable teen, I would say, Rand towers above her contemporaries.

Vintner's Luck is quite simply one of my favorite books of all time. Even 'better' than The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault.

Yay for Twilight!!
written by PalBokEe, June 01, 2008

Go Twilight!!!

MUUST REAAAADD! TWILIGHT # 2?? AWWW:(
written by nathaliie, June 25, 2008

The lovely bones & the vintner's luck loook good=)
i woulld definetely read thhem woow! peter jackson long time no see:*

TWILIGHTT!
written by JESSICACAKES., June 27, 2008

WOO twilight I would of wanted it to be second but I haven't read the first book yet and I don't want to be bias =x WOO for Lovely Bones and Prince Caspian! Time Travelers wife and Harry Potter should be here too

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written by vinus, July 15, 2008

I love Twilight, I purposely look for true stories because they're always the best ones! I just love reading books and picture it on the big screen.
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vinus

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