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Writer's pictureAbi Burt

Books to the Big Screen

The popular show The Vampire Diaries started as a book. Photo by Abi Burt.

If given the option, it would be safe to assume that many teenagers would choose to watch a movie over reading a book. A lot of people don’t know that many movies have been based on books. It may not be exactly the same, but authors all over the world have had their famous books adapted into a film, movie, or TV show, and some authors that have been adapted have not been recognized as they deserve.

The Vampire Diaries follows a young girl named Elena Gilbert who falls in love with two brothers, Stefan and Damon Salvatore, who happen to be vampires. According to Deadline, Elena’s story had been watched by 1.14 million people on the show's finale, many of whom didn’t know that a woman named L.J. Smith had created Elena and the characters for a book, which had been turned into a hit TV show. Like most TV shows, Julie Plec, the producer, added a little twist to the show.

Pretty Little Liars and Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists, written by Sara Shepard, have both been adapted into TV shows. Shepard wrote Pretty Little Liars about four girls, Hanna, Spencer, Aria, and Emily, who had been brought together by the ultimate mean girl, Alison DiLaurentis. When Alison goes missing, the girls then have to deal with the fallout of all of the dangerous lies they have told. The book includes murder, drama, betrayal, gossip, and best of all, secrets. The show ran for seven seasons before finishing with an epic showdown between the liars and their worst nightmare. The first episode based on the first book had a viewership of approximately 3 million people according to Hollywood Reporter.

Producers adapted the best selling novel Divergent into a movie starring Theo James and Shailene Woodley. The characters, Tris and Four, appeared in a dystopian novel written by Veronica Roth, about a society that made people choose which “faction” or group they wanted to join based on their personalities. Although the movies have changed the plot and a few of the characters, the majority have the same qualities and details as the book. Roth wrote four books and the amazing cast recreated three of them.

The Maze Runner, a dystopian trilogy, has been a popular series of books written by James Dashner, reaching the big screen as a movie series in 2014. The movies starred Dylan O’Brien from Teen Wolf, Kaya Scodelario, and Thomas Brodie Sangster. The trilogy reached high levels of popularity, and its final movie finished filming in 2018, ending the exciting and adventurous series. The movie follows Thomas and his friends as they try to travel outside of the walls that make up a maze, enclosing them and trapping the teens. Little do they know that it might be safer to be inside the walls. When the monsters outside of the wall find a way in, Thomas and his friends have to decide whether they should leave, or stay in the maze where they have a chance of being killed.

Overall, many famous movies and TV shows have been based off of best selling novels, written by authors who have fought their way to the top. The adaptations of the movies and TV shows have brought more attention to the books that they have originated from, resulting in the author's name being well known and thousands of copies of the books being sold and read.


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