Film adaptation

(Redirected from Adapted screenplay) Films based on other media (books, plays, etc.)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Film adaptation" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dialogic process.

While the most common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis, other works adapted into films include non-fiction (including journalism), autobiographical works, comic books, scriptures, plays, historical sources and even other films. Adaptation from such diverse resources has been a ubiquitous practice of filmmaking since the earliest days of cinema in nineteenth-century Europe. In contrast to when making a remake, movie directors usually take more creative liberties when creating a film adaptation.

Elision and interpolation

In 1924, Erich von Stroheim attempted a literal adaptation of Frank Norris's novel McTeague with his film Greed. The resulting film was 9½ hours long, and was cut to four hours at studio insistence. It was then cut again (without Stroheim's input) to around two hours. The result was a film that was largely incoherent. Since that time, few directors have attempted to put everything in a novel into a film. Therefore, elision is all but essential.

In some cases, film adaptations also interpolate scenes or invent characters. This is especially true when a novel is part of a literary saga. Incidents or quotations from later or earlier novels will be inserted into a single film. Additionally and far more controversially, filmmakers will invent new characters or create stories that were not present in the source material at all. Given the anticipated audience for a film, the screenwriter, director or movie studio may wish to increase character time or to invent new characters. For example, William J. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Ironweed included a short appearance by a prostitute named Helen. Because the film studio anticipated a female audience for the film and had Meryl Streep for the role, Helen became a significant part of the film. However, characters are also sometimes invented to provide the narrative voice.

Interpretation as adaptation

There have been several notable cases of massive inventive adaptation, including the Roland Joffe adaptation of The Scarlet Letter with explicit sex between Hester Prynn and the minister and Native American obscene puns into a major character and the film's villain. The Charlie Kaufman and "Donald Kaufman" penned Adaptation, credited as an adaptation of the novel The Orchid Thief, was an intentional satire and commentary on the process of film adaptation itself. All of those are cases of Nathaniel Hawthorne's point. The creators of the Gulliver's Travels miniseries interpolated a sanity trial to reflect the ongoing scholarly debate over whether or not Gulliver himself is sane at the conclusion of Book IV. In those cases, adaptation is a form of criticism and recreation as well as translation.

Change is essential and practically unavoidable, mandated both by the constraints of time and medium, but how much is always a balance. Some film theorists have argued that a director should be entirely unconcerned with the source, as a novel is a novel and a film is a film, and the two works of art must be seen as separate entities. Since a transcription of a novel into film is impossible, even holding up a goal of "accuracy" is absurd. Others argue that what a film adaptation does is change to fit (literally, adapt), and the film must be accurate to the effect (aesthetics), the theme, or the message of a novel and that the filmmaker must introduce changes, if necessary, to fit the demands of time and to maximize faithfulness along one of those axes.

In most cases adaptation, the films are required to create identities (for example, a characters' costume or set decor) since they are not specified in the original material. Then, the influence of film-makers may go unrecognized because there is no comparison in the original material even though the new visual identities will affect narrative interpretation. Peter Jackson's adaptations of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit by author JRR Tolkien represent an unusual case since many visual and stylistic details were specified by Tolkien. For the Harry Potter film series, author JK Rowling was closely consulted by the filmmakers, and she provided production designer Stuart Craig with a map of Hogwarts' grounds and also prevented director Alfonso Cuarón from adding a graveyard scene because the graveyard would appear elsewhere in a later novel.

An often overlooked aspect of film adaptation is the inclusion of sound and music. In a literary text, a specific sound effect can often be implied or specified by an event, but in the process of adaptation, filmmakers must determine specific the sound characteristics that subliminally affects narrative interpretation. In some cases of adaptation, music may have been specified in the original material (usually diegetic music). In Stephenie Meyer's 2005 Twilight novel, the characters Edward Cullen and Bella Swan both listen to Debussy's Clair de lune and Edward composes the piece Bella's Lullaby for Bella. While Clair de lune was a pre-existing piece of music, Bella's Lullaby was not and required original music to be composed for the 2008 movie adaptation.

In the 2016 sci-fi film 2BR02B: To Be or Naught to Be adapted from the story by Kurt Vonnegut, the film-makers decided to abandon Vonnegut's choice of music. They stated that they felt that it worked in his prose only because it was not actually heard. Filmmakers' test screenings found that Vonnegut's style of music confused audiences and detracted from narrative comprehension. The film's composer, Leon Coward, stated, "You can try to be as true to Vonnegut's material as possible, but at the end of the day also you’re working with the material that you as a team have generated, not just Vonnegut's, and that’s what you've got to make work."

Theatrical adaptation

Stage plays are frequent sources for film adaptations.

Many of William Shakespeare's plays, including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello, have been adapted into films. The first sound adaptation of any Shakespeare play was the 1929 production of The Taming of the Shrew, starring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. It was later adapted as both a musical play called Kiss Me, Kate, which opened on Broadway in 1948, and as the 1953 Hollywood musical of the same name. The Taming of the Shrew was again retold in 1999 as a teen comedy set in a high school in 10 Things I Hate about You, and also in 2003 as an urban romantic comedy, Deliver Us from Eva. The 1961 musical film West Side Story was adapted from Romeo and Juliet, with its first incarnation as a Broadway musical play that opened in 1957. The animated film The Lion King (1994) was inspired by Hamlet as well as various traditional African myths, and 2001's O was based on Othello.

Film adaptations of Shakespeare's works in languages other than English are numerous, including Akira Kurosawa's films Throne of Blood (1957, an epic film version of Macbeth), The Bad Sleep Well (1960, inspired by Hamlet) and Ran (1985, based on King Lear); and Vishal Bhardwaj's "Shakespearean trilogy" consisting of Haider (2014, a retelling of Hamlet), Omkara (2006, based on Othello) and Maqbool (2003, based on Macbeth).

Another way in which Shakespearean texts have been incorporated in films is to feature characters who are either actors performing those texts or characters who are somehow influenced or effected by seeing one of Shakespeare's plays, within a larger non-Shakespearean story. Generally, Shakespeare's basic themes or certain elements of the plot will parallel the main plot of the film or become part of a character's development in some way. Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are the two plays which have most often been used in this way. Éric Rohmer's 1992 film Conte d'hiver (A Tale of Winter) is one example. Rohmer uses one scene from Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale as a major plot device within a story that is not based on the play at all.

In Britain, where stage plays tend to be more popular as a form of entertainment than currently in the United States, many films began as a stage productions. Some British films and British/American collaborations that were based on successful British plays include Gaslight (1940), Blithe Spirit (1945), Rope (1948), Look Back in Anger (1959), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Sleuth (1972), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Shirley Valentine (1989), The Madness of King George (1994), The History Boys (2006), Quartet (2012), and The Lady in the Van (2015).

Similarly, hit Broadway plays are often adapted into films, whether from musicals or dramas. Some examples of American film adaptations based on successful Broadway plays are Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Born Yesterday (1950), Harvey (1950), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Odd Couple (1968), The Boys in the Band (1970), Agnes of God (1985), Children of a Lesser God (1986), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Real Women Have Curves (2002), Rabbit Hole (2010), and Fences (2016).

On one hand, theatrical adaptation does not involve as many interpolations or elisions as novel adaptation, but on the other, the demands of scenery and possibilities of motion frequently entail changes from one medium to the other. Film critics will often mention if an adapted play has a static camera or emulates a proscenium arch. Laurence Olivier consciously imitated the arch with his Henry V (1944), having the camera begin to move and to use color stock after the prologue, indicating the passage from physical to imaginative space. Sometimes, the adaptive process can continue after one translation. Mel Brooks' The Producers began as a film in 1967, was adapted into a Broadway musical in 2001, and then adapted again in 2005 as a musical film.

Television adaptation

Feature films are occasionally created from television series or television segments, or vice versa, a television series will derive from a film, such as in the case of Bates Motel and Chucky. In the former, the film will offer a longer storyline than the usual television program's format and/or expanded production values. During the 1970s, many UK television series were turned into films including Dad's Army, On the Buses, Steptoe and Son and Porridge. In 1979, The Muppet Movie was a big success. In the adaptation of The X-Files to film, greater effects and a longer plotline were involved. Additionally, adaptations of television shows will offer the viewer the opportunity to see the television show's characters without broadcast restrictions. These additions (nudity, profanity, explicit drug use, and explicit violence) are only rarely a featured adaptive addition (film versions of "procedurals" such as Miami Vice are most inclined to such additions as featured adaptations) – South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is a notable example of a film being more explicit than its parent TV series.

At the same time, some theatrically released films are adaptations of television miniseries events. When national film boards and state-controlled television networks co-exist, filmmakers can sometimes create very long films for television that they may adapt solely for time for theatrical release. Both Ingmar Bergman (notably with Fanny and Alexander but with other films as well) and Lars von Trier have created long television films that they then recut for international distribution.

Even segments of television series have been adapted into feature films. The American television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live has been the origin of a number of films, beginning with The Blues Brothers, which began as a one-off performance by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

Radio adaptation

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008)

Radio narratives have also provided the basis of film adaptation. In the heyday of radio, radio segments were often translated to film, usually as shorts. Radio series turned into film series include Dr. Christian, Crime Doctor and The Whistler. Dialog-heavy stories and fantastic stories from radio were also adapted to film (e.g. Fibber McGee and Molly and The Life of Riley). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy began as a radio series for the BBC and then became a novel that was adapted to film.

Comic book adaptation

Video game adaptation

Main article: Adaptations of video games into media

A video game adaptation is primarily a film that is based on a video game, usually incorporating elements of the game's plot or gameplay, beginning in the mid-1980s.

Tie-in with films

Main article: Tie-in § Video game

Tie-in video games with films or other properties have existed since home consoles and arcade games of the early 1980s. Developers are usually limited by what they can do with the film property, and may be further limited in time as to produce the game in time for the release of the film or other work.

Films closely related to the computer and video game industries were also done in this time, such as Tron, Cloak & Dagger, Wreck-It Ralph, Pixels, Ready Player One and Free Guy but only after the release of several films based on well-known brands has this genre become recognized in its own right.

Adaptations from other sources

Awards

Many major film award programs present an award for adapted screenplays, separate from the award for original screenplays.

In the case of a film which was adapted from an unpublished work, however, different awards have different rules around which category the screenplay qualifies for. In 1983, the Canadian Genie Awards rescinded the Best Adapted Screenplay award they had presented to the film Melanie when they learned that the original work had been unpublished; and in 2017, the film Moonlight, which was adapted from an unpublished theatrical play, was classified and nominated as an adapted screenplay by some awards but as an original screenplay by others.

Adaptation of films

When a film's screenplay is original, it can also be the source of derivative works such as novels and plays. For example, movie studios will commission novelizations of their popular titles or sell the rights to their titles to publishing houses. These novelized films will frequently be written on assignment and sometimes written by authors who have only an early script as their source. Consequently, novelizations are quite often changed from the films as they appear in theatres.

Novelization can build up characters and incidents for commercial reasons (e.g. to market a card or computer game, to promote the publisher's "saga" of novels, or to create continuity between films in a series)

There have been instances of novelists who have worked from their own screenplays to create novels at nearly the same time as a film. Both Arthur C. Clarke, with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Graham Greene, with The Third Man, have worked from their own film ideas to a novel form (although the novel version of The Third Man was written more to aid in the development of the screenplay than for the purposes of being released as a novel). Both John Sayles and Ingmar Bergman write their film ideas as novels before they begin producing them as films, although neither director has allowed these prose treatments to be published.

Finally, films have inspired and been adapted into plays. John Waters's films have been successfully mounted as plays; both Hairspray and Cry-Baby have been adapted, and other films have spurred subsequent theatrical adaptations. Spamalot is a Broadway play based on Monty Python films. In a rare case of a film being adapted from a stage musical adaptation of a film, in 2005, the film adaptation of the stage musical based on Mel Brooks' classic comedy film The Producers was released.

References

Black, Anna (2016). ""...for a father hear a child!" Schubert's Ave Maria and the film 2BR02B". The Schubertian. July (91). The Schubert Institute (UK): 16–19.
Masson, Sophie (October 19, 2016). "2BR02B: the journey of a dystopian film–an interview with Leon Coward". Feathers of the Firebird (Interview).
Barnet, Sylvan (1998) . "The Shrew on Stage and Screen". In Heilman, Robert B. (ed.). The Taming of the Shrew. Signet Classic Shakespeare (Second Revised ed.). New York: New American Library. p. 188. ISBN 9780451526793.
McKernan, Luke and Terris, Olwen (eds.) Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive (British Film Institute Publishing, 1994). The authors list 45 uses of Hamlet which do not include films of the play itself, on pp.45-66. They list 39 such instances for Romeo and Juliet on pp.141-156, and 23 uses of Othello, on pp.119-131.
Diaz, Lav (December 31, 1988). "Kuwentong seks" [Sex story]. Manila Standard (in Filipino). Manila Standard News, Inc. p. 16. Retrieved August 24, 2020. Eksplusibong dramang hango sa komiks ang Magkano...
Lo, Ricky (April 4, 2005). "How Carlo J. created Panday". Philstar.com. Philstar Global Corp. Retrieved June 13, 2020.
Paculan, Virgie (February 26, 1988). "'Our movies have not changed...' – Lupita Kashiwahara". Manila Standard. Standard Publications, Inc. p. 11. Retrieved January 15, 2023.
Mendelson, Scott (November 9, 2019). "Box Office: Joker Becomes The Most Profitable Comic Book Movie Ever". Forbes. Retrieved November 9, 2019.
"Hollywood and video game industry profit from movie tie-ins". Canada.com. Archived from the original on 2012-11-06.
Donahue, Ann; Swanson, Tim (December 19, 2000). "H'wood hits paydirt in playtime". Variety. Retrieved February 1, 2023.
Maio, Alyssa (18 November 2019). "The Adapted Screenplay: True Adaptations or Academy Categories?". StudioBinder. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
"Melanie adaptation Genie returned". Cinema Canada, No. 96 (May 1983). p. 12.
"Oscars: Moonlight ineligible for Best Original Screenplay". Entertainment Weekly, December 15, 2016.

Misplaced Pages