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The Worst Book-to-Movie Adaptations

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You’re about to see the worlds and characters you’ve imagined blown up on the silver

So what happens when the movie turns out to be a total flop? Yes, it’s disappointing,

Now the books we love will be forever associated with a movie that practically no one enjoyed

For instance, many people (myself included) think adapting The Hobbit into three (3!) movies was completely bananas

Here are the worst book-to-film adaptations that nearly all critics and viewers can agree were totally bad

They’re organized from highest Rotten Tomatoes score to lowest rotten tomatoes score, so settle in because

The 2007 film adaptation of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman had all the makings of a good

But the subject matter of The Golden Compass and the rest of the His Dark Materials series

What we ended up with is an adaptation that felt totally heartless

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In 2018, we were all excited about the adaptation of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time

But the film itself did not live up to the hype, nor did it capture the magic

In 2014, the film adaptation of Lois Lowry’s The Giver came out at the tail end of

In fact, these are very wildly different books, and the fact that this movie tries to make

And, look, we all had Taylor Swift’s Midnights at the top of our Spotify Wrapped charts

2022’s Persuasion was the real book-to-film adaptation that inspired this list for me

This is another one of those movies that got a lot of hype, especially after the success

And yes, I too was super excited to see Jane Austen’s novel adapted into a movie

Viewers everywhere cringed at lines like, “It’s often said if you‘re a five in London, 

The sets were uninspired and the costumes looked like they came out of my high school drama

What the heck happened here? This movie probably singlehandedly killed Jane Austen adaptations for years to come

Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones was a book that left me in tears when I read

The movie’s biggest misstep is the fact that it missed the entire point of the novel

But Peter Jackson must have just heard that this story had something to do with heaven

Before the film adaptation of The Woman in the Window hit Netflix in 2021, we all kinda already

First of all, there’s the controversies surrounding the author A

Then there’s the fact that this movie was originally slated to be released in October 2019…and

Vampire Academy was a 2014 fantasy horror comedy based on the YA book series of the same name

And for a comedy, this movie was really short on actual funny moments

You would think that a young adult fantasy adaptation coming out in 2006 would automatically be a runaway

This film adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s beloved novel was not beloved…by anyone

This is another one that also suffered from terrible special effects and bad acting

Fans of Eragon are still waiting for the film adaptation this book deserves

Seriously, how do you mess this one up? The Dark Tower is a film based on the

King was also puzzled by the fact that the film decided to start the story right in

And as much as I love seeing Idris Elba on my screen, the actor was not enough

This 1995 film, starring Demi Moore, Gary Oldman, and Robert Duvall, took the novel’s complex themes of

I mean, just look at this movie poster…What? Apparently even Demi Moore called The Scarlet Letter “

Look, I love movies! I love books! I want book-to-movie adaptations to be good, which is why

Here’s hoping 2023 will be a good year for adaptations too!