Another year, another slew of films based on books nominated at the Academy Awards (including Precious, left, which this year took out best adapted screenplay). We love a good movie adaptation, so here are a few more book-to-screen projects to look out for.

First up, if you haven’t already heard, Stieg Larsson’s bestseller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus) has been adapted to screen as a Swedish-language film and is showing in Australian cinemas from 25 March 2010.

Then there are all the Australian bestsellers being adapted for the screen: Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief (Pan Macmillan) is due to be released by Fox this year; Christos Tsiolkas’ bestseller The Slap (A&U) is to be made into a television series by Matchbox Pictures; and the film adaptation of John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When The War Began (Pan) is set to be released in cinemas on 2 September 2010. (The latter drew a bit of controversial attention last year when Marsden appeared on ABC’s Q&A and said the nationality of the invading country in the book will not be identified, to avoid fuelling racist sentiment.)

Books by Tim Winton are looking like they might come to the screen too. Simon Baker, star of The Mentalist, teamed up with producer Mark Johnson to acquire feature rights to Tim Winton’s novel Breath (Penguin), and Matthew Saville, who directed Noise and several episodes of We Can Be Heroes and Secret Life of Us, will turn Winton’s Cloudstreet (Penguin) into a six-hour miniseries on pay-TV channel Showcase.

If all goes to plan, several international books set to become movies in the future, including Headhunters (Berkley Publishing) by Jules Bass. Selena Gomez will play one of the three lead roles with Nicole Kidman producing and possibly playing a supporting role. Sascha Rothchild will adapt her own book How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage (Penguin) as a romantic comedy and will also be executive producer. Robert De Niro will star opposite Bradley Cooper in the film adaptation of The Dark Fields (Alan Glynn, Little, Brown). Anthony Hopkins will star in The Rite, a supernatural thriller adapted from Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (Simon & Schuster) and French producers Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam have secured the rights to make a 3D animated film adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.

Books with film adaptations currently in production include children’s novel Peter and the Starcatchers (Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Walker Books), award-winning fantasy adventure Life of Pi (Yann Martel, Canongate Books) to be directed by Ang Lee, We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lionel Shriver, Text) about a fictional school massacre, and the story of a Dutch-born New York stockbroker in Netherland (Joseph O’Neill, HarperPerennial).

Fantasy and sci-fi adaptations to look out for include the remake of Frank Herbert’s Dune (various imprints), the return to Hobbiton in JRR Tolkien’s classic The Hobbit (HarperCollins), and the not-to-be-missed dystopian future of extreme cosmetic surgery in Scott Westerfeld’s YA sci-fi novel Uglies (Simon & Schuster).

Also, anime fans will be pleased to hear about another Hayao Miyazaki film. Studio Ghibli has announced their next animated feature is Karigurashi no Arrietty (Arrietty Borrows Everything), which is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s 1952 fantasy classic The Borrowers (Penguin), but instead of 50s England the story will be set in 2010 Tokyo.

Of course, books sometimes disappoint us on the big screen, but even then they usually serve to bring attention to the original book. So, are there any upcoming adaptations we’ve missed that you’re particularly looking forward to? What’s the best film based on a book?

Tags: anime, australian, fantasy, film, movies, sci-fi, screen

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