Pop Culture Happy Hour - Best Book to Movie Adaptations

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

What’s your favorite movie that started life as a book? And what makes for a great book to film adaptation, anyway? We’ve got some examples of beloved books that made the transition to the big screen, and we’re prepared to discuss and debate why each of them works – and why we believe they’re the best of all time. We talk about: Blade Runner, Little Women, Nickel Boys, and Starship Troopers.For even more of our favorite book to film adaptations, check out our list at Letterboxd — at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture.Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhourSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What's your favorite movie that started life as a book, and what makes for a great book to film adaptation anyway? Do you want filmmakers to stay as rigorously true to the book as possible, or are you okay with bold departures, big swings, out of left field choices that maybe evoke the essence of the book, if not every last detail? We've got four examples of beloved books that made the transition to the big screen, and we're prepared to discuss and debate why each of them works, and why we believe they're the best of all times. So gird your loins. Wuthering Heights is about to hit theaters, so we thought it would be the perfect time to discuss and debate the best book to film adaptations of all time. I'm Glenn Weldon, and you're listening to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Joining me today is Barry Hardiman. She's a senior editor for NPR's investigations team. Welcome back, Barry. Also with us as Bea Parker. She's one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast. Hey, Parker. Hello. Welcome in.

And rounding out the panel is Andrew Limbongong. he's the host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast and a reporter for the Culture Desk. Hey, Andrew. Yo, what's up? My loins are girded. I am girding. I'm girding these loins. I was telling producers, this is the dream team.

This is a bunch of folks who, as Homer Simpson would say, these are eggheads who love their bookie-wooks. And I'm excited about this particular thing. So let's get to it. Parker, tell me your favorite book to film adaptation of all time and why it works. Okay. So any other day, when we did books we've loved, Andrew would have. heard me talk about the brilliance of Gone Girl, so we're just going to skip that and talk about something that really, really speaks to me. And it is the 2019 adaptation of Little Women.

Ah, okay. Great pick. All right, which is a famed book by Louise May Alcott from 1868, about the four March sisters in Massachusetts during the Civil War, this coming of age story. And this one is adapted and directed by Greta Gerwig. And she does this really impossible thing of like, contemporizing the story and being so faithful to the book, but for modern times. And it does two, like, fairly impossible things that has never worked in any little women adaptation. She makes me tolerate the love story between Lori and Amy. I get PTSD from a child from the 1994 version of, like, the fact that Greta Grerwig made me root for Amy and Lori skills. and with the character of Joe March, our protagonist,

who's like this liberated author who was like writing the story along the way, she allows for Joe and the audience to have their cake and eat it too, which, I mean, this is going to 150 year spoilers. There is this man named Bear, who was like a scholar. And in like the 19th century approach, which is like, you know, the woman has to have a man at the end.

Like, that's just like a given for these kind of books and for these kind of adaptations. And Greta Gerwig makes, this decision that the writing of the book is essential to the plot line and that is within the book Joe's character ends up with Bear. But in the reality, the book is the man. Getting her first book published is like the win and that is like her love. And the fact that she is able to like have her cake and eat it to is like it's so rich and smart and I just, I love it. And I say this fully, okay, like this is how good of an adaptation it is. Like my head knows that

this is a perfect adaptation, and yet my heart still belongs to the 1994 version. The fact that I know that the 2019 version is a perfect adaptation, and I'm still fighting for it. Like, this is how good an adaptation it is. In the actual book, I've never read it. Sorry. Is, like, her writing the book not that big of a deal? Because I remember that being an integral part of the movie, is it sort of just get tossed aside? It is not the motif.

Yeah, it's not like the motif of it. But it is like it's... Oh, interesting. It's there. Okay. Now, Parker, in this adaptation, in this film, Bob Odenkirk plays the dad. You know what I'm going to say.

You know what I'm going to say. At one point, Mr. March comes home. He walks in the door and he says, My little women. You know what? Calm down. Okay. But here's the thing about adaptations, right?

Odin Kirk is Odin Kirk. He's a great actor. But we have all seen Mr. Show sketches. That's kind of setting this time. No, this is the thing. My mom and my aunt said, we went to see little women. And everyone was like,

Oh, Bob Odenkirk. And my family was like, who the heck is that? So there wasn't like, oh, Bob Odenkirk. They was like, who's this white man? Like, why is it such like a big moment? Like, well, the dad's here. That's great. But for nerds like yourself that know who Bob Odenkirk is, it's great.

Civil War hat. Okay. This is a personal quibble just with all of the little women adaptations in general. There's the mom in the book and in the movies is called Marmee, which is M-A-R-M-E. But Louisa May Alcott is this clearly a woman who grew up in Boston and was writing out mommy. It's a very apothecah, Mahavad Yard situation. But in all of the adaptations, everyone's saying Marmy. Like, no, it's his mommy.

So that's my one quibble. I'm like, just say mommy. It's okay. Wow, Parker. I never have thought, I've like grew up on this book. I'm from Boston. Yeah. Never occurred to me.

It's just like girls in Massachusetts. Oh, my God. The guy. you've unlocked this book for Barrett. You've unlocked it. That's awesome. That's awesome. My heart is beating so hard.

My hat is beating so hot. Wow. How are we feeling about Greta doing C.S. Louis going over to Narnia? What's our temperature read on that? Let her do what she wants with that white witch. She can do whatever she wants. Yeah, let her cook. Aslan.

What she did with Barbie, I mean, she can do it. Absolutely. Do we want it? Do we want it? Another one from her? I didn't think I wanted another little women. I feel like she's a good adaption. Like, even with like Barbie, which is like IP or whatever.

Yeah. She is able to create something unique. There's like a feminist slant. Yeah. Like she's able to make it her own. A meta narrative usually within. Meta narrative. Yeah.

And like contemporize it for these times. Here will be takes. And Narnia. Oh God, you really got the accent stuck in my tongue. Nania. All right. Nanny. Sorry.

All right, Parker. That's a great pick. That's a little women. Barry Hardiman. What's your pick? This is so difficult for me because my. entire life, I would have said the Age of Innocence, the Martin Scorsese adaptation. And then I saw the adaptation of the Nickel Boys, which is Colson Whitehead's book, which is about this boy who

was wrongly sent to this abusive boy school in Florida during the Jim Crow era, and really about this friendship between these two boys. And it is exactly the kind of book where the IP would get taken and put on the big screen. But I'm telling you, I sat down in my same. seat and within five minutes I was so hooked and I thought, oh my God, I'm seeing something really new and not just new different from the book, which I really respect. I like a cover band. You know, like the Harry Potter movies are fine. Like I like a cover band. But I do prefer somebody to have their own idea about it. And because the whole thing is told from this immersive POV camera point of view, which is the real thing here, it's a hard story to watch.

right? It's a hard story to read. But because you are in the head, like really in the head of the person experiencing it, it is somehow more immersive even than the book, which is usually the problem for me, right? You know, like I'm always out of it. I'm thinking like, well, that's where my book. I didda, da, da, da, da, da. I never thought about it in this. I felt that because you were inside of it, sometimes I have a tendency with books that are, you know, I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking, about like, boys don't cry and 12 years a slave and, you know, these narratives that have just these broke descriptions of truly awful things. I find myself covering my eyes, right? I felt because of the point of view with this, I feel that I couldn't. It not only showed me what it was, it showed me what it felt. And what Ramele Ross, the director, has done with this, is just so stunning. And again, this is one of the few times where I thought, oh, he's saying.

something about the experience of reading about these two boys being so badly abused in Jim Crow, Florida. He's saying something about that. He's also saying something about the way that we view it. He is saying something about the way that anyone who wants to see these things on screen should really, really think about how we have them in our heads, how they are portrayed to us, and how we react to that portrayal. I can't say enough about this film. I really was absolutely just jaw-dropped about it. I was shocked that this movie didn't seem to have a bigger sort of like cultural impact when it came out. I would have put money on this being like the talk of the town for like a year and a half. Yeah.

And it sort of disappeared, right? It's on MGM Plus. It's on MGM Plus. Where we go. Oh, my God, for a girl. That's amazing. But it's like encouraging empathy. Yes.

In a way that I know when I saw it in theaters made some. people uncomfortable. Yes. Also, some people got motion sickness. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because of some of the movements. Yeah. But then it's such a beautiful film.

There's like a moment where like Anjanoe Ellis Taylor hugs the camera. Oh, my God. And it's like it envelops you. Like it really, some movie that envelopes you. It's like a ride almost. Yeah. Yeah, you clarified something for me just now. I mean, like, I was wondering why this approach works because the POV perspective,

using the camera as the eyes of your character, I mean, it's so unusual, it calls so much attention to itself. It can feel show off you. People can dismiss it as a gimmick. And they should do it, try to do it. But the weight of this story, and this is the other thing you add when you add an adaptation, the performances of these actors, you're staring into their faces. That carries it.

And, you know, so much of contemporary fiction is written in first-person perspective. That's right. And over the years, you know, filmmakers have cheated that with voiceover and diary entries, or they create characters at a whole cloth just for the main character to confide in. But it is a cheat. And it's been done before. There's a 1947 film called The Lady in the Lake. There was an episode of Mesh.

I remember looking a lot that does it. But it is a risk. And it doesn't feel like a risk here. It feels like the only way to do it, which I guess is the trick. Yeah. Actually, like it feels so much more subjective. And the audience is on, not on edge, but well, yeah, the audience is so. You're in danger.

Yeah. Yes, right. It's so connected to it that it's like, I saw my, seeing more while seeing less, if that makes sense, you know? I think it's just an astounding film. Although I will say this, I have noticed, you know, Nickel Boys is taught in my kid's school now. And I think partly it's because, oh, there are these two ways of looking at the book. And, you know, you don't have to read the book to enjoy the movie and vice versa. But the two together give you a full experience that is itself the class. And so, you know, they'll watch it in class too. And I just wonder if maybe through those kind of, because it's also for film geeks, right? Like, it's so gorgeous. And just these moments where you're staring at the stump of a tree or the little things, like that really sort of emphasize, you know, what it is to be a human taking in images. I think it's probably also happening at the college level, too.

Like, I have to imagine that this is getting a lot of mileage from, you know, eggheads who like their bokey-wookies. Okay, that's Nickel Boys another great pick. We should note that Nickel Boys is distributed by Amazon MGM Studios, Amazon supports NPR, and pays to distribute some of our content. Okay. Here's my pick. It's Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which became the 1982 film Blade Runner. Both the movie and the book are about a future where androids are used as slave labor. Six Androids of a new model that is hard to tell from humans, rebel, the killer masters, and a cop named Rick.

Dickard, which is just such a great noir name. Yeah. A hilariously noir name has to hunt them down. Now, look, there are book people, and there are movie people, and they're Philip K. Dick people, and I've visited the Reddit threads. I know that there's a lot of book people who hate this movie, and some of them for those reasons that you can understand. Like, my copy of this book is called Blade Runner, originally published, as do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep, and it's got art from the movie.

What a copy. They hate that. Of course, they would hate that. Nobody likes to feel like a newbie, right? Nobody likes it when the movie art becomes the book art. Everybody hates that. And also there's been so many versions. You're asking for well actually. This is my well actually. Is this the director's cut or is it the original cut or is it the original cut or is it the original cut or is it the original cut or is it the original cut or is it the original cut or is it. I would argue and this is what we're talking about here today. the book does what books do well, the film does, what films do well, right? Because when you are reading a book, you enter the world. And you're intellectually and you're emotionally invested. You're pot committed because you helped build that world. Like the version of little women, the version of Nickel Boys, the version of Blade Runner,

the version of 200 stream of electric sheep inside your head is different from the one in mine because you helped build it. And you stay inside it for hours, or if you're like me, and you read slowly hours and hours and hours. So you kind of live there. And in this book, the author kind of outfits you with absolutely everything you need to know about this world. There is also a tremendous lot about a religion called Mercerism, which is founded on the notion of empathy as like the most human, the highest human attribute. You learn a tremendous lot about how status works in this world. Like there's a many animals have gone extinct, so owning a mechanical sheep, as the main character does say, is a sign of wealth and status. Everyone carries around this catalog of mechanical animals that are available.

It's this cultural obsession. And certainly the main character, Rick Decker never shuts up about his sheep and wanting to get an ostrich. And like, it's a huge thing. I would say, though, that the world building itself, like how it's executed in the book is, you know, it's not deft, right? It's a lot of characters telling other characters facts that they should already really know if they live in this world. Exposition, exposition, exposition. Plus stuff pushed into dialogue. A lot of Deckerd pausing to remember that Lordup, right?

You're saying it's a science fiction book. I'm saying, thank you, Andrew. But the prose is so like classic, you know, hard-nosed pulp. Now, the movie takes the thinnest possible slice of the book, the action, the hunting android's part. But I would disagree with some of the folks who hate this on Reddit. There is deference paid to the book. The whole notion of empathy, it's in the movie.

It's not a major theme, but it's like in there. the fake animal stuff gets maybe two or three mentions. It's not this obsession like it is in the book, but you don't need it to be. Like, it's just there to undergird the world because movies, they're not, you know, exhaustive, comprehensive deep dives. Their language is visual.

They deal in impressions and imagery and you get the meaning of them through lighting and camera movement and camera placement. So the books lived in, like it's a lived in experience, movies are like you're visiting that world for a couple hours. And so you get in the movie what movies do. you get tone, mood, atmosphere, spectacle. Books do the same thing, but it takes a while, right?

Because, like, you can get in a couple pages what the mood's going to be by, like, how long the sentences are and not going to think, but it builds. With a movie, boom, establishing shot. You get it. You feel the world underneath it, but there's no need to dig into it because I would say the book shapes the world and the movie just walks you through it. And also, the other thing you get that you don't get in books is performances. So you get this big swing, bat poop performance of Rutger Hauer as Roy, who is one of the Androids, and he is off. He's charismatic, but he's sinister. And then when he meets his maker and finds them disappointing, he goes all the way off the rails.

And it's great to see. They made little changes, tweaks to the book, cosmetic changes that at first you think, that doesn't add anything, why they do that. Then you realize, oh, okay, maybe, like the book set in San Francisco largely. The movie is set in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is about what's real, you know, what's not. It's like, that's kind of like the whole economy, that city. The name of the company that makes the Androids in the book is Rosen. In the movie, it's Tyrell. As if somebody sat down at a story meeting early on and said,

guys, do we need to make the greedy corporate corporation making these killing machines Jewish? Or could we maybe not? Maybe we don't. How about that? Good note, good note. Good note. Good note. The smartest tweak they made.

was in the slang for these replicants, for these androids in the book, they're called Andes, which I'm sorry, is just adorable. That's, I'm sorry. There's an Andy behind you. In the movie, they're called skin jobs, which sounds racist, which sounds hateful, which speaks volume to...

That's a little porny. A little bit. Sure. There's also that. So have you seen this film? What do you guys think? Have you read the book? I mean, I've seen the movie.

I will say I do have a do Android sleep like a t-shirt. I do too. From out of print. Yes. Yes. I have this thing one. Because it's such a great old cover. So I know of which you speak, but have I read the book?

No. Okay. I'm so sorry, Glenn. No. But the movie, I mean, it still resonates and is like it's brutal. And it's like it's memorable. to such a compelling viewing. To be fair, I've only seen the director's cut.

I have never seen the controversial original release. Which has narration, which again is what we're talking about. The cheat of narration. That's what makes it bad. Because it's really cheesy narration. That's why I was confused, because I don't remember that. Andrew, have you seen Blade Runner? So, no, I've read the book.

I was a big sci-fi kid growing up. So I read the novel. And I actually, I've never seen the movie because I've always seen, been privy to the arguments over the versions, which has caused a sort of choice paralysis. So then I just end up watching like Frazier or something. You know, like I have no, is there a good version, Glenn, to watch? Is there? Directors cut.

What is the best one to watch? I would go director's cut or final cut, which is also the director saying, no, but seriously, no, but for real this time. This is the fun. It's like when I'm mixing my projects. I'm like, use this project. Yep. Final, final, final. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the one I'd go with. That's the one I'd go with. Or a variety of reasons. The director's good. Okay. In a weird way, this is sometimes the problem with sci-fi adaptations that are really good. And, you know, I've really have been so seduced by it that I'm like, eh, I'm good.

I have actually done the thing that I am always terrified my children will do, which is not read the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that's the danger. But between me and Andrew, you know. Yeah, we're mashing out like Voltron. We did it. Yeah. And part or two, sorry.

But it's like, no, the three of us are a. We have all the knowledge. Yeah, that's great. All right, that's my pick. Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep to Blade Runner? All right, Andrew, bring us home. Spoiler alert. This was my second pick.

Okay, all right. So I think a lot of us have been leaning towards movie adaptations that have authorial voice behind them. They're true adaptations. And as Barry said, just covers. My pick is one in which the director straight up hates the source of material. Straight up detests and makes fun of the source and cereal entirely. Delicious.

And that is the movie Starship Troopers. Ew. Yeah. So now Starship Troopers, the book by Robert Heinlein, which I'm almost done rereading, is about space cadets and a guy, RICO, Johnny Rico going through space cadet school and learning like the philosophies of being in the military and why it's cool to live in a society in which only people who fight in the military can vote. and like that's the whole argument.

The movie is making fun of that idea. It's taking that idea and says, this idea, kind of fascist, right guys? Guys, guys. Yeah, anybody see what's going on here? It's kind of a hilarious parody

of Heinlein's book. And yet, if you are like a mouth breather not fully understanding how it's working on a metatechral level, the movie itself kind of rocks as propaganda, As a piece of action filmmaking, it feels like I'm watching Top Gun.

It feels so cool. And all the... I rewatched it yesterday, two days ago. Like, all of the bugs being shot looks so sick. And then all of the people are so beautiful. Everybody's extraordinarily good looking. And I think the movie, it came out in the late 90s, but I first watched it on like T&T or whatever. And so I kind of think of it as a sort of post-9-11.

movie, even though obviously it came out before 9-11, but I always thought of it in the context of being in school where, you know, people were trying to recruit us to join the military. Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is an interesting sort of comment on what's going on now. Even though I think as a kid I didn't realize it was a parody of the book. I just thought it was like a cool action movie. And then I remember reading the book, finding it kind of boring and kind of like, wow, there's a lot of, a lot of just yapping going on.

Philosophizing. Yeah. And so, I don't know, the movie, I think, is one of the brilliant cases in a movie that can have its cake and eat it too in sort of like making the comments while doing a cool thing that it's commenting on. Who directed it? Was it Joe Esther? Paul Verhoeven. No. Paul Verhoven.

Paul Verhoven. Okay. Yeah. So, and it feels like an extension of Robocop in a lot of ways and how everybody is acting kind of like. Yeah. Not stiff, but like extra. Everybody's got a little like asterisk on all of their lines. All right.

Parker, I'm picking up on some ambivalence on your part. Say more. Look, it's of its time. I respect the craft. It's not for me. Starship troopers? I don't know, man. The great Roger Ebert, who loved this book as a kid, in his review, he dismissed it to science fiction for kids.

And then he says this. He says, the one redeeming merit for Paul Verhoeven's film is that by remaining faithful to Heinlein's material and period, it adds an element of sly satire to which I say sly. We have very different definitions of the word sly, my man. It's doing a lot. It's so obvious. I don't know. It's hilarious.

As if you stumbled into it, right? That Iber abused two stars, by the way, which is insanely love. Crazy. He like gets it, kind of. Kind of. Yeah. Well, I also think this is between he had just done show girls and this was before he does Hollow Man.

and it's just like, it's just not his time at that point. And that's okay. I had to say, I feel for Ebert, I had to grow into this movie, partly because I'm not familiar with the source material. And I'm also like kind of, I was like very, like, serious about my science fiction. And, you know, I was like, why can't they make a left end of darkness? And, you know, I remember going with a group of people and just being like, I kind of don't get it. Like, this is dumb.

Like, this is stupid. And none of these people are. like, I don't know, like Denise for, like, what? I just really didn't get it. Yeah. And in some ways, I will say, like, it wasn't until, you know, my husband kept being like, we got to watch this movie with the kids. And I was like, oh.

With the kids. I mean, my kids are close to teenagers now. I know. Yeah. I'm not watching that shower seat with my parents now. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I should go back and think about that.

But in the case, I will say, once I understood the source material and what it was, and was able to sort of get more context around it, I think it's terrific. But at the time, I just, it didn't land for me. Yeah, I get that. Which may just be because, you know, I was a snooty or, you know, empty-headed person. I don't know. But I just, I didn't get, I grew, I have grown into it.

Don't you dare. My head was full of stuff, just not that stuff. Yeah. There is a very, I would say, popular notion at the time that if this is a satire, it's not intended as one. He kind of stumbled into it because he doubled down on the original period. Like an accidental B movie. Ebert called the characters interchangeable, which is the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was like, these actors are bad. The whole point is that the cast look like they stepped out of a Lenny Rieman-Stahl film, right? And Casper Van Dene, who is Johnny Rico in this film, is all just clean, sharp lines. Like, he looks like a fascist illustration. He looks like an Aryan youth poster. Exactly. There is a scene where he gets floged shirtless in front of these, you know, regiments of troops. that is there for a reason.

That is there for many reasons, and none of them are sly. They're all right there on the surface. So the reason that one works for me is because of this change in tone, because taking the source material and interpreting it, right, which is what we're talking about here. A good adaptation is a separate animal from the book. I feel like if you want to be a loyalist to the book, just read the book. Exactly.

Like there's a movie I love called Little Children. Oh, yes. By Tom Peralta. And like the movie is within the tone of the book. But like ending and other things are different. And it still reaches me. Like I'm not going to be like, well, actually, this is what I'm happening. Like, I don't care about that.

I go into the movie not wanting to like play the greatest hits. I want a new idea, a new thought. I think this is why in some ways I really love when people adapt. Shakespeare to the screen. I'm a little bit done with seeing a million 12 nights on stage, actually. But when I see Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Dane's making a mess of the language, which I used to be annoyed by, and now I'm like, good for them, you know, and changing the ending, you know? Like, literally, like, they see each other. Like, that's amazing. Like, it's even more tragic. Exactly. It's also just like, what balls you have to have to be like, you know what, well, I have an idea.

I got a note. You know? Exactly. I love it. I've got some notes. If you can tell me something new, then, like, that's culture. That's culture. Tell me something new.

That's the culture. Tell me something new. That's great. We want to know what your favorite book to film adaptation is. Tell us what it is and also tell us why. Because my favorite thing about this conversation, we had a lot of different why. So I want to know about yours. You can find us on Facebook.

And we had a lot of book to film adaptations we wanted to talk about. about, but that we couldn't get to today. So we made a list of more of our favorites at Letterbox. You can find a link to that in our episode description. And that brings us to the end of our show. Barry Hardiman, B.A. Parker, Andrew Limbunk, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you.

And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.n.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Liz Metz. and Mike Katz. It's edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reddy, audio engineer was performed by Travis Hagan,

and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.