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Beowulf.
Adaptation

Eight of the worst film adaptations ever made

Some of Hollywood’s most recent disastrous attempts to convert well-loved books to the silver screen…

THE RELEASE OF the first official trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby inspired TheJournal.ie to take a look back over some of Hollywood’s recent attempts to translate well-loved books into films.

Some didn’t work out very well.

Here’s our shortlist of the eight worst Hollywood adaptations of books from the past decade:

I Am Legend, 2007

Fans of the 1950s novel by Richard Matheson note that the 2007 film significantly altered the ending of the fantasy tale, clouding the novel’s central message:

(Video uploaded by Hazbo917)

Da Vinci Code, 2006

The unlikely partnership of Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou as the lead characters of Dan Brown’s page-turning thriller failed to impress many of the book’s fans:

(Video uploaded by MoviesHistory)

Beowulf, 2007

No one has ever explained why many members of the eclectic cast of Beowulf retained their natural accents throughout the production, while Angelina Jolie went with ‘foreign’:

(Vdeo uploaded by TheMoviePark)

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, 2001

Nicolas Cage as an Italian officer in WWII, Penelope Cruz as a Greek islander, and John Hurt as her father. How could any of that have seemed like a good idea in this adaptation of the Louis de Bernières bestseller?

(Video uploaded by isthemoviegood)

The Lovely Bones, 2009 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380510/

Director Peter Jackson has been accused of toning down key elements of Alice Sebold’s child-murder story so much so that the film became a sickly-sweetened whitewash of the original:

(Video uploaded by BoxOfficeSmashers)

The Time Traveler’s Wife, 2009

Adapting Audrey Niffenegger’s romance novel about a man with an odd disorder which means he can inadvertently travel through time was always going to be a challenge. However, audiences really expected a whole lot better than what they got:

(Video uploaded by hitfixcom)

The Time Machine, 2002

Directed by HG Wells’ great-grandson and starring our own Samantha Mumba alongside Jeremy Irons and Guy Pearce, the 2002 adaptation of the classic time travelling tale was generally perceived as a poor interpretation of the classic tale. (It has scored just 29 per cent on RottenTomatoes.com.)

(Video uploaded by hgwells2001)

The Beach, 2000

Danny Boyle’s adaptation of the Alex Garland novel somehow ended up being much, much more confusing and disorienting than the original book:

(Video uploaded by boylemovietrailers)

Have we left any particular turkeys off our list? Add your suggestions for the worst film adaptations of books to the comments below.

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