"Hollywood" movies where adapting a novel to a screenplay was Excellent?

In interviews and columns, even King has said he's not a great writer. That's one of the reasons his work is rather adaptable to the screen. I think he's a director in his mind somewhere. That's not to imply that screenwriters aren't good writers; their genre is just different from that of the writer for books. I admire your tenacity, and I hope you'll continue to push ahead. Yes, I am a teacher. A really bad bunch of health problems made writing for publication impossible for several years, but I never stopped writing. One day, I'll probably open up those many, many binders and edit a thing or two for publication.

Life happens while we dream of doing other things...

Teacher, I am so honored. I absolutely agree that King's Green Mile was King at his best and the movie did the book justice. Overall, I am not a big Stephen King fan. I had never read him. It seems that after the second revision of my one published novel two of editor/critiquer friends both compared me to King. The casual reader because he liked King. The editor because writing like King was a negative to any new author trying to get their first novel published. Because of these two references to King, I never could get through the "short version" of "The Stand" and abandoned finishing it. I did get through a couple of others but they were not made into a movie. Anyway, The Stand is around 600,000 words. The later unabridged version is around a million! Blah, blah, blah. So, I listened to my Editor friend and cut 150,000 down to 60+ for the next revision. Then I left it alone and worked on other stuff for awhile. And repeated the process. It took 10 revisions before my first novel saw the light of day in 2004. I self-published, no budget, and am obscure to this day. But I've not given up. A writer is what I am. Unlike you, I am not academically trained to write. [Yet you are a teacher...] According to my research most "successful" authors come out of the woodwork. By successful, I mean commercially successful. So far, I am like 99 percent of writers who lose money on their passion. This may seem far adrift. But I still plot to eventually see my writing on screen.

Thank you. So, unlike VongoloXII, you think all the Potter stories adapted well, me thinks. As cobrateacher points out, different mediums have different possibilities. As I story tell, my villains are not totally evil, nor my heroines totally pure. In fantasy, absolute evil does seem acceptable. In the "real world" psychopaths can be totally evil but they are crazy, right? Whether novel, comics, or screenplay, old stuff commonly had cardboard characters and the consumer public accepted it. I remember when Spiderman comics came out and they catered to the more modern consumer wanting more sophistication.

I think it depends, a bit, on one's definition of a successful adaptation. It has been my experience that if a movie strays even a word from the book, people are all up in arms that the book was "so much better" and the film didn't do the book justice. But, in my opinion, a movie doesn't have to adhere to the book verbatim as long as script writer(s) sticks to the base story and doesn't mix up the series of events. One thing that really upsets me is when the chronology gets jumbled in the film adaptation of a book. I can't think of any examples off the cuff but I know I've seen some.

Which version of Pride and Predjudice? I'm just curious. I've never read it so I have no basis for comparison but there have been a couple different versions over the years.

I did not say that I had read all the Harry Potter series and I'll take your word for it. As a rule, I DO agree that books are almost always better. I have not read beyond the first book. What I wrote was that the first novel adapted to movie was good. We can agree to disagree. Or, if you own both, you might re-read the first novel as an exercise then re-watch the movie. Mmmm. I do not think I've read the book. The title is certainly familiar. Who played the lead characters in the movie? I'm always looking for tandem entertainment: the book done well as the movie. I'll look into Pride and Prejudice. Thanks.