book-to-screen adaptations - a look at the ‘it ends with us’ film
Please note that this article may contain slight spoilers for the It Ends With Us book and movie. Please proceed with caution.
Social media feeds across the globe have been inundated with talks of the It Ends With Us movie adaptation since it was announced in 2019. The novel by Colleen Hoover was the OG BookTok tried and true, skyrocketing to the top of bestselling lists in 2021, five years after its initial publication date. And while opinions on the story vary — some people have awarded it ‘favourite book’ status, while others work tirelessly to rip its merit to shreds — the impact that it has had on the literary economy (It Ends With Us has sold approximately 8 million copies in total) and public perceptions of reading is indisputable.
But, the world of book-to-screen adaptations is a minefield. When people first learn the news, maybe through a Pop Crave tweet or a text from one of their more observant friends who saw the headline and thought of them, naturally there are questions. Who is directing? Who has been cast? When is the release date? Cinema or streaming service? And the more you think about it, the murkier the movie adaption water becomes.
To use It Ends With Us as an example, when Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni were announced as the respective leads, social media users had a field day making it apparent that the appearances of these actors did not match what they pictured when reading. One user tweeted that they were ‘disappointed in the It Ends With Us cast because they picked Blake Lively due to her reputation and not because they were keeping the character Lily in mind.’ Rumours of the film had been circulating online for months before anything official had been announced, giving people ample time to ‘fancast’ — post their dream cast for the project — and speculate on who would book the job. Crowd favourites included Abigail Cowen as Lily Bloom and Theo James as Ryle Kincaid. Therefore, by the time the Theo-and-Abigail-less actual cast was revealed, Twitter went up in flames. This sort of visceral reaction from fans means that the actors who actually landed the roles are then faced with the somewhat impossible task of being trusted to play a character that is already loved by people who are walking into the cinema expecting to be disappointed. With audience expectations being so high from the get-go, can the teams behind the films ever win?
The age-old question with book-to-screen adaptations is just how close to the source material should you stay? There are clear logistical differences between the mediums — such as the time a consumer spends with the work and the different levels of imagination required — which means that sometimes, chapters have to be left on the cutting room floor. In the movie version of It Ends With Us, producers made the call to omit the character Atlas’s infamous line, ‘You can stop swimming now, Lily. We finally reached the shore.’ which as a surprise to no one, didn’t sit well with many fans. In the book, this line serves to create a circular narrative so like it or not, its absence from the screen does alter the overall feel of the story. Another example of line omission that springs to mind is the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People when writers made the executive decision to not include Connell’s line, ‘I’m not a religious person, but I do sometimes think God made you for me.’ Thinking about this rationally, it is easy to understand that a teenage boy casually saying this sort of thing may throw audiences who are unaware of the source material through a loop, but the die-hard fans were heartbroken by the choice. If audiences of screen adaptations viewed the books as guidelines as opposed to Bibles, the viewing experience could become more enjoyable.
The more recent books being adapted for screen all appear to have virality on their side — for example, Emily Henry’s People We Meet On Vacation which the cast was recently announced for – and as a result, the movies are just a drop in a much wider pool of discourse, never getting the opportunity to be viewed in isolation. This has never really been the case before. To put this into context, let’s look at Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. In the online sphere, this film is well known for Saoirse Ronan making history with the delivery of the line, ‘Women have minds and souls as well as just hearts, and they’ve got ambition and talent as well as just beauty. And I’m sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for’ as well as for Timothee Chalamet breaking Florence Pugh’s heart. However, despite its status as a classic, Tiktok users weren’t making edits of Little Women before it was a film — the movie took on a separate life in itself. When the book and the movie are completely synonymous, as is the case with It Ends With Us, creators sign themselves up to work under the watchful eyes of dedicated fans.
The creation of a book-to-screen adaptation that pleases all involved ceases to exist. Fans are quick to claim their ‘I read the book before it became a movie’ card while also being the first to point out all of the film’s flaws, and this combination is what makes the topic so heated. The future of books becoming films will be up in the air for as long as the online world keeps turning and it seems that the most hopeful future lies with open-minded viewers and readers who are willing to ditch their fictional fixations. As for Colleen Hoover, well, I think she’ll be just fine.