Rylee Anschutz, Jay ebhomielen, Kennedy Levister, madison Rogers, and Camille Johnson
Film adaptation from print media has become commonplace. The existing storylines and characters give filmmakers a blueprint to follow as well as an existing fan base. These adaptations increase both book and film sales, incentivizing authors to grow their work’s popularity to pick up film contracts. This collaboration has changed how books are developed, published, and marketed. Our cluster analyzes the changes that have risen in book development in response to the film industry, as well as how that industry has reacted to both successful and failed adaptations.
Rylee’s essay sets the stage, highlighting the censorship that the film adaptations of the Hunger Games novels underwent to make it to the big screen. This starts a discussion of why film adaptations are often incongruent with the novels in the first place. Hunger Games, the film, was operating in a market that sought teen audiences, so trimming some of the political themes in favor of bolstering the romantic angle is one in a series of choices common under conglomeration. Continuing this discussion is Madison’s essay, describing the process by which stories become watered-down by their film counterparts, and then offering reasons why this happens. Often, adaptation necessitates censorship of certain themes just so that a film can avoid refusal of distribution or negative audience response. Like Hunger Games, films like A Clockwork Orange, The Great Gatsby, and Coraline often end up straying slightly from the themes of their source material, for better or worse.
Jay’s work focuses on the benefits and drawbacks of the way conglomeration and large corporations affect publishing and adaptation. This is highlighted through the unique instance of Percy Jackson, a rare example of a book series with both television and film adaptations developed within a decade of each other. Her essay also stresses the importance of author involvement in the adaptation process.
Kennedy and Camille’s essays split the discussion into two tracks. Kennedy uses the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an example of how conglomeration can enable existing stories to gain a wider audience. This is especially important when diversity comes into play, like in the case of the comic book Captain Marvel and its film adaptation. Camille’s essay explores the negative aspects of mass media and corporate artistry, highlighting the drama surrounding Argylle: A Novel and its film adaptation to emphasize why sincere novels and films are becoming increasingly important in a world of inauthenticity.
Together, these essays shed light on the interesting and ever-changing bridge between the publishing and film worlds, between Penguin Random House and MGM. Like many aspects of our daily lives that used to seem concrete, publishing and filmmaking are two industries currently in flux, hardly recognizable from how they looked in a pre-internet world. Blanketing it all is the foundational text Big Fiction by Dan Sinykin, a book about the history of conglomeration in the publishing world with many references to books that were turned into widely-successful films. Like Sinykin, our essays tell the story of a host of adaptations which span decades and reflect the consequences of creating under conglomeration. After connecting all of these examples, we hope readers come away asking the question: How will these two bonded industries continue to change in the coming years, and how will this affect the art they produce?