[antasvara]

The number of bad book adaptations makes me believe this is harder than you'd think. It's really an act of translation; you have to figure out if a book "works" without being able to just say what a character is thinking, without using descriptive lanfuage to imply something, etc.

Plenty of great books would make terrible movies for this reason, and plenty of pretty terrible books can actually make good movies.

[Cthulhu_]

Likewise video game -> movie adaptations, it seems to be very hard to do. Or they just don't get it, but that's probably my own bias. Thing is, some games are basically interactive movies, but they still make changes to meet some Hollywood ticklist.

(I am forever salty about Max Payne, Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed, etc. Max Payne could've worked with 1/10th of its budget (no CGI or famous actors necessary).