Self-Published Adaptations
This summer, it was announced that “Wool,” a dystopia about an underground city on an otherwise-uninhabitable Earth, was finally under way three years after Twentieth Century Fox nabbed the rights to Hugh Howey’s eponymous book. The project now comes with stellar credentials: “Guardians of the Galaxy” screenwriter Nicole Perman is rewriting “The Fifth Wave” director J Blakeson’s original script, and Steven Zaillian (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Moneyball”) and Ridley Scott (“Alien,” “Blade Runner”) are producing. Not bad for a book that got its start as a series of self-published novellas. But that’s the thing about all self-published book adaptations. No matter how they fare at the box office or on Rotten Tomatoes, they qualify as cinema’s Little Engines That Could. The sheer fact that these stories have defeated so many odds – that they made it to the big screen at all given that they initially could not find a niche in the literary world – is amazing. And some of the films in this category may surprise you. Continue Reading →