They give me the money, I give them the book. Having input into the adaptation would be kind of like selling a house and coming back three years later and saying, 'Paint it this color!'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.
The issue of doing an adaptation of a book is the theater of the mind, and so you always face that.
My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they've read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!
I think my background in film taught me that a great book adaptation is not always slavishly faithful to the source material.
There is a contract between the reader and the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them.
I've never watched any of the adaptations of my books. I've never wanted to, and there's absolutely no chance of me doing so in the future.
Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations.
I guess my approach to adapting books is to treat them with a deep respect on one level and at another level part them to one side and go, 'I'm doing something completely different here.'
I get to show the reader the essence of the book without giving anything away.
I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.