10 Long-Awaited Film Adaptations Which Can't Get Off The Ground

9. The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath's only novel was adapted into a film once before in 1979; it didn't do well at the box office and it received lukewarm reviews, which complained about its superficial approach to the book's exploration of mental illness. Since then, the campaign for a second adaptation has been spearheaded within Hollywood by actress Julia Stiles. The big screen return of The Bell Jar (with Stiles as its producer and star) was announced in 2007, but seven years later it hasn't materialised. In 2012, Stiles admitted that her inexperience as a producer damaged the project's chances, and in 2013 acknowledged that she'd had to let it go, although it does still appear on IMDB. Her onscreen relationship with The Bell Jar therefore begins and ends with the scene in 10 Things I Hate About You in which her character reads the novel because she's angry and misunderstood, in the time-honoured tradition of teenage rebels everywhere.