10 Movie Adaptations That Clearly Hated The Source Material

7. Adaptation

Charlie Kaufman isn't a filmmaker who does anything the obvious way. Consequently, when Columbia Pictures drafted him in to adapt Susan Orlean's The Orchard Thief, the executives probably should have expected something unconventional.

Famously, that writing task would eventually become Adaptation, a movie that stars Nicholas Cage as the writer Charlie Kufman who's struggling to adapt The Orchard Thief for the big screen. Confused yet?

Apparently, in real life Kaufman was running around in circles trying to find a way to make the book cinematic and interesting to him, encountering a particularly bad bout of writers block. Rather than carry on with a straight adaptation, he instead focused on the meta story - his own story - while tying it into elements of the original narrative.

Of course, this isn't what he signed on to do and kept the new direction secret from the studio, admitting "I really thought I was ending my career by turning that in!"

Somehow, this version of the movie was made, and his real struggles will forever be immortalised on celluloid.