10 Movies Where The Director Hated The Source Material

7. Blade Runner

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is unquestionably one of the greatest and most influential sci-fi movies of all time, and though hardly a faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it certainly does a fantastic job capturing the mood of Dick's dystopian source material.

But Scott himself wasn't much taken with the novel, confessing that he didn't even finish reading it before making his movie.

He said, "I honestly couldn't get into it. It's so dense, by page 32 there's about 17 story lines. So one of the problems is distilling it down into a three-act play that can be filmed."

Thankfully the scripting duties were handled by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, while Scott, a designer by trade, could focus on nailing the stylistic and world-building aspects.

Despite Scott's disinterest in Dick's novel, the author was reportedly amazed by an effects reel of Blade Runner he saw before passing away just a few months shy of the film's release.