15 Film Adaptations Completely Different From The Book

When a novel, play, or comic is beloved by the masses, it is not uncommon for it to be adapted for cinema. Now, no matter how good a story is, some tweaks here and there have to be made for the transition. What works perfectly in a novel mightn't work at all in a movie.

More often that not, you can make colossal revisions to the adaption but still maintain the spirit of the source material. Massive alterations were made to the conclusion of The Shawshank Redemption, The Lord of the Rings, and Watchmen, and yet, the films are still considered faithful retellings.

But that's not always the case. In this list, we will be looking at some adaptions that have NOTHING in common with the book they are based on, save for the title. Sometimes, the plot, the characters, the tone and the style bears no resemblance to the source material that supposedly inspired it. In fact, they can have so little to do with the original story, you wonder why the filmmakers bothered to adapt it in the first place.

Winston Groom's book, Forrest Gump, is about a cognitively disabled man whose simple outlook on life allows him to accomplish wonder. The first half of Robert Zemeckis' film adaption is a pretty accurate (save for the fact that Forrest is meant to be 6ft 6.) Forrest is an amazing football player, falls for a girl called Jenny, joins the army, meets Lieutenant Dan who becomes a paraplegic, and plays ping-pong for China.

However, Gump's other adventures in the book are a lot more... zany. He becomes a Hollywood stunt performer with a naked model, a wrestler called The Dunce, and a NASA astronaut, where he is joined by a male orangutan called Sue. The story concludes with him begging on the street alongside Lieutenant Dan and his new primate buddy.