It’s a truth universally acknowledged that books are better than their screen adaptations. That fact hasn’t stopped filmmakers from trying to translate the magic on the page to the screen with varying degrees of success, and 2024 certainly had its share of failed attempts. (My least favourite was Prime Video’s watered-down version of The Idea of You, and my second-least favourite was Apple’s nonsensical Palm Royale.)
However, a handful of book-to-screen adaptations stood out for capturing the spirit of the original stories. Here are my top five adaptations of the year, and which promising adaptations to put on your radar for next year.
Best Romantic Comedy Adaptation: One Day
Barely a week into 2024, Netflix dropped its 14-part series One Day, which was an adaptation of the David Nicholls novel that I never knew that I needed. Given that the bestselling book had already been adapted for the screen in the 2011 movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, another version seemed unnecessary. However, before the end of the couple’s first St. Swithin’s Day (July 15) together, I was hooked.
Like the book and movie, the show follows Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter (Leo Woodall) for two decades worth of July 15ths in this friends-to-lovers story. The book’s structure naturally fits the pacing of a series, and the unlikely magnetism between Emma and Dexter’s characters makes the show a must-watch for fans of the book. However, I couldn’t list this as the best rom-com adaptation of the year without acknowledging that the ending is a tragedy. (To me, including this as the best rom-com screen adaptation of the year is further proof of how sad the state of rom-coms is right now.)
Most-Anticipated Rom-Com Adaptation: People We Meet On Vacation
If you loved One Day, you’ll be thrilled to know that Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation is now filming. Like One Day, it’s a will-they-won’t-they story that spans time. For a decade, two best friends — Alex (Tom Blyth) and Poppy (Emily Bader) — have taken a summer trip together. Instead of using days as the vehicle to tell the story, Henry uses vacations. Alex and Poppy have 10 trips to see if they can become more than friends.
While a release date hasn’t been announced, it’s expected to stream on Netflix sometime in 2025. The cast also includes Sarah Catherine Hook, Jameela Jamil, Lucien Laviscount, Lukas Gage, Miles Heizer, Tommy Do, Alice Lee, Alan Ruck and Molly Shannon.
Best Mystery Adaptation: The Perfect Couple
A niche subcategory for this genre could be Socialite Fiction with a Side of Murder. Since 2017’s Big Little Lies, there has been an explosion of adaptations of best-selling books about women navigating the politics of exclusive communities and social drama that comes to a climax when someone is murdered. Nicole Kidman has starred in more than one of them, including this year’s adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s Nantucket-based novel, “The Perfect Couple.”
Kidman plays the matriarch, Greer, who is trying to control everything, especially how her family appears to others, during her middle son’s glamorous wedding weekend. When a “floater” is found in the water outside her property the morning after the rehearsal dinner, the show becomes a classic whodunnit with an escapist quality that makes it a bingeable and delightful watch.
Most-Anticipated Mystery Adaptation: The Hunting Wives
The Hunting Wives, based on the novel by May Cobb, will air as an eight-part series on Starz, and it appears to have all the ingredients for a niche socialite murder mystery. The premise of the book is that when Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow) moves from Chicago to a small town in Texas, she is bored and becomes intrigued by socialite Margot Banks (Malin Akerman) and her dangerous, exclusive group known as the Hunting Wives. When a teenage girl’s body is found where the group meets, Sophie is at the centre of the investigation. The cast also includes Dermot Mulroney, Jamie Ray Newman, Chrissy Metz, Katie Lowe and Evan Jonigkeit.
Best Classic Novel Adaptation: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Ever since Netflix’s disastrous adaptation of Persuasion starring Dakota Johnson in 2022, I’ve been even more hesitant to watch adaptations of classic novels. However, Netflix has redeemed itself with One Hundred Years of Solitude. The series, which premiered with the first 8 of its 16 episodes on Dec. 11, is based on the classic Nobel Prize-winning novel by Gabriel García Márquez.
This is the first time that the novel has been adapted for the screen, and directors Alex Garcia Lopez and Laura Mora Ortega do a phenomenal job translating the story of the Buendía family and their mythical town of Macondo to the screen. The set design of Bárbara Enríquez and Eugenio Caballero is gorgeously detailed, the cast embodies the enigmatic characters Màrquez created, and the magical realism is incorporated in a way that feels grounded instead of gimmicky.
The series opens with the famous first line of the book — “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” — before moving back in time to the wedding of Aureliano Buendía’s parents. Over eight episodes, it tells the first half of the multigenerational story that spans a century. The final eight episodes are in production, but a release date has not yet been announced.
Most-Anticipated Classic Novel Adaptation: Frankenstein
I know it’s merely a coincidence, but I read both One Hundred Years of Solitude and Frankenstein during the same AP Lit class in high school. Both are moody novels with themes about humanity that have clear implications for the world today. If you love adaptations of classics, you’ll want to watch out for Netflix’s latest adaptation of Frankenstein. Guillermo del Toro’s version will star Jacob Elordi as the monster that Dr. Pretorius (Christopher Waltz) tracks down so he can continue to experiment on him. It is expected to have a theatrical release in 2025, and the cast also includes Mia Goth and Oscar Isaac.
Best Young Adult Adaptations: Turtles All the Way Down and Heartstopper
When thinking about the best young adult adaptations of the year, it’s impossible to decide between Max’s movie Turtles All the Way Down, based on John Green’s book by the same name, and the third season of Netflix’s Heartstopper, based on the fourth and fifth volumes in Alice Oseman’s graphic novel series. Both are moving portrayals of teens struggling with anxiety in addition to the other stressors of being a teenager and falling in love for the first time.
In Turtles All the Way Down, Aza (Isabela Merced) goes on a search for a missing billionaire who also happens to be the dad of her crush, Davis (Felix Mallard). In Heartstopper, Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor) are navigating the progression of their relationship emotionally and physically while Charlie is also beginning treatment for his anxiety and eating disorder.
Both Turtles All the Way Down and Hearstopper are moving, faithful adaptations that tackle difficult subjects without coming across as didactic. As a result, both have become part of the larger destigmatisation of mental health disorders and have been cited as sources of hope for teen viewers going through similar situations. To have this impact while maintaining the story elements that make the originals so loved is a feat that most things adaptations, adult or YA, never accomplish.
Most-Anticipated Young Adult Adaptation: The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3
I’m not embarrassed to say that my most anticipated show of 2025 is the third season of Jenny Han’s series The Summer I Turned Pretty. The second season remained faithful to the overall plot of the books, ending with Belly (Lola Tung) choosing to be with Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) instead of his brother Conrad (Christopher Briney). While the television series has modernised the books, it has kept many key moments of the love triangle the same.
I can’t wait to see how this applies to the third book, We’ll Always Have Summer, because the tension in this last novel comes from Belly and Jeremiah deciding to get married, which is something I can’t imagine as a main storyline in 2025. But I’m looking forward to seeing how that element is translated to the screen. Main cast members Sean Kaufman, Jackie Chung and Rain Spencer will also be returning.
Best Children’s Book Adaptation: The Wild Robot
The Wild Robot movie directed by Chris Sanders is a must-watch for kids and adults. The movie is about a robot (Lupita Nyong’o) who is stranded on a wild island and must learn to take care of an orphaned gosling (Kit Connor) while also trying to survive herself. While the film changes elements of the story, it maintains the spirit of the book and emphasises themes about motherhood and belonging that may make it even more touching than the original story.
Most Anticipated Children’s Book Adaptation: How To Train Your Dragon
Both kids and adults who like The Wild Robot will want to mark their calendars for the live-action release of How to Train Your Dragon on June 13. Cressida Cowell’s book was previously adapted into an animated film by DreamWorks in 2014. It tells the story of a Hiccup (Mason Thames) who must catch and train a dragon to pass the initiation test of his Viking clan.
Honorable Mentions
Even though it’s not on the list, Wicked was another amazing adaptation. While I wish it hadn’t been divided into two parts, it was, hands down, my favourite movie of the year, and I can’t wait for the release of Part 2 next November. There were also well-executed adaptations like Rivals and Bridgerton that were so much fun to watch and are getting additional seasons, but there will probably be a bit of a wait (think 2026) before fans get those next instalments.
Similarly, fans of 2024’s It Ends With Us will have to wait a while for the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel Verity, which just announced Anne Hathaway as the lead. Fans of Dune will have a longer wait for Dune 3, but they do have the new Max show Prophecy to stream in the meantime.