The Book Was Better: Results of Our Big Adaptation Survey

When it comes to book-to-screen adaptations, you’re supposed to read the book first, be utterly disappointed by the movie, and then spend the next week complaining that the author wasn’t involved enough. At least, that’s how I could have summarized our big survey on adaptations—but that would paint a completely false picture of the actual results. So, let’s take a closer look!

The Book Comes First…

The first part of our survey focused on adaptations in general. Well, "general" isn’t quite the right word; after all, adaptations can go in any direction (there are Star Wars books based on the movies, for instance). But since a controversial quote from Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin triggered this survey—"nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse"—we specifically focused on adaptations of books.

The Elbenwald community is definitely open for Martin’s views, at least when looking at our opening question. When it comes to the choice between picking up the source material or just hitting the cinema or turning on the TV, 62% of respondents read the book first! Only 9% watch the series or movie regardless, while about 13% only pick up the book if they actually liked the adaptation.

…But It’s Not Automatically Better

Next, we confronted the community with a few statements and forced them to pick the one they agreed with most. After the previous results, I was almost certain that "The book was better" would take the top spot. But surprisingly, with 23%, it only managed to snag third place.

The majority (30%) chose: "The adaptation must stay true to the story," closely followed by "The movie is the movie, the book is the book," which 28% of you agreed with. Interestingly, only 3% believe that changing the story for an adaptation can enrichen it!

The follow-up results support this: 35% said they’ve been disappointed by adaptations too often in the past. However, nearly as many (33%) believe that a good story is a good story, no matter how or where you experience it. While 26% prefer the visual possibilities of film and TV, only 6% want to see more original, bold ideas from adaptations.

Movie, Series, Audiobook, or Game?

Interestingly, movies aren’t the preferred medium for book adaptations. More than half (52%) prefer TV series because they offer more room for detail. 32% appreciate that movies, by their nature, have to focus on the essentials. Surprisingly few people (just under 9%) see audiobooks or audio plays as the best medium, even though they are logically the closest to the source material. Only 7% think video games are the best way to adapt a book.

There was much more agreement on the question of whether some stories are simply impossible to adapt—62% of you think so. (No idea how those people explain The Lord of the Rings or Dune, but okay!) We all know an adaptation can never be a 100% accurate, but what about expanding the world with things that weren't in the original books? We’ve seen plenty of examples lately, like The Rings of Power, Fantastic Beasts, or Wonka. Almost 70% think this is perfectly fine, as long as the original author gives it their blessing. 20% are happy to get extra material regardless, and the remaining 10% only consider "canon" what the author personally wrote.

Checking the Heavy Hitters

In the second part, we looked at specific examples. But first: I was called out on social media because the option "I don't know the book or the adaptation" was missing. That skewed the results a bit—my bad! Still, the clear majorities are pretty fascinating.

The Lord of the Rings: Almost 40% of participants say the books and movies are equally good. 31% admit they’ve only seen the movies, while only 16% consider the books the superior version.

Game of Thrones: The "TV phenomenon" is in full swing here. A large majority (40%) only knows the series and can’t compare the two. Nonetheless, 23% think both are equally good, while 22% prefer the books.

Harry Potter: A total outlier—over 85% of participants have both seen the movies and read the books! A whopping 46% think the books surpass the films, while 33% love both equally. Only 6% prefer the movies.

Dune: A stark contrast. 41% only know the two Denis Villeneuve films, while 20% chose the (admittedly cheeky) option: "What about the 1984 Lynch version?"

The Hunger Games: Surprisingly, 35% have only seen the movies (only books: 4%). Still, 30% consider both to be equally good.

The Best Book Adaptation of All Time

Finally, we wanted to settle the score: What is the best adaptation of all time? We got some flak beforehand because we only provided 20 titles (plus "something else") to choose from. I get it, but with the sheer number of participants we have now, a free-text field would have been an absolute nightmare to evaluate—you wouldn’t believe how many ways people can misspell the same title!

Our shortlist was based on various "Best of" lists, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes scores. But in the end, no free-text field in the world could have threatened the top spot: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy took a massive 38% of the vote. Granted, this might be due to the fact that it was the Elbenwald community voting. Here is the Top 5:

The Lord of the Rings (38.2%)
Jurassic Park (7.1%)
Schindler’s List (6.6%)
The Green Mile (6.1%)
The Shawshank Redemption (4.2%)

To wrap things up, here are some depressing numbers for some of the best films ever made: Arrival got 0.5% of the vote, No Country for Old Men got 0.3%, and Goodfellas only managed 0.2%. Looking at these numbers, The Shining and The Godfather can practically consider their shared 1.9% a victory! Also falling under the 1% mark: Blade Runner and The Social Network.