Books: Movies v TV shows

For a long time (in fact probably most of the 20th Century), books have pretty much constantly been adapted into movies. Book rights held by publishers have traditionally been expensive, and to procure the rights to adapt often costs large amounts of money. They can also be cheap, however TV or film studios usually pay little attention to these. Prices can be from $1000 to $100,000, and anything that has appeared on a New York best seller list will cost you upwards of $50,000. Also, these rights to adapt usually only last for around 12-18 months in most cases, so the window of time after gaining the rights to adapt and complete filming is short before they elapse and return to the publisher. Therefore, it is easy to see how expensive a book adaptation can be, by the time actors, directors, film crew, location bookings, set producers, prop makers costs etc are all factored into the finished article.

All seems expensive, for something that at this point, no one knows for certain will be a hit – or a flop. Which is why studios often go for books, especially ones which have been great sellers, or are part of a long running and/or loved series (cult followed books also do well if they come with a strong following, that mainstream society hasn’t detected). It comes out of the blue backed by and talked about on social media, then it falls victim to cultural assimilation (just think enter the hipsters…”have you seen blah blah”), as they have what’s termed as a ‘baked in’ audience.

Herein lies the rub with adaptations. Something that has a baked in audience, usually has strong followers who tend to be overly protective. So, if the adaptation lands being welcomed by the hardcore fans, they will rave about it and get everyone to watch it as they almost freely promote, by shouting about it. On every social media platform they can find (even myspace if that’s still a thing, wonder about Bebo…) they will share, comment, tag and RT ‘till it becomes a continuous sounding klaxon. Engulfing everything online in its path, as it slaughters its way to the top of trending polls everywhere. Board members all slap each other’s backs, pop the champagne, and start to spend all their bonus money in their heads already. Flop, and it’s been a monumental waste of every bit of time effort and money spent, which leaves a sour taste in the mouth of fans, board members and everyone involved, while also making it difficult for people involved to get work afterwards.

So, for all the above reasons it can be seen to be a big gamble. So what’s better movie or TV show?? From a financial position, on balance movie adaptations can be less expensive, and reap more money instantaneously, whilst TV Shows tend to be more slow growth and expensive. A direct comparison, which clearly highlights this difference, can be made between ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movie trilogy and ‘Game of Thrones’ TV series. Both based on book series’ with a large following, they reached and set new heights in their respective formats, being welcomed and praised by critics and viewers alike (although jury is still out on that final season of GoT….) with almost universal acclaim. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy released between 2001-2003 by New Line Cinema, based on the fantasy series of books by J.R.R.Tolkien written in 1954, cost $281million dollars to produce. Accounting for inflation, would cost roughly $468million dollars to make today. It went on to take $2.9billion dollars at the box office. It continues to this day, to be a collection of films that everyone will have heard of (even if they haven’t seen them), and rank high on top lists of movies to see before you die (not bad for being almost 2 decades old!) Game of Thrones based on the book series ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ by George R.R. Martin, was released in 2011 on HBO, with it finishing just last year, producing 8 seasons over that time. The first season’s run of 10 episode’s cost around $6million per episode, while the final season’s cost per episode was roughly $15million per episode, bringing the whole show to a total ball park figure of $558million 1 . Some estimates put the total value of complete production cost of the show to $1.5billion, however HBO has earned $3.1billion on paid subscription for the series 2.

Both expensive to produce and make, however when film rights where purchased from original authors they are cheap at the price. Although not made public it’s believed George R.R. Martin sold the Game of Throne rights to HBO for $15million dollars, while back in 1969 J.R.R. Tolkien sold his rights to United Artists (who later sold to New Line Cinema) for £100,000 (though this figure is debated) which in today’s money is roughly £3.8million.

Ultimately from a financial point it is hard to answer which is better. As time goes by and the way people consume visual media shifts, there will surely be a larger increase towards TV shows. Although cinema will still have its place, mostly for big action summer blockbusters and Christmas family movies – TV shows will grow. The way people now watch TV shows is also shifting from TV channels and listings, to streaming on demand services. Gone are the days of watching Lost, waiting a week for the next instalment, and getting a 30 second recap of the previous week’s episode. People binge a whole 10-episode series of the latest ‘on-trend’ show over a weekend, talk about it the following week in work, then repeat again on the next thing. In some ways Game of Thrones will probably be the last to have weekly instalments, as it was so big, part of the show was the waiting and tension created by each episode’s cliff-hangers. However in some ways that’s what became its Achilles heel, people waited so long it didn’t feel worth the wait in the end, and the investment in time (and brain power arguing over the fan theories, and exchanging of what you thought was going to happen) meant it was always destined to fail. So as a result, more TV shows will become the norm, and almost all will be instantly stream-able in their entirety for our binging pleasures.

So, in some ways, it’s maybe less of what is better, but more what will become the norm. A good indicator, and sign of where this is going is the example set by Disney plus. It seems to be diverging quickly into the streaming market, and cleverly luring millions of monthly subscribers in with its large back catalogue (which realistically cost it nothing more than server hosting costs, as it is primarily old pre-produced content), tapping on the sweet vein of nostalgia. The next way of ‘original’ content (after The Mandalorian), will be the accompanying expanded marvel universe TV shows which will create what Star Trek used to, a shared all-canon universe of storytelling via TV shows and films. So seamlessly actors can appear as said character for a mini-series, before reappearing in the next big Avengers blockbuster movie for example, none moreso truer than with WandaVision, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, or Loki. All will revolve around characters who have been and will continue to be on the large screen. Least we also forget, these Marvel movies, are based loosely on the characters from the Marvel Comics, which are technically books themselves, now being made into movies, and now TV series. Why have these movies (and probably TV shows) been so successful? Because of that repeating factor, the baked in audience.

On a personal note, I feel things are better made into TV shows. Especially when the source material is rich, dense and dealing with complex subjects surrounding lots of ‘main’ characters, as most good books or book series do. Too often, movies due to budgets and timing ignore characters from books, or condense their screen time, especially if it’s part of a less important sub-plot from the books. Which runs the risk of angering some of that baked in audience, or hardcore fans as they hate or don’t like the way their favourite character was portrayed, or cut from the movie (Tom Bombadil from Lord of The Rings, Peeves from Harry Potter). Don’t get me wrong I do love a big summer blockbuster, that hits the cinema’s every year as much as the next person, but preferably something that is an original idea created by a director or writer, and not something based on books. I know I argue that Marvel movies do this, by basing the films on the graphic novels, but it is done in a loose fashion, which gives those movies room to use a bit of artistic licence, and make it still feel original what’s on screen. Books I feel are done more justice, when done as shows, when given the room for the source material to breathe, and characters, sub-plots etc the time to be fleshed out with all shades of them shown. With increased budgets, actors are now also showing it’s possible to have a successful career doing both TV shows and movies (looking at you Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Peter Dinklage etc), as well as big name Hollywood directors, directing episodes of shows (Taika Waititi – Thor:Ragnorak / The Mandalorian, Cary Fukunaga – IT / True Detective), then it seems that TV Shows as a format are hitting a purple patch.

In a bizarre twist maybe, everything will eventually be remade into a TV show, to simultaneously guarantee viewership (remember again the baked in audience) as well as to keep mining that guaranteed money generator – nostalgia. Maybe the only way for Hollywood to survive long term, is to sidestep into the small screen (even though houses these days have a ‘large’ flat screen TV), and to recycle old movies into shows. Hollywood has struggled in recent years to present original ideas on the big screen, and is continually mining its back catalogues to remake and/or reboot old movies (IT, Jurassic World, Planet of the Apes, A Star is Born, and please don’t get me started on horror movies….), or they make live action versions of classic kids movies (Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Jungle Book, probably everything Disney by 2030), so seems there is plenty mileage in redoing something old. A good example of where redoing something has worked well, is Philip Pullmans – His Dark Materials. Released as a joint venture between the BBC and Netflix in 2019, it focused on the 1st in the trilogy of books, and managed to effectively present the complex morality of the difference between how a child and an adult can see the world, as well as the viewer. This was something that its big screen adaptation in 2007, known as the Golden Compass failed to do, and as a result it was not as well received by audiences or critics.

A final example (strange as it may sound), is that of Lord of the Rings. A 9 hour long (almost 12 if you watch the extended editions) trilogy, that inspired Game of Thrones to be picked up by HBO several years later and turned into a TV show, is itself in ironic fashion, getting a companion TV series, produced by Amazon. This inception-esque situation has shown how TV shows are changing, costing Amazon $250 million in rights, and a quoted $1 billion budget to produce 5 seasons 3. It will apparently borrow footage from the original movies themselves, to blur the line between where the movies begin and the show starts. If that still hasn’t convinced you enough that book’s are better as TV shows instead of movies, imagine Game of Thrones, as a 2.5 hour long movie, or even a trilogy of movies, wouldn’t have done it justice would it have ??

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1. (calculated roughly thanks to) https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/21/much-game-thrones-season-cost-make-9622963/ *season 5 isn’t accurately represented, so a rough estimate was used)

2. https://www.finance-monthly.com/2019/05/how-much-money-has-hbo-made-from-game-of-thrones/#:~:text=Whilst%20the%20budgets%20of%20Game,Billion%20through%20HBO%20subscriptions%20alone.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(TV_series)#:~:text=Amazon%20closed%20a%20deal%20in,worth%20at%20least%20%241%20billion