Earlier this week, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin set off a drama bomb when he bluntly criticized HBO's Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon in a blog post. It's clear that he has problems with how the show has adapted his book Fire & Blood. Martin drilled down on how the show's decision to cut a certain character from the book could have negative butterfly effects down the line, and teased that there are "larger and more toxic butterflies to come, if HOUSE OF THE DRAGON goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and 4."
This was surprising to hear because Martin, who's as big a celebrity author as exists right now, has always been very supportive of the TV shows based on his work. He may have expressed a quibble here and there about Game of Thrones when it was running, but there was never anything on this scale, where he's openly wondering what House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal has planned for the show's future, "if indeed he has planned anything." For Martin, it was a very spicy post.
But compared to some of the other authors who have criticized adaptations of their work, it was nothing. Below, let's look at some authors who were unhappy with the screen versions of their books, and what they said and did about it:
Ursula K. LeGuin didn't like the Sci-Fi Channel's adaptation of Earthsea
Let's begin our journey into dissatisfaction with Ursula K. LeGuin, the author of the beloved Earthsea books. Where high fantasy epics often involve war or other mass-scale conflict, the Earthsea novels are quieter and more complicated, with different books following different characters living on a string of islands where magic is practiced freely. When The Sci-Fi Channel announced that it was going to make an Earthsea miniseries based on the first book in the series, A Wizard of Earthsea, people were excited.
But that excitement evaporated when they saw the finished product, which ran back in 2004. Le Guin herself was already bracing for the worst. "When I saw the script, I realized that what the writer had done was kill the books, cut them up, take out an eye here, a leg there, and stick these bits into a totally different story, stitching it all together with catgut and hokum," she wrote for Locus magazine. "They were going to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a silly plot based on sex and violence."
"I want to say that I am very sorry for the actors. They all tried really hard. I'm not sorry for myself, or for my books. We're doing fine, thanks. But I am sorry for people who tuned in to the show thinking they were going to see something by me, or about Earthsea. I will try to be more careful in future, and not let either myself or my readers be fooled."
While Le Guin had kind words for the actors, she had a major problem with the casting. In the Archipelago of Earthsea, almost all of the characters are people of color, including the wizard Ged, the closest thing the series has to a main character. But in the Sci-Fi show, pretty much everyone was white, something Le Guin did not appreciate. "In the miniseries, Danny Glover is the only man of color among the main characters (although there are a few others among the spear-carriers)," she wrote for Slate. "A far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned."
"My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn’t see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn’t see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had “violet eyes”). It didn’t even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn’t they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?"
Le Guin was a bit kinder about the 2006 animated movie Tales from Earthsea, although she was still disappointed it didn't channel her books more. "It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie," she remembers telling director Goro Miyazaki. At least she didn't hate it this time.
Alan Moore has hated every movie or TV show based on his work, but let's focus on Watchmen
You can't talk about genre authors who hate adaptations of their work without bringing up Alan Moore, the man behind some of the most influential comic books of past 50 years, including Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke and V For Vendetta. He hated them all.
To be fair, he makes a point of not watching much of anything based on his creations. But he preemptively hates it on principle. “I would be the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work,” he told GQ. “From what I’ve heard of them, it would be enormously punishing. It would be torturous, and for no very good reason."
This is despite at least some adaptations of Moore's work being well regarded. Take HBO 2019's Watchmen show, which is more of an extension than an adaptation. Conceived by Damon Lindelof, it went over splendidly with fans and critics alike. Moore recalled when Lindelof sent Moore a meesage about the show, trying to get the author's blessing. Predictably, it did not go well:
"I think it opened with, “Dear Mr. Moore, I am one of the b******s currently destroying Watchmen.” That wasn’t the best opener. It went on through a lot of, what seemed to me to be, neurotic rambling. “Can you at least tell us how to pronounce ‘Ozymandias’?” I got back with a very abrupt and probably hostile reply telling him that I’d thought that Warner Brothers were aware that they, nor any of their employees, shouldn’t contact me again for any reason. I explained that I had disowned the work in question, and partly that was because the film industry and the comics industry seemed to have created things that had nothing to do with my work, but which would be associated with it in the public mind. I said, “Look, this is embarrassing to me. I don’t want anything to do with you or your show. Please don’t bother me again.”"
Moore seems pretty cynical on the entertainment industry in general, be it movies, TV or comics. He wasn't happy with how people received his graphic novels, either. "It seemed to me that what people were taking away from works like Watchmen or V For Vendetta wasn’t the storytelling techniques, which to me seemed to be the most important part of it," he once said. "It was instead this greater leeway with violence and with sexual references. Tits and innards."
So yes, Alan Moore does not like adaptations of his work. But it's not clear he likes much of anything.
Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick's The Shining movie
This is a good one. Stephen King published his horror novel The Shining, about a struggling writer who goes bonkers and tries to murder his family while cooped up in a snowboard hotel, in 1977. A few years later, Stanley Kubrick released his movie version of The Shining, which has gone down in history as a classic. And Stephen King hated it.
"Too cold," King told The Paris Review. "No sense of emotional investment in the family whatsoever on his part...I felt that the treatment of Shelley Duvall as Wendy—I mean, talk about insulting to women. She’s basically a scream machine. There’s no sense of her involvement in the family dynamic at all. And Kubrick didn’t seem to have any idea that Jack Nicholson was playing the same motorcycle psycho that he played in all those biker films he did—Hells Angels on Wheels, The Wild Ride, The Rebel Rousers, and Easy Rider. The guy is crazy. So where is the tragedy if the guy shows up for his job interview and he’s already bonkers? No, I hated what Kubrick did with that."
King did write a screenplay for The Shining movie before filming started, but Kubrick ended up hiring novelist Diane Johnson to write a new version emphasizing the parts of the story he was most interested in. "Then he redid it himself," King continued. "I was really disappointed."
"It’s certainly beautiful to look at: gorgeous sets, all those Steadicam shots. I used to call it a Cadillac with no engine in it. You can’t do anything with it except admire it as sculpture. You’ve taken away its primary purpose, which is to tell a story."
So King hated the movie, but here's an interesting wrinkle: I've both read King's book and watched Kubrick's movie, and at least from where I'm sitting, the movie is definitely better. King is right that it's colder, but that's part of what makes it so terrifying. And frankly, King's original book has a lot of silly, melodramatic stuff that the Kubruck movie wisely removes.
I don't feel like I'm alone here, either, since Kubrick's Shining is still shown in theaters to this day. Meanwhile, Stephen King wrote the screenplays for a three-episode Shining miniseries with a different cast that aired on TV in 1997. You may have never heard of that one, because everyone forgot it moments after it was over. Sometimes, just because an author hates an adaptation doesn't mean that adaptation isn't beloved. And speaking of which...
P.J. Travers thought Disney ruined the Mary Poppins movie
We're now in the classic movie section of the post. Who doesn't love Mary Poppins? Well, author P.J. Travers, who wrote the original books, thought it sucked.
Caitlin Flanagan wrote in The New Yorker about Travers crying at the premiere of the movie, writing that anyone “could have been forgiven for assuming that her tears were the product either of artistic delight or of financial ecstasy (she owned five per cent of the gross; the movie made her rich). Neither was the case. The picture, she thought, had done a strange kind of violence to her work."
"The première was the first Travers had seen of the movie—she did not initially receive an invitation, but had embarrassed a Disney executive into extending one—and it was a shock. Afterward, as Richard Sherman recalled, she tracked down Disney at the after-party, which was held in a giant white tent in the parking lot adjoining the Chinese Theatre. “Well,” she said loudly. “The first thing that has to go is the animation sequence.” Disney looked at her coolly. “Pamela,” he replied, “the ship has sailed.” And then he strode past her, toward a throng of well-wishers, and left her alone, an aging woman in a satin gown and evening gloves, who had travelled more than five thousand miles to attend a party where she was not wanted."
According to biographer Valerie Lawson, Travers “told a contributor to The New York Times that the movie went against the grain of the books, that it was merely a colorful extravaganza, as far from true magic as it was possible to be.” She reportedly didn't like the character of Bert, played by Dick Van Dyke. “All that smiling, just like Iago. And it was so untrue—all fantasy and no magic.” (Thanks to Literary Hub for gathering those quotes.)
Again, this is an author complaining about an adaptation that has gone down in history as a classic. We actually find that happening quite a bit, probably because an author who dislikes something a lot of people love makes for a good story. But most movies don't become classics, leaving the authors of the original works to hate them in silence.
Anyway, Hollywood can't even adapt P.J. Travers' hatred of the Mary Poppins movie correctly. In 2013, a film called Saving Mr. Banks came out that chronicles the relationship between Travers and Walt Disney, starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks. There's tension between them, but Disney comes off as far more pure-hearted than I think Travers would have us believe.
As long as we're talking about beloved children's authors who hated classic movies basd on their work, Roald Dahl was known to strongly dislike 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, based on his book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But let's skip ahead now to something more modern:
Brandon Sanderson has a lot of problems with Prime Video's The Wheel of Time TV show
Last year, author Brandon Sanderson — who wrote the final three books in The Wheel of Time epic fantasy series after original creator Robert Jordan died — appeared in a video with two influencers where they watched the season 2 finale of Prime Video's Wheel of Time TV show. Technically, Sanderson didn't write the books that this particular season was adapting, but he's still closely associated with the series, so his word carries weight.
And a lot of his words boiled down to, "I asked them to change this but they didn't, I'm sorry it's not better." He had a lot of problems with the episode, both broad and specific, and it sounds like those issues extended to the rest of the show. "A lot of the problems with this episode are actually previous episodes, in that the scenes are all good — a lot of them are good — but what you’re having happen doesn’t feel built to, character-wise, for a lot of the characters for me," he said. "The show is doing a lot of things fantastically, and it’s really good at scenes. But one of the things I keep arguing for is, ‘What are the arcs’? What is the theme? And arc and theme seems to fall by the wayside for cool scenes quite a bit, and that worries me."
As for the specific, Sanderson had problems with the way the show depicts channeling, which is this world's version of magic. "I’m worried that they’re gonna start contradicting their own rules real quick…I’ve warned about that…They’re already doing it with channeling," he said. "They’ll say one time it has to be a certain way and then other times it isn’t. I warned them about that with teleportation…If can teleport, why isn’t he behind the shield, the moment she brings it up? The moment you start breaking metaphysics, then suddenly you have some big problems every step of the way."
Sanderson had problems with a lot of other stuff, from character beats to bits of lore, but if we recapped it all we'd be here all day. The point is that a popular modern author was criticizing an ongoing TV adaptation of his work (well, of the work he would eventually conclude), which is the closest anyone on our list comes replicating George R.R. Martin's current situation. "I want to love it, and I like it," Sanderson later clarified on Reddit. "I think people are gonna enjoy watching this, I don’t think they’ll come back for it. Cause what brings you back are those moments where things culminate. You don’t come back for cool scenes."
Is it possible that the folks at Prime Video could take Sanderson's advice on board and tweak things for the upcoming third season of The Wheel of Time? It's possible. Some people close to George R.R. Martin theorize that, with his blog post about House of the Dragon, Martin is hoping to change the direction of the show, if only by a little. Maybe Martin and Sanderson should talk to each other and strategize. They're really the only two people in this particular position.
Michael Ende took legal action against the 1984 movie adaptation of The Neverending Story
Overall, both Martin and Sanderson are pretty mild in their criticism, probably because they don't want to jepordize the relationship they have with the studio. Other authors on this list go far harder, including Michael Ende, the author of the 1979 fantasy book The Neverending Story. The book was adapted into a movie in 1984, and you can probably guess by now how it went. "A usually reserved and thoughtful man, held an impassioned press conference in Stuttgart last April to denounce 'that revolting movie' and demanded that his name be removed from the credits. It was," PEOPLE wrote in 1984. “'The makers of the film simply did not understand the book at all,' he complains. They just wanted to make money.'"
Ende worked on the movie as an advisor, but charges that director Wolfgang Petersen later rewrote it. "I trusted them," Ende rued. “I saw the final script five days before the premiere...I was horrified. They had changed the whole sense of the story. Fantastica reappears with no creative force from Bastian. For me this was the essence of the book.”
Ende's website quotes him as calling the movie a "humungous melodrama of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic," and not in a fun way. He actually took out an injunction in an attempt to get the studio to remove scenes he felt contradicted the inner logic of the story. He lost that case and he didn't take it well, saying:
"According to the logic of the ruling: the original novel had undoubtedly been distorted, but since the film was aimed primarily at a younger audience, such distortions were irrelevant. Of course the truth of the matter was that sixty million dollars were at stake. The only voice of opposition came from a lone author who had evidently grown too big for his boots. After all, majority opinion deems a movie to be the pinnacle of a novelist’s success. Shouldn’t writers be grateful if directors want to film their books? In financial terms, losing the court case cost me far more than I gained from the rights. At the time I took the whole thing to heart, but these days I don’t let it get to me. I heard somewhere that Part II has been released at the cinema - I haven’t even watched the thing."
The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter did indeed come out in 1990. Probably best Ende didn't go to the theater to see that one. There may not have been any survivors.
So what have we learned? We've learned that Hollywood often doesn't treat books as sacrosanct, particularly books in genres like sci-fi and fantasy, and that the authors will likely be ticked when they see that everything has been changed for the movie or the show. Sometimes everyone agrees that the adaptation sucks, like with the Sci-Fi Channel version of Earthsea, and at other times the movie becomes a classic that might even outlive the book, like The Shining.
And in the case of ongoing adaptations like House of the Dragon and The Wheel of Time, we don't really know their fate yet. Will Martin and Sanderson continue to complain, and if so, will their complaints have any effect? Are they in the right to voice their objections, or would they be better off divorcing themselves from the situations to avoid the stress?
Personally, as messy as these sorts of situations can get, I'm glad that Martin made his issues known. I like House of the Dragon and I think the producers should listen to the creator if it they want the series to be as good as it can possibly be.
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