The buzz on the next big book-to-movie adaptations after Emily Blunt’s The Girl on the Train

As book fans await Thursday’s cinema release of The Girl on the Train, we gauge the buzz on five more movie adaptations coming soon.

One of the year’s most anticipated adaptations, The Girl on the Train, is riding on the performance of Emily Blunt as anti-heroine Rachel. Picture: Entertainment One

PAULA Hawkins, whose novel The Girl on the Train has sold more than 11 million copies in less than two years, has only one complaint about the new movie adaptation of her world-beating book: actor Emily Blunt is “too beautiful” to play the story’s damaged, drunken anti-heroine.

“They’ve done their best to sort of make her look a bit s---,” the author said at a London book festival last month, “but you know ...”

The good news for book fans eagerly awaiting the release of the movie on Thursday is that Hawkins’ final verdict is that Blunt overcame that handicap to do an “extraordinary job” playing a divorcee who thinks she witnesses a murder on her daily commute, but whose frequent drunken blackouts make her an unreliable witness.

Author Paula Hawkins with the “too beautiful” yet “extraordinary” Emily Blunt, star of The Girl on the Train. Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP

Ask any author what they want from an adaptation of their work and it’s mostly that it captures, or stays faithful to, “the spirit” of the book.

In recent years, Gone Girl, Brooklyn, Wild and The Martian stuck to the page with Oscar-worthy, crowd-pleasing results.

But graphic novel adaptation Watchmen was cringe-worthy, some thought Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby missed the point and while Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy made billions, the movies won’t go down as classics.

Fans and authors alike will be hoping this next batch of book adaptations headed to cinemas captures that ever-elusive spirit.

JASPER JONES

Release: March 2

Novel by: Craig Silvey

Film by: Renowned indigenous filmmaker Rachel Perkins, who brought us 2010’s Bran Nue Dae

Silvey’s coming of age story is considered a quintessentially Australian classic. After a successful stage adaptation, early whispers on the movie point to an all-ages hit.

In a small West Australian town rife with racial tension and suspicion in the 1960s, teenager Charlie joins indigenous outcast Jasper to investigate the death of a local girl — an adventure that will forever change the way he sees his hometown.

The tremendous kids carrying the movie (Levi Miller as Charlie, Aaron McGrath as Jasper, Kevin Long as Charlie’s Vietnamese best mate Jeffrey, Angourie Rice as the dead girl’s sister) are aided by veterans Hugo Weaving and Toni Collette.

Amy Adams is a lonely housewife reading her ex-husband’s terrifying book manuscript in the stylish Nocturnal Animals. Picture: Universal

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

Release: November 10

Novel by: Austin Wright (published as Tony and Susan)

Film by: Fashion designer turned ultra-stylish filmmaker Tom Ford

Within Austin Wright’s 1993 novel there was another book, titled Nocturnal Animals. In the film that takes that name, there is also a book — sent by Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) to his ex-wife Susan (Amy Adams). As the lonely, bored Susan reads Tony’s manuscript, its menacing story comes alive in the film, and her real life begins to reveal major cracks.

Ford’s movie — sexy, violent pulp fiction juggling multiple story strands with style — received rave reviews out of the Venice Film Festival.

Simon Baker leads two boys onto a risky break in the movie adaptation of Tim Winton’s Breath. Picture: Nic Duncan/ScreenWest

BREATH

Release: 2017

Novel by: Tim Winton

Film by: Ex-pat actor Simon Baker returned home to make his directorial debut on this most Australian of stories

Growing up on the waves off WA, 16-year-olds Loonie and Pikelet are introduced to the surfing subculture by older wild man Sando (Baker). Pushed to surf bigger waves and take bigger risks, the boys get addicted to the thrills.

Baker said of Winton’s book that it “viscerally captures the restless curiosity and yearning for identity that often defines our coming of age”. The good news for Winton purists is that the author wrote the first draft of the film’s script.

Idris Elba is the Stephen King-approved Gunslinger in The Dark Tower. Picture: Sony Pictures

THE DARK TOWER

Release: February 23

Novels by: Stephen King

Film by: Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, after years and years of hard graft from producer Ron Howard to get the project off the ground

Stephen King once called The Dark Tower (he’s published eight novels in the series since 1982) “gold on the ground waiting to be picked up” by Hollywood.

Finally, it is happening — with Idris Elba playing King’s hero, The Gunslinger, forever pursuing his ageless foe The Man in Black, a sorcerer played by Matthew McConaughey, across space and time.

King is listed as a producer on the western/fantasy project, gave notes on the script and gave his blessing to both the casting of the film and it being set in the modern day, as a kind of sequel to his books.

LION

Release: January 19

Novel by: Saroo Brierly (published as A Long Way Home)

Film by: Garth Davis, who makes the leap to feature film from Foxtel series Top of the Lake and Love My Way

This true story, which spans India and Australia, had its movie premiere in Toronto last month. Reviewers agreed on several things: Its opening, in which five-year-old Saroo becomes separated from his family and lost in India, is both kinetic and harrowing. Nicole Kidman’s performance as Saroo’s adoptive Australian mother is emotionally powerful and worthy of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar run. Watching a twenty-something (Dev Patel, with a convincing Australian accent) tracing trace his Indian roots on a computer via Google Earth doesn’t make for the most riveting cinema, but pays off in his emotional family reunion. And, take tissues.

Originally published as The buzz on the next big book-to-movie adaptations after Emily Blunt’s The Girl on the Train