Clare Rigden reveals best book-to-screen adaptations of 2023 and explains what makes a great read a hit show

Daisy Jones, June Osborne, The Vampire Lestat — there’s never been a better time to be a fictional character from a novel. With more books making their way to television via series and film adaptations, chances are, if you’re dominating the pages of a best-seller, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll make your small-screen debut. You can thank Mr Darcy for that. Jane Austen’s 19th century hero started the trend way back in the 1990s. And sure, he wasn’t the first beloved fictional hero to cross over from page to screen, but Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC adaptation sure made it look good. Not content to stay within the confines of the printed page, he had to go strolling into our living rooms, all soggy britches, tousled hair and see-through puffy white shirt. We were never the same again. The latest best-seller to make its way to TV is Daisy Jones and the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel about a fictitious 1970s band who rose to fame, only to implode when they were at the peak of their powers. It’s a tale of love, fame, music and the excesses of rock and roll — ripe for adaptation. Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company picked up the rights before the book even hit the shops. According Lauren Neustadter, the woman who runs the company’s film and TV division (she’s also executive producer of the adaptation) managed to get early access to the novel because her husband, screenwriter Scott Neustadter, was asked by Reid’s manager to take a look a year before it was published. Neustadter famously contacted Witherspoon while on holiday, demanding her boss take a look, saying, according to her account in The New York Times: “I need you to bring your iPad to the beach tomorrow morning, because this book is so good and it’s going to be so competitive.” And she was right. Witherspoon did love it, making the novel a part of her book club on its debut in March 2019, helping secure it a place on the New York Times bestseller list in the process. It has remained there for a whopping 100 weeks, and counting. It’s not surprising Witherspoon fought so hard — book-to-screen adaptations are big money and have been for some time. You only have to look at the glut of Tom Clancy film and television adaptations starting in the 1990s, each starring top-end talent — Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October (1992), Harrison Ford in Patriot Games (1990) and Clear and Present Danger (1994) — to see that there are precedents. So popular are Clancy’s characters that Prime Video rushed to secure the rights to bring Jack Ryan back to the small screen, paying big bucks for Hollywood heavy-hitter, actor and producer John Krasinski, to take on the titular role in 2018. Three seasons later, it’s still going strong. Witherspoon knew that Daisy Jones and the Six was likely to be big business. She’d already brought adaptations of Where the Crawdads Sing, Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere to audiences to great acclaim, and knew people were hungry for new stories. And there have been plenty in recent years, including 2018’s Sharp Objects (adapted from Gillian Flynn’s 2006 debut novel) Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which is still going strong after five seasons, The Queen’s Gambit, The Night Manager, Fleishman’s In Trouble — the list goes on. There are even more best-sellers on the way, including White House Plumbers (a series from the Veep creators based on Matthew Krogh’s 2009 book), Love & Death, which will star Elizabeth Olsen, City on Fire and Tiny Beautiful Things. It’s seemingly win-win for production companies, networks and publishing — sign a new author, look for ways to spin the property off: watch the money roll in. Sort of. “If an upcoming release, particularly by a very well-known author, has a plot that lends itself well to a movie or TV series and has a big distribution planned, it makes sense that producers will want to snap up those rights in case the book is a big sensation,” says Australian author Sally Thorne, whose first novel The Hating Game was recently turned into a movie for Prime Video. Thorne never set out to write an adaptable book. “I didn’t think anything like that could happen to a writer in the suburbs of Canberra,” she says. “I didn’t remotely imagine who could play my characters — I didn’t want to jinx anything by wanting it too badly.” But when producers came knocking, she was open to the possibility. “My novel was optioned for a possible movie around one year after publication, October 2017,” she says. “It remained on a low simmer in the background and only became a reality when (Pretty Little Liars star) Lucy Hale was attached as a lead in May 2019, after she enjoyed the script and saw a lot of herself in my quirky character, also named Lucy. “I actually found out this casting news many hours after it was released — one of the drawbacks of the time difference between Australia and the US! “I knew something had happened because I had a lot of phone notifications — she couldn’t have been more perfect for the role.” The stars aligned for Thorne, but as she’s quick to point out, the journey from page to screen can be a wobbly one, with no guarantee an adaptation will ever even see the light of day. “A film option also isn’t a way to instantly retire,” she says. “The money paid to authors for the initial film option isn’t always big bucks, and it effectively reserves that book for a possible adaptation, if all the complicated Hollywood stars align. “The production team then has that period of time to try to make something of this project.” And if it does make it to the screen, it doesn’t always land. There’s real alchemy involved in bringing beloved book properties to film and TV. And it’s an inexact science: get it right and you have a big hit on your hands — Big Little Lies or the phenomenally popular Game of Thrones, arguably the most successful book-to-TV adaptation of all time. But get it even a little bit wrong and you’ve got an expensive flop. “Not all books can be realistically made into a movie, for a variety of reasons,” Thorne says. “In a romance adaptation, hot chemistry between the leads is key.” Bridgerton, adapted from Julia Quinn’s series of novels, is a prime example of explosive chemistry on screen. “Another mistake is often taking a beloved book and not respecting what the fans love about the source material. It’s a fine line to balance,” she adds. But Peak TV, a phrase coined to capture the rise in high-quality television production since the turn of the century, means there’s an insatiable desire for content. And right now, it’s local content that has networks scrambling. International streaming services are investing hundreds of millions in developing Australian TV projects. Brigit Delaney’s book Wellmania, Mia Freedman’s memoir Work Strife Balance and Holly Ringland’s celebrated novel The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart are all getting small-screen adaptations in the coming months. And there’s more to come. “It’s such an exciting landscape seeing so many Australian books adapted to TV,” says Young Adult author Pip Harry, who’s most recent book, August & Jones, scored a coveted place on the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Notable List this week. “I’ve heard that changes are afoot, with the Government looking to raise quotas on Australian TV content, so that would make it even more likely producers would be sniffing around for compelling local books to make into TV shows,” she says. Harry admits she’d love to see her books adapted. “I always envisage the characters on screen — and yes, I’ve written a dream cast list or two!” she says. “Once you cast Hugh Jackman or Angourie Rice in your head, it’s hard to imagine your characters looking any other way. “ She jumped at the change to take part in an initiative designed to help writers pitch their work for film and television, an opportunity she says was invaluable. “My books haven’t been optioned yet, but I did get selected to participate in the Adaptable program in 2021, run by the Queensland Writers’ Centre,” she says. “I got the opportunity to pitch my award-winning children’s book The Little Wave to five producers on a single day, trying to convince them the story would make an excellent TV series or movie. “I didn’t get any bites, but others have had their books optioned through the program. “I think it’s a mix of cracking story, luck and timing in terms of who gets a shot at seeing their book on the small screen.” Christina Lee, senior lecturer in English and cultural studies at Curtin University, believes a good story will find ways to an audience if it has enough broad appeal. “Inspiration for adaptations can be discovered in all types of places, whether it’s a book that has stood the test of time and continues to be popular or relevant to today’s society, or in stories where a spin-off opportunity was present from the outset,” Dr Lee says. “For an adaptation to succeed, it needs to find that sweet spot in the storytelling. “There has to be a certain level of fidelity to the original source material, but at the same time showrunners have to exercise creative licence to translate the text for another medium and format. “Telling a story through written words is different from telling it through moving images.” Harry, Thorne and Dr Lee believe adaptations can only be a good thing for the publishing industry. “Novels can be rich source materials for television,” Dr Lee says. “We’re increasingly seeing tie-ins between literary texts and screen productions, which has introduced many viewers to books they might not otherwise have known about.” Harry added: “The wonderful thing is, a good story doesn’t have a shelf life. “Blueback by Tim Winton was first published in 1997 and made into a movie released in 2023.” Thorne is equally enthusiastic: “Anything that keeps people walking into bookstores or downloading that audiobook is a great thing,” she says “And if a novel doesn’t get an adaptation, it will still be a book, always and forever.”