Stand by Me (1986)

Stand by Me epitomizes the notion of giving a book adaptation a Hollywood ending. In Stephen King’s novella, Gordie (Will Wheaton) loses all of his friends as young adults; only he survives to become a successful novelist. Onscreen, only one of his friend’s meets an early demise: Chris (River Phoenix), stabbed during a fight at a fast food restaurant, while everyone else survives until adulthood. Sadly, River Phoenix, who played Chris, would also meet an untimely death due to a drug overdose.

Fever Pitch (2005)

This baseball-infused rom-com essentially takes its name from its source material and nothing else. Loosely based on Nick Hornby’s 1992 memoir Fever Pitch: A Fan’s Life, the film follows Ben (a pre-late-night Jimmy Fallon) and Lindsey (Drew Barrymore) as they fall in love and overcome (or embrace) his obsession with the Boston Red Sox. The original memoir follows Hornby’s obsession with Arsenal, a British association football (soccer) team; the word “pitch” refers to the football field, using the British sense of the word. Prior to the 2005 Americanized baseball twist, the story was previously adapted in 1997 with the soccer storyline intact. It starred Colin Firth and was penned by Hornby based on his own memoir. One thing they all share: the story of an underdog team coming back for a surprising win (the book focuses on Arsenal’s last minute 1989 league title victory), although producers were handed a different ending from the original script when the Red Sox ended up winning the World Series while they were filming.

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (2016)

It is seemingly impossible to adapt Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace—the book features four volumes and a two-part epilogue and stretches well over one thousand pages—but that hasn’t stopped Hollywood from trying, most notably with a 1956 film and a 2016 mini-series. Yet it’s Broadway that seemed to figure out the surest way around the novel’s epic length: don’t try to adapt the whole thing, just select a small part. This is what Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (affectionately known simply as The Great Comet) does. Focusing only on Volume 2, Part 5 of Tolstoy’s novel, the musical centers on Natasha’s affair with Anatole and Pierre’s quest for meaning in life. The adaptation is extremely faithful, with the libretto even using word-for-word passages from a 1922 translation of the novel. However, its narrow slice of life storytelling and its more avant-garde approach (all of the actors play instruments and the sets suggest a cabaret-like feel) make it a wholly inventive take on a classic novel.