“I was horrified,” said “The NeverEnding Story” author Michael Ende. “They had changed the whole sense of the story.”

13 authors who had major issues with movie and TV adaptations of their books

“I was horrified,” said “The NeverEnding Story” author Michael Ende. “They had changed the whole sense of the story.”

July 9, 2026 12:30 p.m. ET

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Logan Lerman in ‘Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief’; Julie Andrews in ‘Mary Poppins’; Christian Bale in ‘American Psycho’. Credit:

fox/everett; disney; Lions Gate/everett

Authors are understandably protective of their ideas, so when one of their beloved stories makes the transition from page to screen, it’s not just dedicated readers who might have complaints about the resulting adaptation.

Tomi Adeyemi, author of the acclaimed *Legacy of Orïsha* novels, recently revealed that she’s cut ties with *The Children of Blood and Bone*, the highly anticipated film based on the first book in her series.

“Since someone asked, I have not seen the film, and I will not watch it,” Adeyemi said in response to questions about why she stopped promoting the adaptation, which is set to hit theaters on Jan. 15, 2027. “I do not mind anyone going to watch the film. I wrote this for us. I fought for us,” the author continued. “I’m just laying down my sword and officially separating my name because I can’t keep being hurt and attacked behind the scenes.”

Reps for Adeyemi, Paramount Pictures, and star Amandla Stenberg did not respond to **‘s request for comment.

While it’s unclear exactly what happened — though Adeyemi included screenshots that appear to suggest a falling out with Stenberg — she is joining a long list of authors who have distanced themselves from, and in some cases entirely disowned, adaptations of their work. Here are 13 more authors who had serious issues with the movies and TV shows based on their books.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and Brad Dourif in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Released in 1975, Miloš Forman’s adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel *One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest* was a critical and commercial success, becoming only the second film in history to sweep the five major Academy Award categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Despite its near-universal acclaim, Kesey himself was not a fan.

As producer Michael Douglas recalled in an essay for *The Guardian*, Kesey’s issues with the film began during production. “Saul [Zaentz, producer] asked Kesey to write a screenplay and promised him a piece of the action. But like a lot of novelists trying to adapt their own material, it didn’t work out,” Douglas wrote. “We fell out with him after that. It was our only longstanding, painful issue. We got in to a financial dispute — it was silly, but maybe it was his way of defending his ego.”

Like the book, which is set in a psychiatric ward, Kesey’s script was written from the perspective of Chief Bromden, a Native American patient. “I really wrote it to be as weird as I thought being in the nuthouse was, but it was not what they wanted,” Kesey said in 1992, according to NPR. “I was naive at the time. I wanted to do *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari*, and they wanted to do *Hogan’s Heroes.*”

Rick Riordan, the Percy Jackson movies

Logan Lerman in ‘Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief’.

Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

Following the massive success of the *Harry Potter* and *The Hunger Games* franchises, 20th Century Fox sought to capitalize on the YA fantasy boom with 2010’s *Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief* and its 2013 sequel, *Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters*. Based on Rick Riordan’s bestselling novels about teens who discover they are the children of Greek gods and attend a special camp to learn to harness their powers, the films found an audience at the box office, though the franchise ultimately stalled after two installments.

“I still have not seen the movies, and don’t plan on ever doing so,” Riordan said in 2020, following the announcement of the new series adaptation of *Percy Jackson* on Disney+. “I judge them from having read the scripts because I care most about the story. I certainly have nothing against the very talented actors. Not their fault. I’m just sorry they got dragged into that mess.”

While the films were financially successful and fans approved of Logan Lerman’s casting, some still took issue with changes made to Riordan’s source material — though none were as displeased as the author himself, who described the films as “my life’s work going through a meat grinder.”

P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins

Julie Andrews in ‘Mary Poppins’. Everett Collection

The *Mary Poppins* author’s distaste for Walt Disney and her resistance to his studio’s 1964 adaptation of her beloved heroine are so well known that Disney released an entire movie about their relationship in 2013. Starring Emma Thompson as P. L. Travers and Tom Hanks as Disney, *Saving Mr. Banks* is broadly faithful to the pair’s acrimonious relationship—until its ending, which suggests that Disney ultimately won Travers over and that she happily signed away the film rights.

In reality, Disney spent roughly two decades trying to acquire the rights before finally convincing Travers to travel to California in 1961. By then, she was in need of money, as royalties from her *Mary Poppins* books had declined. Even so, she detested Disney’s approach. A former arts critic, Travers once wrote of *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*, “There is a profound cynicism at the root of his, as of all, sentimentality.”

Disney’s vision of the titular character differed dramatically from Travers’. In part, that was because Disney was focused on making family entertainment, while Travers did not write exclusively for children and didn’t shy away from the darker aspects of life. She also opposed turning the story into a musical. According to songwriter Richard M. Sherman, Travers didn’t hesitate to express her disdain for the songs he and his brother, Robert B. Sherman, wrote. “She didn’t care about our feelings, how she chopped us apart,” Sherman recalled to *The New York Times*.

Clive Barker, Hellraiser: Inferno and beyond

Stephan Smith Collins as Pinhead in ‘Hellraiser: Revelations’. Shutterstock

*Hellraiser* (1987) is the rare adaptation that was both written *and* directed by its author. Based on his 1986 novella, *The Hellbound Heart*, Clive Barker’s film is equal parts horrifying and compelling, and it remains astonishing that it spawned an entire franchise. Barker remained involved with the first two sequels, but by the fourth and fifth entries he was being pushed aside by executives at Dimension Films.

In 2000, following a repertory screening of the 1987 film in Los Angeles, Barker was asked about the then-upcoming fifth film, *Hellraiser: Inferno*. “I really don’t like to say this about another’s work, but I really hate this movie and it seems to have violated a lot of the things that I like about *Hellraiser*,” Barker said. “I kept away from *Hellraiser IV*; I kept away from *Hellraiser V*, because in both cases I tried to be involved in the process, and in both cases they said, ‘No, we can do this better than you; go away.’”

Barker continued, “It’s painful, because I loved making this movie; I loved making the second movie; I actually had a good time at the third one, and then it started to fall apart.”

Arguably, he had the last laugh. A little more than a decade later, in 2011, a fan tweeted at the author about the trailer for *Hellraiser: Revelations*, calling it a “total disrespect” of Barker’s work. He replied, “Hello, my friends. I want to put on record that the [flick] out there using the word Hellraiser IS NO F---IN’ CHILD OF MINE!”

Clive Barker adaptations, ranked

11 Adaptations That Are Wildly Different From Their Books

E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web

Wilbur the pig with Templeton the rat, a duckling, Charlotte the spider, and a goose in ‘Charlotte’s Web’.

It’s hard to imagine anyone taking issue with the 1973 animated film *Charlotte’s Web*, about an endearingly naive pig named Wilbur who is rescued from slaughter by a nurturing spider. E. B. White, who wrote the 1952 novel on which the film was based, called Hanna-Barbera’s adaptation “a travesty.”

According to NPR, White resisted Hollywood’s attempts to adapt *Charlotte’s Web* for years. “Anybody who can’t accept the miracle of the web shouldn’t try to film it,” he wrote in a letter to his agent. Like P. L. Travers, White was not a fan of musicals or animation, and the 1973 film was both (it also featured songs by the Sherman Brothers, who similarly irked Travers). “The story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song,” White wrote to a friend. “I don’t care much for jolly songs.”

He also didn’t approve of the film’s depiction of Charlotte, who was given a feminine makeover. “The spider in the book is not prettified in any way,” White said of his own design, which was informed by a year spent studying spiders.

White won arguably the most important battle over his source material: preserving the book’s bittersweet ending, in which Charlotte the spider lays her eggs and dies. “He held out at great financial cost to himself for years and years because people wanted to fudge on that,” Peter Neumeyer, author of *The Annotated Charlotte’s Web*, explained to NPR. “They were worried about Charlotte dying in a children’s film.”

The author died in 1985, so we’ll never know how he might have felt about the 2006 version of *Charlotte’s Web*, which ditched the songs and featured a Charlotte that actually looked like a spider.

Stephen King, The Shining

Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’. Everett Collection

Stephen King’s dislike of Stanley Kubrick’s *The Shining* is among the most well-known examples of an author taking issue with an adaptation of their work. Released in 1980 to mixed reviews, Kubrick’s film differs from King’s 1977 novel in several ways, most notably in the characterization of Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son Danny (Danny Lloyd). In the decades since, Kubrick’s *The Shining* has endured as a horror classic, albeit one best viewed as separate from its source material.

King, however, remains critical of Kubrick’s changes to his source material. “I think *The Shining* is a beautiful film and it looks terrific and as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it,” the author told *Deadline* in 2016. “In that sense, when it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favorable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much.”

King cites Nicholson’s portrayal of Jack Torrance, noting that “he’s crazy as a s--- house rat” from the beginning of the film. “In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that’s a tragedy,” King said. “In the movie, there’s no tragedy because there’s no real change.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea

Shawn Ashmore and Kristin Kreuk in ‘Earthsea’.

Legendary sci-fi and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin made no secret of her disdain for the Syfy (then the Sci Fi Channel) miniseries adaptation of her beloved *Earthsea* book series. The author even published an op-ed in *Slate* detailing her many problems with the miniseries, which aired in 2004.

“The books, *A Wizard of Earthsea* and *The Tombs of Atuan*, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are,” Le Guin wrote. “I don’t know what the film is about. It’s full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense.”

Le Guin, who was a consultant on the miniseries, recalled her initial excitement about the adaptation due to the involvement of *Lord of the Rings* screenwriter Philippa Boyens, whom she called a “key factor” in her decision to option the rights. But after Boyens exited the project, filmmakers appeared to dismiss Le Guin’s input, as well as her concerns about “making unnecessary changes to the plot or characters.”

When she was informed that the series had begun filming, Le Guin wrote that she realized, “I had been cut out of the process,” adding, “And just as quickly, race, which had been a crucial element, had been cut out of my stories. 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). A far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned.”

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Audrey Hepburn in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. Everett Collection

Blake Edwards’ 1961 adaptation of *Breakfast at Tiffany’s* is among the most iconic in cinema history, thanks in large part to Audrey Hepburn’s portrayal of Holly Golightly, the free-spirited and stylish protagonist. Truman Capote’s novella, published in 1958, is much different from the film version: It’s narrated by a gay man, for one, and Holly’s backstory in the book is darker and more complex. Edwards’ film swapped the gay narrator for a hetero one, who became Holly’s love interest, and transformed the protagonist into a more straightforward, aspirational It Girl.

If Capote had gotten his way, Holly would’ve been played by Marilyn Monroe, who had more in common with the character than Hepburn did. “Marilyn would have been absolutely marvelous in it,” Capote said, according to *The Telegraph*. “She wanted to play it, too, but Paramount double-crossed me in every conceivable way and cast Audrey.”

However, Sam Wasson, author of *Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ and the Dawn of the Modern Woman*, told ABC News that it was “Paula Strasberg, [Monroe’s] advisor and acting coach,” who discouraged the actress from taking the role, because she “should not be playing a lady of the evening.”

Lois Duncan, I Know What You Did Last Summer

Jennifer Love Hewitt in ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’.

*I Know What You Did Last Summer* hit theaters in 1997, more than two decades after Lois Duncan’s original novel was published. According to former EW staffer Clark Collis in his book *Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie*, Duncan was “unaware” of the changes that screenwriter Kevin Williamson made to her story for the film, including the addition of the slasher character, the Fisherman.

“It was my characters and my plot gimmick, but then it went in all directions,” Duncan said in a Q&A included in the 2010 edition of her novel. “I was quite horrified by the sensationalized violence.”

“Several years earlier, my own teenage daughter, Kait, had been chased down in her car and shot to death, and I had seen, right in front of my eyes, what real violence is,” Duncan continued, referring to the murder of her daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette. “To have people screaming and laughing about it did not go down well…”

Duncan published *Who Killed My Daughter?*, a nonfiction book about Arquette’s then-unsolved murder, in 1992. The author died in 2016, six years before Paul Apodaca was indicted in her daughter’s killing. Apodaca later pleaded guilty to Arquette’s murder and was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2024.

Elin Hilderbrand, The Perfect Couple

Liev Schreiber and Nicole Kidman in ‘The Perfect Couple’.

Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Netflix

Netflix’s six-episode adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s *The Perfect Couple* features a star-studded cast — including Nicole Kidman and Dakota Fanning — as members of a wealthy family questioned about a suspicious death over a Fourth of July wedding weekend in Nantucket (and you thought Taylor Swift’s wedding was insane). While the adaptation of Hilderbrand’s bestselling beach read remains broadly faithful to the source material, readers were surprised by a major reveal created specifically for the series finale.

“Netflix wanted a six-episode murder mystery,” Hilderbrand told EW. “The book is more nuanced with the love story. And a lot of that got cut.”

The author added that her “readers will be happier” with *The Five-Star Weekend*, the new Peacock series based on her novel, which she described as “a lot closer to the original material.”

Michael Ende, The NeverEnding Story

Noah Hathaway with Artax the horse in ‘The NeverEnding Story’.

With its fantastical settings, impressive (and mostly practical!) effects, and embrace of darker themes, *The NeverEnding Story* is deeply nostalgic for an entire generation of kids who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Ahead of the film’s 1984 release, however, author Michael Ende held a press conference in his native Germany to denounce what he called “that revolting movie” and demand that his name be removed from the credits.

“The makers of the film simply did not understand the book at all,” Ende said. “They just wanted to make money.” The author joined the project, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, as an adviser and helped develop the screenplay. “I wanted a beautiful movie. I trusted them,” he explained.

Ende claimed that Petersen later rewrote the screenplay without his knowledge and that he didn’t see the final version until five days before the premiere.

“I was horrified,” Ende continued. “They had changed the whole sense of the story,” including a climactic moment involving the young protagonist, Bastian. “For me this was the essence of the book,” the author said. “My moral and artistic existence is at stake in this film.”

Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

Christian Bale in ‘American Psycho’.

Lions Gate/ Everett

Bret Easton Ellis’ fans have come to expect a certain attitude from the author — one man’s edgelord is another’s artful provocateur. When his 1991 novel *American Psycho*, about a yuppie investment banker who moonlights as a serial killer, was adapted into the 2000 film of the same name, Ellis unsurprisingly had opinions. He had also publicly expressed a general distaste for female directors, with a handful of exceptions. It was therefore notable that *American Psycho* was adapted by screenwriter Guinevere Turner and director Mary Harron.

“There’s something about the medium of film itself that I think requires the male gaze,” Ellis said in a 2010 interview, in which he reflected on the film’s release. “We’re watching, and we’re aroused by looking, whereas I don’t think women respond that way to films, just because of how they’re built.”

In a 2013 interview, Ellis was more directly critical of the adaptation, saying that he didn’t think “it really works as a film.” Specifically, Ellis found Harron’s handling of the questions surrounding protagonist Patrick Bateman’s mental state — and whether his murders were real or imagined — to be lacking. “The movie is fine, but I think that book is unadaptable because it’s about consciousness, and you can’t really shoot that sensibility,” Ellis explained. “Also, you have to make a decision whether Patrick Bateman kills people or doesn’t. Regardless of how [director] Mary Harron wants to shoot that ending, we’ve already seen him kill people; it doesn’t matter if he has some crisis of memory at the end.”

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Alan Moore, Watchmen… and everything else

Billy Crudup in ‘Watchmen’.

Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection

Known as “the Orson Welles of comics,” writer Alan Moore has long been a vocal opponent of any attempts to adapt his work, including *From Hell* (2001), which he politely dismissed, and *V for Vendetta* (2006), which he called “rubbish.” But it was his experience with 2003’s *The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* that soured the writer on Hollywood entirely. After that, Moore decided to redirect the money he would have earned from adaptations of his work to his collaborators. (In 2023, Moore told *The Telegraph* that he now donates all of those royalties to charity.)

In 2008, EW spoke with Moore ahead of the release of Zack Snyder’s *Watchmen*. When asked if he was even slightly curious about Snyder’s adaptation, the author replied, “I would rather not know,” citing the director’s adaptation of Moore’s *300* to illustrate his point. “I’ve not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn’t particularly like the book *300*. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid.”

Moore also reiterated his dislike of DC Comics, which published many of the books that were later adapted, and of the American film industry. “I don’t want anyone who works for DC comic books to contact me ever again, or I’ll change my number,” the author said, adding, “There’s nothing that could get me interested in Hollywood again. And, increasingly, there’s nothing that could get me interested in the American comics industry again.”

- Book Adaptations

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Book”