Taking Stock of the Year in Adaptations
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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. And today we're taking a look back at the adaptations of 2024 books that got turned into film or TV, various kinds, both in the meta sense, like what mattered. We might take a look at the, maybe we'll talk for a minute about the kind of state of adaptations. I think it's fair to say that

That I finally called Peak Adaptation. I got it right. It took me six years, but we finally hit it. But there's still a lot out there, Rebecca, don't you think? I do think so. This was an interesting year. And as we get into our favorites and the highlights a little bit later, I discovered that most of the things that I really enjoyed on screen were not necessarily from big books or from books that were my favorites, but that made for great television or great movies. And that's not a brand new phenomenon.

on. But when we when we started cresting Mount Adaptation a couple of years ago, it was really like the big hot properties and the stuff that like you loved reading and you couldn't wait to see it on screen. And since the streamers have all gotten through most of the big hot properties at this point, we're farther into Backlist. And I think that makes it more interesting in like seven different directions. Yeah, I'd say it's interesting. There are quite a few big hit movies that

on this list in writ large. Like, it was a fairly good year at the box office all things now.

We're not going to do comic book adaptation on the show. We don't really cover comics. But Deadpool and Wolverine was a huge hit for Disney. Moana 2. Sorry. Sorry. There's another one. I just lost it. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Inside Out 2. Inside Out 2. So there was a bunch. There's like kids and things, but that's not an adaptation. Yeah. So Deadpool and Wolverine, Kraven the Hunter bombed. Madam Web bombed. Really a weird moment for comic book movie adaptations. Marvel is going through...

let's call it aging pains. Deadpool and Wolverine was a huge hit, but it's sort of the exception that proves the rule, unlike a lot of its other fare. And Marvel has a few more movies coming out next year. I'm particularly excited about Thunderbolts. It looks like a lot of fun. But where we go from here, you can even see apparently Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell and Robert Downey Jr. are all coming back in various roles for another... They're going back to the well. And when you go back to the well, that means the other wells that you drilled came up again.

It's not a great sign for the new content coming out of Marvel. And in the non-comic space, I haven't started to see a lot of listings for 2025 adaptations yet. So folks, if you've seen stuff, shoot us an email, podcast at bookriot.com or Patreon members. You can comment on the post online.

on Patreon to let us know what adaptations you are looking forward to next year. We will be doing a preview in mid-January. We might have some fun guests join us. So keep us posted about what you're looking at. Also, before we get into the meat of the conversation today, be sure to check out mytbr.co. Just a really great option. I would say this even if it weren't one of our products, but it is. So I get to have my cake and profit from it too. You can give it as a gift, give it for yourself.

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For each of the picks, there's an explanation written by a human of why that expert book picker thinks it's the one for you. Or you're going to get the books or your giftee will get the books in the mail. So one-off gifts, one-off for yourself, year-long situations. Go to mytbr.co to check that out. Also link in the show notes at bookriot.com slash listen.

All right, let's do this. What was the adaptation of the year? Rebecca, let's do one. Let's what was it? What was the one way to pick the one that were like, this is the movie that came out in 2024. That was the most, I don't know, consequential will be remembered the longest. Where are you going to go with your pick? Let's do one for movies, one for TV. Sure. Yeah, that's fine. Movies. I think it's the story is going to be wicked.

this year. And we have a point of order around that, I guess we should say. Or maybe you don't have as much of a point of order as I do. That it's an adaptation of the musical that is an adaptation of the book? Yeah, I think so. It's like the color purple was last year. I have a take on Wicked. I've always liked the musical. Michelle and I saw it several times in New York. They used to do the $20 ticket lotteries. And in the early days of Wicked...

You could actually get them. Like we would go and you stand up, you know, you put your name and you wait around. You could be able to do this rent. And I think Hamilton did this too. It's one of the really cool things that Broadway does where you get the enthusiastic 22-year-olds who just moved to New York in the front row. So we saw it several times. We take people in there. The music is really fun and great. And the main character, the two main character relationship is wonderful.

Other than that, it's kind of a mess. That movie and that musical, the book, it's a mess. And so this is... People are here for defense.

Defying gravity, popular and loathing. They're not here because it's based on the book Wicked. So I give it an asterisk. That's where I am. Your knowledge may vary, but I just don't think it really is an adaptation of a book. I think the idea is cool that Gregory Maguire had. But like, let's look at things from the villain's point of view is a little played out at this point, though he was early on that side.

I'm just not, I don't know. It's going to be an adapted screenplay, I guess, but I don't think the screenplay is very good. The music is so amazing that it holds a lot of water for a lot of rickety stuff in that show. Yeah, I actually have no exposure to any of the versions of Wicked. The book came out, I think, when I was like at the end of high school or maybe early college. I just missed it and then missed Wicked.

the musical being a thing. It's not quite in the zone of like what I'm drawn to in theater. I probably will. I mean, I'll watch it when it hits streaming. I might go see it in the theater over the holidays. It looks like fun. It looks like a good time. But I think that asterisk is...

well-deserved. I would have put the same kind of asterisk around The Color Purple if we were talking about it last year. A movie that's based on a musical that's based on a book is an adaptation of an adaptation, and you're probably closer in the case of The Color Purple to the source material, or at least to the story. Okay, so outside of Wicked, the movie adaptation story of the year, there's two, and

I think it's Dune Part 2 is the one that's going to be up for a bunch of Oscars. Yep. Or if it's not, it will be like we're all waiting until the third one so that Denis Villeneuve can finally win awards. And then the other, the big one for commercial success is It Ends With Us. Yeah, I think...

It Ends With Us was probably more profitable and almost certainly more profitable on a dollar per dollar basis. I think the budget was $50 million. It earned $148 million at the U.S. box office. I don't think it did much internationally. This is a real U.S. phenomenon. We'll put the link back into the show notes when Vanessa Diaz and I went to see It Ends With Us. We talked about it right after the adaptation was released. It's kind of the rare thing where the book is really not great. The movie is also not great, but it, I think, is more palatable than the book.

And is a pretty faithful adaptation. Folks who loved the book were not unhappy with how the movie went, as evidenced by $148 million at the box office. It's number one on Netflix this week. It just hit streaming. Big, big story. And there was a lot of...

fun gossipy stuff happening around like mysterious gossipy stuff that happened around the press tour right so for a kind of melodramatic movie and then you get like interpersonal drama among the cast you got a lot of stuff going on with it ends with us and we are going to get the sequel it starts with us and i'm sure it'll do sort of equivalent numbers but i think this is very

It's very contained, right? There's not a lot. A lot of people have seen this, but not a lot of conversation around ends with us. I think the wider sort of critical establishment in my movies is keeping it at arm's length, both just for a variety of reasons, not unlike the book world has done with Colleen Hoover's work to this point, much like

I think, did we call It Ends With Us? Did we do a book of the year for It Ends With Us? Or we just did the whole Hoover Ouvre? I don't know how we handled this, but... Yeah, I think we talked about her a lot that year. Yeah, it's just, it's hard to...

It's hard to put in context, but it did very, very well. I think it's Dune Part 2, and I don't think it's close. It's kind of what you may be hearing me say out there. I think that's right. It Ends With Us is a story in 2024, but in a couple of years, we're all going to have forgotten that this was a sensation that people cared about. No one is going to care about this Colleen Hoover adaptation in 5, 10, 15 years. In terms of art and contribution to cinema, it's definitely Dune Part 2. Yeah.

And I don't even think it's going to have, if you think of some of the other sneered at literary adaptation phenomenons, I'm thinking Fifty Shades, I'm thinking Twilight's, those have remained...

For some, like kind of a cult. Cult maybe is not even fair, but like there is a pretty consistent fandom for the Twilight movies and Twilight. Yeah. The Hoover Bloom seems to be coming off the rose. It doesn't have those other things. I think there's a really important difference that Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight, which of course Fifty Shades of Grey is fan fiction for Twilight. Yes.

inspire a kind of guilty pleasure fun. Like you, especially the first Twilight movie where the, like when the vampire starts sparkling, it's like, it's so poorly done. It's ridiculous. And that makes it fun to see the 50 shades adaptation. The first one at least was so over the top. Like I went to see it with friends with little nips of Jack Daniels poured into our Cokes, you know, like everybody in the theater is kind of shouting at the screen. And it was like, let's just go see what the spectacle is. And,

It Ends With Us does not lend itself to that because it's fundamentally like a weirdo romance about domestic violence. And so you can't really engage with it on a like so bad it's good kind of level. And I think a lot of folks have genuine affection for the Twilight series, but a lot of folks, especially in our like elder millennial demographic, have this so bad it's good affection for those Twilight movies. And that does give them more endurance than something like It Ends With Us.

On the TV side, let's take a sponsor break before we get to the adaptation of The Year in TV. This episode is sponsored by The Gardens of Eden by Rosie Lee. Stick around after the episode to hear an excerpt from the audiobook provided by our sponsors at Random House Audio.

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Whatever you love, find it on eBay. eBay. Things people love. I think I've seen more of these. Well, I've seen about half of the stuff on each of the lists here. It wasn't a terrific movie going year for me, just in terms of getting out to the theater.

I really like, I thought Dune Part 2 was amazing. Wicked is a good time. I think, Rebecca, I'd suggest if you can get to the theater over break, you should go with a big speaker, a big screen. It really is worth it. Just go see Wicked. Go to your 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. Wicked on the day after Christmas or something like that. And then the other thing I should mention in the movies of the year I want to mention, I think the sleeper hit that we might see in awards season of Variety plays is The Wild Robot, which is a book that my kids loved, a lot of people loved.

we just missed this in a theater. We're going to watch it over streaming. They're really looking forward to it. The response, I did a couple of posts for a client, frankly, that was sponsoring the Instagram and stuff for the Wild Robot Adaptation Edition, which

And the comments were just effusive for the book and the movie. And it did very well. It's a really strong year for animation. There's this movie called Flow. There's the Wild Robot. There's Inside Out 2. A lot of really interesting stuff there. So that's probably the third of the troika of It Ends With Us, Dune Part 2 and the Wild Robot. And then the asterisk next to Wicked. Yeah. On the TV side, I have a harder time. I have my personal favorites. But what is like, what's going to win the Emmy? Shogun. Shogun. Okay. Yeah.

It's very good. It is very good. I like Say Anything Better. I like them both, but I ultimately like Say Anything Better. I feel like Say Anything hasn't been watched very much. Is that your sense of it? Yeah, that's my sense of it as well. And I don't know if it's because it's just on Hulu, where Shogun was also airing on FX on cable. And Shogun had a big splashy campaign. It came out earlier in the year. There's been more time to talk about it. Say Anything is...

is also, I think, struggling because you can't tell anything of what it's about from the title and the pitch of... John Cusack? John Cusack series? Right.

the pitch for it is a little like it's it's very serious not that Shogun isn't but there's like action and suspense and like palace intrigue in Shogun that makes it I think Shogun is a more fun watch like it's not intended to be fun but it's more enjoyable from a just like you can be on the edge of your seat at moments we're not all the way done with say anything yet here I really like it as well like incredible acting and

In both. But yeah, it's just not as sticky for some reason with the TV viewing public. And I do think Shogun is the one that's going to win a bunch of awards. Ripley is right there behind it. Yeah. Which that came out so early in the year that I think it's suffering from it at this point in the year. Folks don't really remember it. But the Netflix Ripley adaptation is stunning. Yeah.

And Andrew Scott is just spectacular. The whole thing is shot in black and white for the first like six months of the year. It was my favorite thing I watched on TV this year. Do you think that suffers from having it being an adaptation that's been adapted multiple times and a fairly well loved? We talked about the talented Mr. Ripley 90s movie that's well loved by people our age and around our age and maybe even a little bit older. Yeah.

There's a been there, done that element to Ripley. Well, Shogun has been adapted, but it was a TV series in the 70s. It's on TV, like a completely different world. Yeah. I just wonder that, like, I don't know, that Ripley feels a bit of a retread where some of these other things feel different. It might be, like, unless you're really paying attention, and most people aren't, to the details of TV releases. Yeah.

You might think that the Netflix Ripley is just sort of a remake of, or like a TV version of the nineties film. It's really different in a ton of ways and more faithful to the book and to Patricia Highsmith's vibe. But most folks don't care about that, especially when you're competing with like Jude Law and Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, which is super fun. I did go back and rewatch the nineties one before the Netflix one hit, but just that's an incredible one. I do it.

got nominated for some Emmys. I think we'll see it get nominated for additional awards, maybe take some home. And then on just pure fandom side, Bridgerton season four did really well. Bridgerton continues to kill it. Okay. So I think those kind of cover the adaptations of the year. Hard to know, I should say, what to do with House of the Dragons season two and Rings of Power season two, which both came out this year. I watched them both.

enjoyed them both and sort of a steady B plus. Like you kind of know what you're going to get. They are based on, these are not extended universe things where this is George R. R. Martin has written a book that covers the material and it's done of House of the Dragon. The Lord of the Rings stuff is a little loosier, goosier. What Amazon has the rights to is still a little unclear to me, but it is based on some of the J.R.R. Tolkien stuff and then things are filled in. I think

fans of Tolkien are into it, it hasn't broken out into people you just know might try really either of these at this point. I think it's pretty hardcore fans of both of those franchises. I think that's right. All right. How about your favorites on the movies? Just straight up the things you were most glad to have watched this year. Okay. Well, this might be recency bias because I just saw it over the weekend, but The Return with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche is effing incredible. You immediately texted me about this.

So it is so good. It's about like, well, it's adapted from the end of the Odyssey when Odysseus comes back from sea after 10 years after winning, you know, taking down Troy and his bride Penelope has been surrounded by suitors who are trying to become the new king and she's getting to the end of her rope. They're like backstabbing.

Bad things are happening. Everything has gone to hell and he returns home. And most of the film, I mean, I think it's pretty faithful. It's been a while since I read The Odyssey, but most of the film is Odysseus like not telling anybody who he actually is because he washes up on shore and he looks like a beggar and he's in these like tattered, you know, raggedy clothes. And he's finding out from, you know, the local people that are taking care of him.

what's been going on. And is he going to make his way back to the palace? Is he going to reunite with Penelope? Will he be able to like take down these other suitors in some way? What's up with his son Telemachus, who's never really known him. It is so good. I'm so excited. They made a great decision to like, it's not written in the Homeric rhythms. I don't think most of the dialogue is pulled from Homer. It's just really,

what would these people do in this story? And there's a lot of sections where like, there's not much talking, but there's Ralph Fiennes doing Ralph Fiennes face things and Juliette Binoche doing Juliette Binoche face things. And like, there's a big climactic scene where the suitors have got to compete to see who can shoot Odysseus's bow. And can, can one of them even successfully string the bow and can they shoot it through the heads of 12 arrows? Um,

And like, I have read the Odyssey. I know what is going to happen. And I was like on the edge of my seat, like, how are they going to do this? And what is Ralph Fiennes going to do? And it's phenomenal. It is so, so good. I'm so glad it was made. I think that's my number one with a bullet or like with an arrow this year.

But also Conclave. It's a Ralph Fiennes doubleheader for me this year. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah, I'm looking forward to both of them. I think Conclave is also on my family's viewing list. What's cool about The Return is...

I've only seen the trailer, of course, I know the Odyssey pretty well. And I'm guessing this is a bloodbath at the end. No spoilers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Things don't go well for the suitors, let's say there. The thing, as I get older, you identify with different characters in books, right? This is what happens. At the beginning, you're like the rebels and the kids and the young lovers. And as you get older, you start identifying with, say, Mr. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Yeah.

The way Ralph Fiennes looks when he washes up on shore is how I feel every morning. Just every morning, that's what I feel. I'm barely holding on. I got to get through the day. And I'm not quite as in sort of old man shape like Ralph Fiennes is. I think he did some things. I wonder what kind of regimen, physical, chemical, or otherwise he was doing. But good excuse for Fiennes to round into form. Yeah, early 60s. He looks incredible.

Incredible. There is full frontal Ralph Fiennes in this. Oh, well, you're talking about burying the lead. Before you put it on the big projector in your living room when the kids are still up. I don't remember that from the Homer.

But yeah, he's, I mean, he just looks phenomenal. It's a full body performance in so many ways. And he's wonderful also in Conclave, but so reserved in Conclave. His character, you know, is a bishop living in the Vatican trying to run this. He's kind of a company man who doesn't think that he should be in the running to be the next pope. He wants to be the administrator who like helps these things happen. And he's just, that's quiet. His head, like forehead wrinkles do a lot of work for him.

in Conclave, but those two performances. I just sat there watching The Return thinking like, man, I thought I got a gift when I went to see Conclave and I got one Ralph Fiennes this year, but The Return is the real story. It's really fantastic. And I was texting you like, we got to do Hot Greek Summer. We got to read The Odyssey. Then we got to do all of the adaptations of things inspired by The Odyssey. Troy and The Return back to back, you know, get some pit and some fine sweating it up on the Mediterranean coast. No complaints from me.

Yeah, my favorite of these is Dune Part 2. I haven't seen all of them. I think my most anticipated continues to be Nickel Boys. It's just not out where either of you are. The reviews have been pretty good. I think it's going to be in the conversation for Best Picture. Was it Enora, The Brutalist, Amelia Perez, Dune Part 2? There's 10. I don't know as many as others, but that's kind of the list at this point, it feels like.

I think adapted screenplay is a fascinating one. Between Nickel Boys, we haven't talked about Sing Sing yet, but based on the Sing Sing files, it has a lot of good feelings, especially towards Coleman Domingo. People really like that movie, kind of a feel-good movie if you don't know what it's about. It's a theater program group in a prison. They're queer, which is based on a William S. Burroughs, I think, novella or short story starring Daniel Craig.

I think people don't love that movie as much as Luca Guadagnino's new movie. Apparently Craig's performance is amazing and that's maybe kind of all there is to recommend it from what I gather at this point. That's what I've been, that's the vibe I've picked up about queer as well. I think I'm probably going to save that one for streaming rather than my holiday time. I do want to give a plug for Sing Sing. I went to see it in the theater. It is really wonderful. It does not get too...

too sweet about the story. Like it is inspiring. There are heartwarming moments, but there are also like really difficult, really sad things that these men experience. It is about the power of art to bring us together for connection, for healing, but it doesn't make it glossy. It doesn't make it go down too easy. And I think that's part of why it's in, I think it will be in conversation maybe for a best adapted screenplay. We'll see what else gets tossed into the mix later.

Same thing with The Wild Robot. I haven't seen that one yet. I'm keeping my powder dry for is it going to be in the Best Adapted Screenplay conversation? Will I need to have read it for the show? Is it just something to read the book and see the film on my own just for fun? But that one looks really great. If I had to guess today, Adapted Screenplay nominees, I'm guessing Nickel Boys, Dune Part 2, Conclave...

I think I can get the wild robot in there without feeling like it's a stretch. I think it's very possible that the wild robot will be up for best adapted screenplay. Okay. Then our favorites on the TV side. So Shogun, I said earlier in the year. Well, you go first. What is your favorite? Yeah. Ripley. I loved Ripley. I really enjoyed watching Shogun, but Ripley just rang a bunch of bells for me. I struggle with this because I really like Shogun. I really like Say Anything, but then...

And I think this is maybe part of the Pachinko story writ large. I sort of forget about it, but then I look at it and I'm like, am I sure that's not the best TV show ever made? Maybe? Because the production design is out of this world. It's gorgeous. The pacing is gorgeously done.

The acting is phenomenal. The movement between Korean and Japanese, there's multiple ways you can watch this. I watch it with the original language, but then the Korean and Japanese subtitles, they put them in different colors. So you know who is speaking what to when and the switching matters based on context. It's really helpful. It's really helpful. I think the thing that hurts it in a wider context, I think frankly part of it is being on Apple, which doesn't do as good of a job at promoting these things.

Because who knows what their business case is. People don't really know what they want to do with these things. And that the action is, there are big action things. It's set during World War II, principally season two. So, you know, we know Hiroshima and Nagasaki is going to happen. So when someone's there or is maybe going to go there, there's drama, but mostly it's interior, mostly it's character.

And the cultures and characters portrayed here are ones of restraint, not verbosity. This is not Succession or the West Wing where action is dialogue, right? The action is, are they going to say the thing? Maybe they're going to say, nope, they are. And then they say like one thing and all the tears start flowing or someone gets a bowl of rice. You're like, it's the most important thing that's ever happened to me watching TV. Right.

And so in that way, it's a faithful in spirit adaptation of the original novel. It is the most literary thing on this board, bar none. And I think all those things make it hard for, I'm going to fire up the streaming box tonight and see what's rolling. Am I going to try this multi-generational, multi-perspective things in multiple dubbed languages that doesn't have guns or swords or dragons? Tough hang, Rebecca, I think for most people. Yeah.

I mean, before the first season came out, I read Pachinko for the first time. I hadn't read it when it was big. And I remember saying I was surprised by how page turnery it was and how quickly it becomes a page turner in the book. Like, it's huge. It does not pass the O'Neill 350 or less test. No. But it really moved.

And the TV show requires and rewards patience. Like you get to the place where you're that invested of like, are they going to say the thing? What's going to happen with the bowl of rice? But it doesn't have the same kind of pacing magic that I think happens in the book. And it's just a tough pitch because it is a quiet TV show. For a lot of folks watching with subtitles is a non-starter or makes it much more difficult. That makes it hard to pitch them things.

And there is, as you were saying, there's just not like a lot of action. There's not, you know, like whose head is going to be on the pike this week, which is kind of the vibe of Shogun. Like there's not a lot of intrigue. It's all just like really quiet interpersonal stuff, which is great.

the hardest to do, and they do it so, so well. I'm looking forward to watching season two. I couldn't get to that level of, like, five-alarm snot bomb television during election season, but I'm going to go there. Yeah, and it hasn't been renewed for season three, which is sort of peak adaptation stuff. I don't know. Maybe they're waiting to see what happens with award season. I don't have a sense of that there. We'll just...

Also shout out Slow Horses season four. Any year that there's a Slow Horses, I'm going to be the gladdest that I got to watch a season of Slow Horses. So reliably terrific that I take it for granted now.

Yeah. And there's like 10 books and we get one or two seasons a year and they just they're kind of making them constantly. They finish filming one season and they just pick up making the next. I will watch this for as long as they want to continue making it. It's so terrific. It certainly passes in my household. We have four new episodes of shows we're watching.

What do we watch first? If there is a new Slow Horses episode, we watch Slow Horses first. And it's one of the rare ones where like, I know what day of the week it comes on when it's airing and we'll be having breakfast and Bob's like, Slow Horses tonight? Yes. That's right. It's like pizza tonight. There's only one answer to that one there. Let's see, what else is worth? That's kind of it. The three body problem or three body problem

deeply flawed show that had moments I still think about. So it is a real roller coaster ride of the three body problem. And I think that's kind of how it's

existing right now. I feel like my experience with that, I benefited from having not read the books that I just, we watched it on Netflix on vacation and it was just kind of like, I was just going with it. And there were changes that they made from the story that Bob was like, Oh, that kind of ruins this element or this part doesn't make sense. It is, it is deeply flawed even having not read the books, but it was enjoyable. Like, you know,

kind of potato chips for me in entertainment. I'm almost more looking forward to the second season because I feel like they did a lot of the establishment things

I'm guessing some of the characters that worked better than others and ones that worked well foreground and background a little bit. But I anticipate that being a pretty significant hit. Other things that did better than I thought, or maybe it's because they're on Apple and you have no idea. But I didn't read great reviews of Dark Matter. I was looking forward to this. I didn't check it out because the reviews weren't great. It got picked up for season two pretty quickly. Yeah.

It was good enough. Yeah, that's what I heard. And good enough isn't good enough for me to check it out, especially when I've already read the underlying source material. And then Silo, which the season two just came out, already got renewed for season three and four, which will apparently take it through the end of the Hugh Howey books. And that's kind of cool. So people tend to be watching that. Whatever magic eight ball metrics Apple uses, apparently it checked enough of those boxes to get those going there.

We had listened to Dark Matter on a road trip several years ago, and Bob and I both really liked it. So we did watch the show and it was we firmly agreed. Good enough. But I don't think we're going back in for season two. So take that to mean what you will. He has been watching Silo and is excited that that's going to continue. Let's do one more break and then we're going to talk about the things that just didn't work this year for whatever reason.

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I can't believe Argyle was this year. That was this year. I know. I had to completely forgotten about Argyle until I was scrolling all the way back through our years worth of podcast agendas, looking at like the stories of the year. And I was like, Oh right. Argyle. And I can put that in the adaptation episode. Uh,

A huge bomb. And there's all this intrigue about did Taylor Swift write it? Do you remember this? I do, yeah. And we'll talk about that maybe next week with the year-end review podcast. It made $45 million at the box office against a production budget of $200 million. Again, it's Apple Mac. Who knows? Who knows? I think that should have been signed that I don't know.

Again, underestimating Taylor Swift is a fool's errand and many a white guy has died trying to do this. There be dragons. I feel like in hindsight now that the era is coming to the end, the rumors around Taylor Swift having written and maybe being in this movie based on like TikTok Swiftology had to have been a sign. That's like...

Dutch tulip fever kind of indicators there. We should have known. We're outside the realm of anything rational here. And...

Just watch out. Be careful. We're in a swift bubble and a lot of things are happening when you're in a bubble. Yeah. Yeah. Argyle. That happened this year. People were disappointed by it. Was that the biggest... I mean, I'm looking at the list of stuff you put on here and maybe we didn't put on some of the other things that just didn't work at all in terms of bad reviews or box office. Nothing else really comes to mind for me. I mean, that one had the...

biggest delta, I think, between the hype around it, some people's expectations for it, and then how it actually performed. So it's worth mentioning. I did go see The Outrun with Saoirse Ronan, which is an adaptation of Amy Liptrop's memoir. Also a really quiet book about a young woman living on...

like Welsh islands, I believe who is getting, she's sober and she hasn't been sober for very long and she's trying to stay sober. And so she's like volunteering and working with like wildlife organizations and just living in this kind of like a little house, like someone's guest house on this little island and,

There were some really beautiful moments, but it didn't quite come to life. I haven't read the book, but the movie didn't come to life in the way that I thought it might. I walked out of that feeling like, oh, this feels like it could have been more exciting. It was a solid B. But that was also, it's a small independent movie. There wasn't a lot of press around it. So I don't think that qualifies for a box office disappointment. Yeah. I'm just looking at some, I just looked up some of the other

Lopp's Origin, which was the Anna DuVernay film based on Isabel Wilkerson's book Cast. Cast, yeah, Ava DuVernay. Just did not work. It had a $38 million budget, which is modest, but only did $5 million in global revenue. So...

It lost five times its budget. Yeah, that's a tough hang. Borderlands, again, there's a video game adaptation, and then Argyle is the number one on most lists. So I think we kind of have it covered there. Well, good. We nailed it. A lot of TV flops this year, though. Yeah, so let's see.

In terms of the delta between expectation and experience, I have to give a special commendation to the O'Neill family performance on Masters of the Air, which is super hyped and haven't watched a frame. So there we go. Yeah, I was really excited for Masters of the Air at the beginning of the year, and we watched most of it. We got close enough to the end of the season that we should have just finished the season, but we could not stay in.

Like the band of brothers magic is not there. There are some great performances. There are some faces that were nice to see. There were some five alarms, five alarms, not bomb moments, but it just did not. They move. I think they moved between the characters too much. It was like each episode really focused on a different character and there wasn't enough time to get really attached to

To anybody, the Austin Butler of it all made it flashy. But I was bummed that I was not finding it to be appointment television.

I probably will watch this at some point. I might be 65 and on a lazy boy on a deck, you know, like watching a hologram on my headset. But I will watch this at some point. Maybe a snowstorm. It's going to take some unusual circumstances, but I just don't know. I think the next time you're sick and you're like hanging out in the basement to not infect the rest of the family, Masters of the Year is a good contender. Yeah, I think from there...

interior i mean ones we've talked about interior chinatown yeah gentleman in moscow the sympathizer i think we had questions about all of those coming in i guess i had the highest confidence in the gentleman in moscow because of the mcgregor-ness it's a character study

And I think the tone, what Towles does, the tone is harder than people think. And I am people. And I underestimated how difficult that way would be. And maybe McGregor wasn't quite the right choice. Maybe he wasn't. Yeah. And there were just some decisions about how they changed the story in the first couple of episodes that I think also, you know, made sense.

made the show even softer than the book is. There were some sharp edges to the character in the book. I think we only watched the first two episodes before we talked about it on a Patreon episode. And at that point, we had both concluded we were done. And I had such a rollercoaster experience because I was not on the Amortals train at all. And I read A Gentleman in Moscow so we could do the adaptation. And I really liked the book. I found it really charming. And the show just didn't have...

that sparkle. I am going to be interested in what happens with the Lincoln Highway, which I believe is the next Tolles adaptation that we're going to get. Like a road trip story. There's a lot of fun you can have with that. But Gentleman in Moscow, I think it could have gone places and it just, it didn't quite work for me. I think maybe it should have been a movie. I agree. And a lot of the pleasure of the text is the language, both the spoken dialogue, but also the internal dialogue

thoughts of the main character and then tells his narration which is sort of arch in a kind of way has a West Andersonian Playfulness glee it's it's darker than that for sure. And I think they struggled to capture that Thread that needle between the darkness and the lightness in a real way Sympathizer just didn't work all my fears about it sort of came true that there's too much downy doing downy things and

And I think I watched a couple of the episodes, I should say. Oh, okay. I haven't seen any of those. And just kind of like with Gentleman in the Mosque, I was like, I see what they're trying to do and I like the book better. And so it doesn't offer me something good and different enough to continue watching. Just a real disappointment. I was very worried about this based on the trailer. Yeah, we had a lot of side eye for how was that going to go.

Kind of from the beginning of when it was announced that Robert Downey Jr. would be doing that. Yeah. And then we did an episode of Interior Chinatown. Was that for Patreon? Maybe the people on the media. Yeah, it was for Patreon. So if you didn't hear that. We talked about Interior Chinatown and Say Anything. And Say Anything. It looks great. Jimmy Yang's performance is great. I think a lot of the performances are great. Yeah. Ronny Chieng is having the time of his life. Yeah. I think he's coming out as the real winner there. I don't think it's doing particularly well.

a muddled and confused start, which I think they were kind of trying to go for a

Maybe there's a Severance mystery box thing happening, like what is happening to these characters? Maybe. But it more felt like a smudge than a real clear sense of stakes and why I'm trying to figure that out. I don't know. Those are like metafictional devices are tough on screen and the way Charles Yu executes it just like flawlessly in the book where you always know where you are, you always know what's happening. Yeah.

it they just did not translate that i i felt i guess i had a similar question mark around it to like how i felt about cloud atlas being adapted like the book there's such a feeling to reading the book and you're like this i but i know where i am and i had no idea how they were going to do it on screen and i think we've all agreed that that was not a very successful adaptation either um yeah i was bummed about interior chinatown and it's one where like

Very rarely do I find myself in the place of maybe we should just not try to adapt to this thing. But like some things just work as books in ways that are too difficult to try to translate to the screen and the way that it works is.

in on the page if you've not read interior chinatown go do it if you're not in the charles u fandom get there join us it's great yes the water is warm but it just it feels so good and it like makes your brain tingle with that little snap crackle pop of like what are we doing and like where is he gonna go next and kind of all that magic just didn't translate for tv we were talking the other day about i don't know we're thinking of those

authors that you feel like they can do anything in every book. It feels like you're opening a different present in an advent calendar, but the advent calendar might be a portal to your childhood, but everything's pink and upside down, just that kind of thing going on. Everett and Whitehead and Roth and Smith, and then you as one of those people. There's a ungenerous part of me that's glad this didn't work,

And I'll tell you why. Because you want him to go back to writing books? Yes. Thank you very much. Because he's been writing TV and having a great career. And if that's what he wants to do, I wish him all the success in the world. But my highest and best Charles Yu experience as just a guy out there on the internet is a Charles Yu novel every two and a half to three years. Totally agree. So...

Want him to be successful. Get that bag, Charles Yu, but please write us some more books. Please write us some more books. And this happens with writers. Yeah. Gillian Flynn, notably, very absent from the world of fiction. She's having a great time writing for TV. Man, I can't even talk about that. And going on NPR game shows with James Patterson, apparently. I just...

Like, what is the... You look so pained. I mean, people should do whatever they want. I totally... I really do believe that, even if I don't. Yeah, they don't owe us anything. They don't owe us anything, but, like, I just want to know the story. Like...

It's quiet as it's kept. Like, actually, the George R. R. Martin, Patrick Rutherfuss, we're publicly and loudly not writing things has kind of covered for Gillian Flynn a little bit, right? Like, no one's wondering because it's not a part of a series or anything, but literally what's she's just not writing books. Like, what is what is going on in her own mind? Like, I don't know that she said publicly, like, I'm done writing or I've had something I've had a bunch of false starts. Like,

Who knows? She hasn't been publicly, I don't know, pained about it. So she seems to be having a great time. So maybe there is nothing. I mean, maybe she's just like living her life on that Gone Girl. She was writing TV too. Wasn't there a couple of TV things? Yeah, there were some TV things. She officiated a wedding that a friend of mine in publishing went to this summer. So she's like out there living life. I mean, you do reach a point with some people where you get enough gigs and like Cheryl Strayed and Roxane Gay and Gillian Flynn. Those are the just three that immediately come to mind.

they're making a lot of money doing non-book things and books are not as renumerative as people think. So I get it. And yet I'm kind of bummed because I'm a reader at heart when it comes to this stuff.

Yeah. And maybe like, I don't know, Gillian Flynn has been so imitated at this point that she would almost need a new something, like a new shtick. This gone girl birthed, the girl on the train birthed like the huge wave that we're still writing of, oh my God, it turns out the narrator is unreliable. Yeah. I wonder if like the Freda McFadden pale imitators, Delia Owens crawdads has caused a bit of, wait,

Wait, what do I do in this? On the other hand, those are, they're not just pale, they're translucent imitators. So maybe a real Gillian Flynn would feel so much more substantial and sharp that jumping into the ring and saying, oh, this is what a pro wrestler looks like. Yeah, like getting a T-bone when you've been eating, you know. Yeah, right. Salisbury steak. McDonald's for a while. Yeah.

All right, Rebecca, anything else you want to say here? What else that we didn't cover? It's just been an interesting year. I love that for me, the biggest hits were surprises. Like I didn't go into the year thinking, Oh my God, I'm going to be so glad I spent two hours watching an adaptation of the Odyssey, but really terrific. And then as you mentioned, Nickel Boys has come out officially, but it's not in all the markets yet. So we're hoping to see that over the holidays. Same story goes for Night Bitch. Uh,

And the other big adaptation that's coming out on Christmas is A Complete Unknown starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. It is adapted from Elijah Wald's book Dylan Goes Electric.

And I don't know if I have just been Stockholm syndrome about it because they've been playing the trailer for it at the front of every movie I've seen for the last like five months. So at this point, I have like affection for the trailer of A Complete Unknown. And the whole like the mere exposure effect has worked on me. I went from like, I'm not going to go see a Timothee Chalamet movie about Bob Dylan to like, no.

Looks kind of good. So we'll see the story around that. Like, if it is good, that might also be in contention for Best Adapted Screenplay. I think we'll see some acting nominations for it as well.

The only movie I really am going to make an effort to get to by the end of the year while it's in theaters is The Brutalist. It's not an adaptation. Hollywood Theater here is playing it 70 millimeter. I'm in for some Adrian Brody. That's one of the trailer got me as well. Yeah, I'll be going to see that. I'm going to go see Nickel Boys for sure. But outside of that, like, it's not, I'm not going to be racing to catch a lot of this stuff, I don't think, before awards season. The Return, I don't know if we're going to make it.

I don't know if Michelle loves Ralph Fiennes, but he's had some not amazing biographical things happen over the last five or 10 years. So I am unaware of these things. I'm sorry. That's going to be a disappointing Google. Yeah. I'm not sure it's going to be fine to put it, um,

Punnily. Oh, dear. All right. Thanks, everyone. Bookriot.com slash listen. Shoot us an email. Podcast at bookriot.com. Check out the Patreon. We just did the... What did we just do on Patreon? The books we missed. We did the books we missed this year. And then we're recording later in the week. What are we recording for the Patreon?

I'm so out of the loop. I've lost total track. At some point, we're doing the best of the rest. Oh, and our favorite things? Yeah, right, right, right, right. It is this week. This week, we're recording the best of the rest, which is our favorite non-book stuff of the year. And that will be the last bonus episode for the year. My list is so unbelievably boring.

I can't under deliver. I can't over. Do you under deliver on how boring something is? What would be the failed state of saying something is very boring? It's a little bit of a logic puzzle. What you're doing is underselling here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something called something that's not quite a box cutter is the best thing I bought this year. That's a preview. Well, that's all. There's also space for like movie and TV and like entertainment things. Just anything that's not books. Okay. All right. Thanks, Rebecca. I'll talk to you later. Y'all have a good one.

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you enjoy this audiobook excerpt of The Gardens of Eden by Rosie Lee. Thanks again to our sponsors at Random House Audio. How have I lasted in this family so long? Ruth thought as she steered her golf cart toward Naomi's driveway. The cart bounced up and down along the old red brick path, and Ruth wobbled along with it.

She was tired of being jerked around by the golf cart and the tensions brewing in her family. She wondered if the bumpy shortcut to her mother-in-law's cottage was symbolic of her convoluted placement in the garden family tree and the repercussions that came along with it.

Visitors usually parked in the small circular driveway in front of the house, where the asphalt was smooth. But Ruth rarely drove along the street to get to Naomi's cottage during the daytime. Although the women lived next door to each other on the garden family estate, their homes were separated by a couple of acres of deciduous trees, and the brick path connected the far end of Naomi's driveway to Ruth's backyard.

It was the last original road on the estate, its bricks crafted and laid by the formerly enslaved people who settled the land and whose descendants comprised the family into which Ruth had married. Ruth treasured the path's history and convenience, but they weren't the reason she tolerated the uncomfortable commute. It was because she finally felt peaceful when she drove over the last brick,

marking the spot where she and Bo had spent hours talking and stargazing when she first moved to Eden with Naomi. After Ruth stopped the golf cart at the edge of the bricks, she took a long, deep breath, leaning into the headrest with her back slightly arched. The stretch reminded her of yoga class, but did little to ease the tension in her lower back.

Once a regular attendee, Ruth hadn't gone to a yoga class in a year and a half since the morning Bo died. But she visited the spot in Naomi's driveway almost every day, most often in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep. Dissatisfied with her stretch, Ruth opened her eyes. She stared up at the sky, thinking of Bo.

Red, orange, and bright yellow hues reflected off the thin clouds as the sun set. She marveled at the horizon, which felt like a fiery reminder that she was about to face a task she'd dreaded all week.

Instead of backing down, Ruth was emboldened. She jumped out of the cart like a manx cat, landing flawlessly in the stiletto heels she'd worn since her 7.30 AM check-in meeting with the event planner she hired for the Garden Family Enterprises Christmas party. With the gathering only a week away and this year being her first time relinquishing the party planning duties since she married Beau,

Ruth was nervous, especially given the media outlets and influencers scheduled to cover the high profile event. As Ruth sped up the front walk to Naomi's cottage, she smoothed the soft fabric of the black v-necked pencil dress she wore. She hardly noticed the multicolored flashing Christmas lights Naomi had placed in the bushes that afternoon,

Ruth's schedule had been filled with back-to-back meetings since she took the helm of Garden Family Enterprises after Beau's death, and it was beginning to wear on her. She was grateful when she noticed the small details she used to obsess about previously, but Ruth couldn't deal with Naomi's unauthorized holiday decisions.

Though Christmas remained Ruth's favorite time of the year, she had no time to commit to her tradition of coordinating decorations at the four homes on the family estate. Without someone to rein her in, Naomi was prone to go overboard. She couldn't help it. A simple decorated bush could morph into a flood of string lights cascading from the fountain in the front yard with a sea of candy canes and inflatables spilling into the street.

Ruth slowed as she accessed the steps of the wraparound porch, digging inside her black Brandon Blackwood tote until she found a scratched heart-shaped keychain. She inserted the single key in the door lock, but decided the evening might go better if she rang the doorbell instead. As she eased the key from the lock, the door opened.

I was wondering what took you so long to come up to the house. It's too early for you to be sleeping in the driveway again, Naomi said with a sly grin. She extended her arms in a broad V shape. With her silver curls falling below her shoulders and white oversized cardigan draping her petite frame, she looked like a mischievous angel.