The desire to adapt a book into a movie is certainly understandable—somebody else has already done the heavy lifting of writing a (hopefully) interesting story with compelling characters, and if anyone read the book, then the movie comes with a built-in audience.
What’s not to love about that?
Less clear is the reason for Hollywood’s recent move of making movies out of books that don’t really feature stories or characters at all. From 2009’s He’s Just Not That Into You to this year’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Think Like a Man, plus the upcoming Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, the criteria for good movie source material seems to have gone from “Hey, this would make a good movie!” to “Hey, people have heard of this.” Tsk, tsk, tsk.
