What books should never be made into movies?

Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It’s such a deep work that cramming it into a 2 hour movie would completely decimate it, I think. One of his other works, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress could be an awesome film, and I know someone was in fact working on one, you can find the screenplay online.

Slaughter House Five and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

The Gospel of Mark

Dungeon And Dragons.
xD

The dictionary.

@dynamicduo – I had this exact conversation with a friend a few weeks ago ! Mistress would be an awesome movie; I really can’t imagine why it hasn’t been filmed, except perhaps Heinlein’s estate is blocking it. Maybe rightly so – look what they did to Starship Troopers!

Anathem

Lord of the Rings

(actually, it could be done well, if the director actually cared about the source material)

@aidje uh, where do you live, or am I missing the sarcastic tone in your writing?

ha ha! I was wondering the same thing!!

Anything by Thomas Hardy. Unfortunately they did and the flicks are just too darn depressing.

Recipe books! You would never know how the ending was going to turn out, and what if you stuffed up on the ingredients…
It might make a lot of dough though…
It’s ok I missed my morning medicine again!

Most of Stephen King’s, only because the majority made have been butchered.

Exception being Carrie and The Shining

The way I see it, if the movie follows the book, i.e. emphasizes the original plot even with time editing, nails the character descriptions with decent if not phenomenal actors, and produces a film that honors its literary predecessor, then by all means do it! BUT, don’t ruin it. Its frustrating seeing perfectly good novels destroyed by crappy acting, and horribly written screen-plays…

@judochop – Probably the latter. Unless living in Illinois means something to you.

Another LOTR comment: I really liked the BBC audiobook series. They captured the book better than the movie. Of course, they had 13 hours to work with.

The Tin Drum