Dylan O'Brien Quotes

It's tricky to take a book of short stories and turn it into a feature film.

Unfortunately, the author of a book pretty much gives up control of the story when the producers take over a book to make it into a movie.

I'm always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a book and they leave the book behind, or the heart of it.

To be quite honest, I've been very blessed when I've worked with Hollywood. The studios that have purchased my work to be adapted to film have really liked the work and wanted to stay as close as they could to what the book was.

Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book?

'Underworld' was my first filmed book. I think there are about seven of my lines in it.

I would say what you have to do as a screenwriter is strip the book back to find the skeleton. When you've found the skeleton - that's what you trust - you reclothe.

To make three films out of one shortish book, they have to turn it into an epic, just as 'Lord of the Rings' is an epic. But 'The Hobbit' isn't an epic: its tone is intimate and personal, and although it's full of adventures and excitement, they're on a different scale to those of the bigger book.

People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.

With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal.

The great thing about Stephen is that he sees the movie as a separate thing, I think. He wants it to capture the essence of the book, and if he feels that's been done, then he's not too particular about the details. I think that's why he's happy.

I would like to see 'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole adapted.

I think that being isolated from the Hollywood world of premieres and red carpet events was probably good for me because I could ease into those at will and by my own choice. But in other aspects, when it comes to fanfare, Hawaii is nuts and in L.A. they're all so jaded. They don't care.

I think it's counterproductive for actors to come to the set with well-thumbed copies of the book their film is adapted from.

At times when you're adapting a book into a movie, you have to take certain creative liberties to bridge the gap between the two forms of media.

While not my personal favorite of the Disney princess films, 'The Little Mermaid' wins hands-down in my book for best Disney adaptation. Little girls waited for more than 150 years for Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Little Mermaid' to have a happy ending. Walt Disney finally gave it to her.

I think you are doing a disservice to a novel just by transposing it wholesale onto the screen, because it doesn't work. They are completely different beasts.

Some writers get snooty about what happens when their books are adapted to film, but I don't feel that way.

I think my background in film taught me that a great book adaptation is not always slavishly faithful to the source material.

You take some creative license when you make a movie, and things can be a little bit different.

'The Fugitive Kind,' 'Rope,' 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' - I watched all these as a way of reminding myself that you can do a movie based on a play. You can do a movie that stays in one place for a long stretch.

I always felt once it goes into movie land, the book belongs to someone else.

I was very excited to do 'The Witches.' It was with one of my favorite directors, Nick Roeg, and I loved his work from 'Don't Look Now' and 'Eureka.' So I was very excited to work with him. The story was a very subversive fairy tale by Roald Dahl, and a fantastic part.

As a fan, when I hear that a film is going to be turned into a television show, I do go to that place immediately of, 'Is it going to be any good? Is it going to be a waste of time? Why are they doing it?' It's '12 Monkeys,' and '12 Monkeys' is awesome, so I wanted to be a part of it and work on it.

Our games are not always the best, but they are exciting, which is what people love to see.