Nina Jacobson Quotes

I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film. Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

Realistically, the chance of any book becoming a film is slim.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

I don't know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn't hurt the book.

I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.

I think successful movies that are based on books are their own thing. I think if you're too faithful, word by word, character trait to character trait, it can hurt the movie.

By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

Lots of movies don't kind of work as well as they do on the page.

As far as books getting turned into movies, I fared very, very well.

I never thought about whether film is inherently more sincere, because certainly I think if Guy Maddin had directed A Series Of Unfortunate Events, there probably could have been more of the stage-y irony that is in the books. But I was just interested to see what people would do with it, and worrying that Brad Silberling wouldn't do what I had in mind.

I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."

I do know that the best way to make a mediocre movie is to just transcribe the book.

We didn't want to dilute or soften the material because that would really be irresponsible, in its own way. The [Hunger Games] books are very intense and very demanding of the reader, and the movie should be that too.

Adaptation of books is never a success. When the author wants to make it, it's even worse.

A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.

The first person I met in the business was David Heyman, who was a producer on Daytrippers and who went on to produce the highly-unsuccessful Harry Potter series.

It is impossible to do a movie exactly the way a comic book is written and drawn, just as it's impossible to do a movie exactly like a novel or exactly like anything else. When you go to different forms of media, you have to adapt.

I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.

I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.

A movie's very different from the book, and it's different from the script, and it's usually one person's vision.

I don't know if kids still read it, I just know that for me - as a boarding school kid - the book had a lot of resonance. It was a well written book. I was honored to play a part in that movie version.

If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.

Being able to just stick to our instincts and honor the [Hunger Games] books and find a way to stay the course of trying to make the best possible decisions that you would make creatively on any movie, without having your head turned too much by all of the interest, has been a great challenge. It's the best challenge you could ask for, but that was a big challenge.