Quote Originally Posted by Granite View Post
I was wondering recently about big-screen adaptations of books. Which modern authors have had the most. I know some big ones are Michael Chriton (sp?), John Grisham, and Nicholas Sparks. Anyone know any others? Anyone have a list of the top ten?

Finally, just for fun - What's your favorite book (or short story) to movie adaptation?

My favorite is the Shawshank Redemption!

Thread fascinates me. First of all I agree with stardragon and michalz00 that Stephen King has to be modern author and champion in this arena with far more than 11 bigscreen adaptations . just look here. It's too difficult to assess how many though not TV went straight to video http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000175/

It depends what you mean by modern Allowing Jake
Phillip Dick with 6 big time movies and also some smaller ones.

Blade Runner
Total Recall
Minority Report
Paycheck
A Scanner Darkly
Next
Phillip K Dick died in 1982, so setting last 25 years as a criterion I'd have to include other writers like:-

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0533745/ Alistair McLean (died 1987)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0046701/ Desmond Bagley (died 1983)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0383604/ Patricia Highsmith (died 1995)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0531792/ John D MacDonald (died 1986)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0355261/ Trevor Dudley Smith aka Elleston Trevor/Adam Hall (died 1995)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0402805/ Evan Hunter/Ed McBain (died 2005)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001294/ Graham Greene (died 1991)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001920/ Isaac Asimov (died1992)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0585151/ James Michener (died 1997)


...as well and they are all up for contention with more than 3.

Also living writers like.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0929696/ Charles Willeford
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001465/ Elmore Leonard
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0215050/ Len Deighton
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001969/ Ray Bradbury
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0810335/ Wilbur Smith
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0287046/ Frederick Forsyth
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0255278/ James Ellroy
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0458461/ Andrew Klavan

Getting a headache posting (besides wasting download time) ... so will cut it off in a moment - may post again though. Please forgive any wrong links I make mistakes.

Thrilled that John D MacDonald's Travis McGee character may be getting a big screen treatment with the announcement of filming for "The Deep Blue Goodbye" (2008), but then I heard that sometime ago about Adam Hall's Quiller character and nothing seems to have come of that!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0908624/ Edgar Wallace (long dead!) would probably give Stephen King a run for his money as all time most prolific but then again they only had big screens at the time. I don't know quite why he was quite so popular with German Filmmakers and I didn't know that the King Kong stories were based on him either!

All this research is probably re-inventing the wheel anyway