Ok, so Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children comes out today. I haven't read the book and probably won't see the movie till later down the line. I will say though, it looked good and given the subject material, seems a good match for director Tim Burton to handle.
But got me thinking. I didn't know this was a book before a film. I mean it's been five years since it's release, but I still hadn't heard of it. I suppose that's a nice thing for an author. That you have a decently successful novel, and that down the line you can get a feature for some reason or another.
Though, there's always "that risk". Just like from games, book-to-movie-adaption have some risky business. After all, a book can take awhile to finish if you're a steady reader (less if you're really into it). A movie? 2/3 hours tops. Therein lies one of the problems of adaption. Making sure you get in what you NEED to get in. It took two movies to tell the story of the Hobbit "properly", but I'm sure there was stuff missing here and there (and stuff added for no reason).
The thing is, you can have several characters, several small plot bits, and little quirks to characters or places that you have to all get into the span of your movie time-frame. Unfortunately, this process can make a movie suffer. Favorite moments in the book may be excluded, plot changes to fix the time frame, or characters may be changed or altered (Mandarin anybody?).
Another thing that such adaptions can suffer is based on if the book is a series or not. If it's a short series, some movies may attempt to force 2-3 or even more books together to form a plot together in just one film. A sloppy and unrespective process, this almost assures essential things are going to be taken out to make the cut.
So, in honor of adaptions, lets take a look at a few...

Lets start with one that makes writers go "UGH" when they hear it, and they all have their reasons, from how he skipped a writers "rite of passage", to even plagiarism of famous works.
ERAGON.
Eragon's story is one of...well...uninspiration. The book series was written by Christopher Paolini, who's parents happened to own a publishing company (or purchased one just for the occasion, can't recall). Horray for him. I mean, it seems obvious that someone would become a writer if their parents could take away one of the hardest and grueling parts of the process. I dunno, feels like cheating to me is all. A lot of people struggle to get to that point, and some good ideas don't get to make it, and yet Paolini gets a free card. But, I digress.
Eragon became a movie about 4 years later. Like many adaptions, a lot got cut, from characters to plot points. It seemed like the only saving grace was Sephira, the dragon. What can I say, add we dragons and you get awesomeness. I have actually played the game version of the movie way way back, and it was sub-par at best with very limited appeal.
(image: Add Dragons For Awesomeness - Most Of The Time)

Another popular series, that didn't get the obsessive "squash" factor and had each book for a separate movie, was Twilight.
Let me just say this from the start. I don't get it. Then again, I am a guy, so I guess that's to be expected. I really never heard about it till the first movie, and didn't care to notice much until maybe Eclipse. About then the whole "Edward v. Jacob" thing was starting up between teenage girls (round up or down to your own theories), which is sorta a testament to the whole "romance" thing from the novels that starts skipping over into reality.
I mean I kinda get the story....girl meets boy, boy meets girl in woods, boy shows girl shiny body and has her admit he's a vampire, other vampires no like. Then from there...boy leaves for awhile, girl gets suicidal and finds new boy, new boy turns out to be werewolf, find out werewolves and vampires aren't on good terms. Then some stuff about some sort of prophecy, the girl becoming a vampire, and a baby that looked REAAAALLLLY freaky, blah blah blah.
I have seen the films way back at the time, just to find out what the heck was some drawing about it. Maybe the books were more drawing, but I ain't reading those. I'm not really a romantic-movie watcher...heck the only real bit I liked was that cool fight at the end of Breaking Dawn 2 that actually never happened (spoiler!).
But, while "I" don't get it, that doesn't make the handle of the series bad. Ok, maybe it was. But I will say, that at least each book got it's own film. And honestly, that's a good way to go about it. Imagine condensing ALL of it into one? Wow, that would be the quickest, weirdest love story ever.
Interesting enough, the last book got separated into two films. We'll see a common theme here in a moment.
(image: Halloween Costume Throwdown)

Ok, lets get to some better stuff. Lets move on to a more interesting romance story. Where the romance is just a part rather than a full on driving force.
Hunger Games.
Honestly when I first heard about it, I didn't think much. Great, another young adult love story adapted to a film. But here and there I was hearing move about it, so I gave the movie a look and was actually surprised. 12 subdued districts that are forced to have, essentially, sacrifices in a game of death because they lost a revolution way back? Ok, WOW. A fight for survival, political intrigue, a messed up world, and a protagonist that's not a stick figure like that Twilight woman was? Nice!
Ok, so there's the whole love thing between Katniss and...what's his name again...Peeta, there we go, sorry, forgot you behind Gale ha ha ha. Anyway, fights to the death, you gotta impress the crowd (saying "Are you not entertained!" only works in Rome). And naturally "who doesn't like a love story". But, as we all know, it's FAKE. Well...at least in the beginning. It's still survival.
As the series went on, things turned to revolution, with sacrifices and living up to greater ideals.
Overall, not a bad series. A decent female protagonist (sure, she uses a bow, but she uses it well), a messed up sacrificial system that NEEDS to get fixed (I oh so knew and loved when she shot the arrow at the end, go girl go), and a love story that's not drowning everything else out.
So overall, Hunger Games did alright in my opinion...
And AGAIN, this one's final film was ALSO split in half...notice a trend?
(image: Don't Set Mocking Jays On Fire)

Let me put these two together to save you some scroll space. Lets come to two great adaption series. LOTR and Harry Potter. Both fantasy, take your pick. Both series have a lot of material and supplements that, naturally, not all of it made it in. But a combination of working with writers and directors, a great cast (especially for HP), and decent pacing produced some awesome results.
Who doesn't remember the awesome battles in LOTR? Or the tension of Harry's first battle with Voldemort?
Thankfully, neither of these adaptions squashed books together, spreading out each for their own film. LOTR escaped breaking up it's last book, though Harry Potter followed the trend.
LOTR was an awesome journey, with several character plots coming together and evolving as we followed along. Harry Potter gave us the same characters (and more or less the same cast picked by the author, to which they all seemed perfect for their roles) with increasing locations and fresh plots with every installment. Overall, both of these were great adaptions.
.....well....except maybe Order of the Phoenix, not sure what happened that made me fall asleep viewing that one...
(image: Make Sure Its Not The One Ring)
(image: Magic Is Real)

Overall, Book Adaption Movies can be up and down, just like Game Adaptions. It's all about making sure you get in what makes the material special. The characters, the plot, the little nuances that make you laugh or go "oooooohhhh!". Still, there's always that little feeling, at least, of when you reading this series you like and suddenly there's going to be a movie about it. In Games, we see the action...but for the most part, books we only see in our minds. So the impact is greater. For readers, seeing our favorite story or characters on the big screen can sometimes be a dream come true moment. As long as, you know, they get the right cast, director, and actually have read the book themselves.