Classic novels dominate screens as adaptations outperform original ideas 3.4 to 1

The latest:

Literary classics are colonising the release calendar, with a new Sense and Sensibility out in Britain on September 25th, a seven-part East of Eden landing on Netflix on October 1st, and a fresh Pride and Prejudice due in December. Netflix executive Jinny Howe said period settings feel exotic to audiences living in a high-speed, high-tech digital world.

Details:

• The slate: Recent adaptations include Wuthering Heights, The Odyssey, Frankenstein and Little House on the Prairie. Still to come are East of Eden, A Tale of Two Cities and a version of A Christmas Carol starring Johnny Depp. Producers treat Pride and Prejudice as remakeable roughly once a decade, and the newest version reaches Netflix in December.
• The numbers: Christofer Hamilton of research firm Parrot Analytics calculates that shows and films based on books drew 3.4 times the global demand of the average title so far this year. That arithmetic makes adaptations a surer bet than original ideas for an industry under financial pressure.
• The new film: Sense and Sensibility, directed by Georgia Oakley, opens in Britain on September 25th and in America in October. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Elinor Dashwood and Esmé Creed-Miles plays Marianne. The setting is rugged moorland rather than pastoral idyll, and the tone more earnest than the 1995 version with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet.
• The craft argument: Screenwriter Andrew Davies, author of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice screenplay, argued that the crucial moments in Austen are often silent, when the viewer thinks, “God yes! He loves her—and she loves him.” Only fine acting, he said, can convey the interior depths of great novels.
• Why now: Davies attributed the appetite to anxiety, saying audiences facing fears of climate catastrophe or AI robots reach for something comforting and familiar. Howe said the main task is identifying what in a book cuts through and feels relevant today, while conceding the pressure of expectations can be daunting.
• The reinventions: The new Sense and Sensibility emphasises the bond between the sisters. Davies is writing a Mansfield Park that will visit the slave plantation funding an Austen family’s wealth. In East of Eden, scripted by Zoe Kazan, Florence Pugh’s Cathy is given a background of abuse, and the Chinese-American character Lee, cut from the 1955 film, is reinstated.
• The failures: Louise Willder, author of The Book was Better, criticised the film of The Scarlet Letter for adding skinny-dipping and a man dancing with a deer carcass on his head. She argued slavish adherence to a text can be sterile, while disfiguring it, as with Wuthering Heights, can look absurd.
• The book effect: Penguin Classics reported 2026 sales of The Odyssey up 265% in Britain and 599% in India, while Circana Bookscan reported American sales quadrupled. Wuthering Heights topped Britain’s bestseller list, 180 years after publication. Tom Rowley, who runs London bookshop Backstory, said sales rise months before buzzy releases.
• The counter-trend: Reading for pleasure is declining, with some teachers assigning passages rather than whole books. An examiner’s report in England found students of Romeo and Juliet had relied on the Leonardo DiCaprio film, making specific references to guns and petrol stations.

Background:

Adaptations habitually alter their sources. Clueless transplanted Emma to Beverly Hills. The Odyssey added gore while omitting Homeric episodes including the hero’s adultery and the mass execution of slave girls. The 1955 East of Eden, directed by Elia Kazan, covered only part of Steinbeck’s novel.

Between the lines:

Two declines are running in opposite directions. Serious reading is contracting in classrooms, yet Penguin’s triple-digit sales jumps suggest screens are now the main gateway to the classics rather than their replacement. Oxford professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst argued these reboots show how old stories keep adapting to changing circumstances — a claim the Mansfield Park and Cathy rewrites illustrate directly.

What’s next

Sense and Sensibility opens in America in October. East of Eden arrives on Netflix on October 1st, followed by Pride and Prejudice in December. Sales data for those titles will test whether the adaptation-to-bookshelf effect holds.