I heart books. And movies. Especially when they are based on a book I love. 2017 brings us many beloved books that are being made into movies. We’re breaking down the list from groundbreaking women working for NASA to Russian spies, and featuring characters such as a narrating dog, a monster tree and an outcast.
One way to relive the joy of a beloved story is to have that book made into a movie. Many tomes are jumping to the big screen in 2017. We have a rule we TRY to follow in our house: read the book before the movie comes out. Well, this rule bit me in the butt on our way back from St. Thomas when my daughter wouldn’t let me watch Me Before You because I hadn’t read the book first! Actually, I’m glad I waited and read the book. So she got me there!
I have my favorites from this list that I can’t wait to read and see. Some I’ve read already and am eagerly awaiting to movie’s release. Hopefully this “Books Made into Movies” list will help you find a few you will love this year.
This post contains affiliate links.
Books Made into Movies in 2017
By Release Date
A Monster Calls January 6
Storyline: “At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting– he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd– whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself– Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.”
Hidden Figures January 6
A Dog’s Purpose January 27
Storyline: “A Dog’s Purpose is not only the emotional and hilarious story of a dog’s many lives, but also a dog’s-eye commentary on human relationships and the unbreakable bonds between man and man’s best friend. This moving and beautifully crafted story teaches us that love never dies, that our true friends are always with us, and that every creature on earth is born with a purpose.”
Makes me think of our beloved Cali, who was our fur child for 15 wonderful years.
The Shack March 3
Storyline: “Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever.”
Before I Fall March 3
Storyline: “Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.”
The Zookeeper’s Wife March 31
Storyline: “After their zoo was bombed, Polish zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski managed to save over three hundred people from the Nazis by hiding refugees in the empty animal cages. With animal names for these “guests,” and human names for the animals, it’s no wonder that the zoo’s code name became ‘The House Under a Crazy Star.'”
Wonder April 7
Storyline: “August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Wonder…begins from Auggie’s point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others. These perspectives converge in a portrait of one community’s struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.”
The Lost City of Z April 21
Storyline: “In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called ‘The Lost City of Z.’ In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for ‘Z’ and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.”
The Circle April 28
Storyline: “When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.”
Captain Underpants June 2
Storyline: “George and Harold have created the greatest superhero in the history of their elementary school–and now they’re going to bring him to life! Meet Captain Underpants! His true identity is so secret, even HE doesn’t know who he is!”
This series is beloved by my 11 year old, so we will be going to see this one!
My Cousin Rachel July 14
Storyline: “Philip Ashley’s older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to Ambrose’s beautiful English estate, is crushed. While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful woman. Now Rachel has arrived at Philip’s newly inherited estate. Could this exquisite woman, who seems to genuinely share Philip’s grief at Ambrose’s death, really be as cruel as Philip imagined? Or is she the kind, passionate woman with whom Ambrose fell in love? Philip struggles to answer this question, knowing Ambrose’s estate, and his own future, will be destroyed if his answer is wrong.”
The Dark Tower July 28
Storyline: “Roland of Gilead: The Last Gunslinger…is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which mirrors our own in frightening ways, Roland tracks The Man in Black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York named Jake.”
It September 8
Storyline: “They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.”
The Mountain Between Us October 20
Storyline: “On a stormy winter night, two strangers wait for a flight at the Salt Lake City airport. Ashley Knox is an attractive, successful writer, who is flying East for her much anticipated wedding. Dr. Ben Payne has just wrapped up a medical conference and is also eager to get back East for a slate of surgeries he has scheduled for the following day. When the last outgoing flight is cancelled due to a broken de-icer and a forthcoming storm, Ben finds a charter plane that can take him around the storm and drop him in Denver to catch a connection. And when the pilot says the single engine prop plane can fit one more, if barely, Ben offers the seat to Ashley knowing that she needs to get back just as urgently. And then the unthinkable happens. The pilot has a heart attack mid-flight and the plane crashes into the High Uintas Wilderness– one of the largest stretches of harsh and remote land in the United States.
Ben, who has broken ribs and Ashley, who suffers a terrible leg fracture, along with the pilot’s dog, are faced with an incredibly harrowing battle to survive. Fortunately, Ben is a medical professional and avid climber (and in a lucky break, has his gear from a climb earlier in the week). With little hope for rescue, he must nurse Ashley back to health and figure out how they are going to get off the mountain, where the temperature hovers in the teens…As the days on the mountains become weeks, their survival become increasingly perilous. How will they make it out of the wilderness and if they do, how will this experience change them forever?”
The movie will star Idris Elba and Kate Winslet. Sounds good to me!
Same Kind of Different as Me October 20
I adore this book. I’m interested in how they will bring this to life.
Storyline: “A dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up picking cotton in virtual slavery. An upscale art dealer accustomed to the world of Armani and Chanel. A gutsy woman with a stubborn dream. A story so incredible no novelist would dare dream it.”
Red Sparrow November 10
Storyline: “State intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a ‘Sparrow,’ a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the CIA’s most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers, trained in their respective spy schools, collide in a charged atmosphere of tradecraft, deception, and, inevitably, a forbidden spiral of carnal attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America’s most valuable mole in Moscow.”
Murder on the Orient Express November 22
Storyline: “Agatha Christie’s most famous Hercule Poirot mystery, which has the brilliant detective hunting for a killer aboard one of the world’s most luxurious passenger trains.”
This one is really going to take off from the station with a phenomenal cast of Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad, Willem Dafoe, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, and Leslie Odom, Jr.
Let It Snow November 22
Three interconnected stories by authors John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle, best-sellers in the teen genre.
Storyline: “A Christmas Eve snowstorm transforms one small town into a romantic haven, the kind you see only in movies. Well, kinda. After all, a cold and wet hike from a stranded train through the middle of nowhere would not normally end with a delicious kiss from a charming stranger. And no one would think that a trip to the Waffle House through four feet of snow would lead to love with an old friend. Or that the way back to true love begins with a painfully early morning shift at Starbucks.”
Jumanji December 22
Storyline: “Over thirty years ago, Peter and Judy first found the game—Jumanji—with the instructions that once the game is started, it must be finished or it will go on forever—and it was then, with this same wonderment, readers found Jumanji, too.”
Remember the Robin Williams movie? This one stars Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart.
Also movies of The Nightingale and The Glass Castle are coming out too, but no release dates have been set yet.
It’s worth noting that Big Little Lies is coming to TV as an HBO series on February 19th. The trailer looks like it really lives up to the book, which was suspenseful and surprising!
What are you most excited about reading and/or seeing? Any favorites?
Disclosure: Books listed here contain affiliate links. They help keep me caffeinated and motivated to find new goodies to share. Thanks!
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