Bollywood special: Top 4 movie adaptations

Movie adaptation can be defined as the transfer of a written work to a feature film. This form of derivative work is easier due to many reasons like, ready – made story line, already available fan following of the book, and so on. Even though, more times than often, movie adaptations tend to disappoint the readers, there have been many instances where the movie has been proved to be better than the book, for example, Die Hard or The Notebook, perhaps. One can observe an increasing number of movies in Hollywood being based on a novel but Bollywood is yet to get properly settled with this idea.

We bring you some of the best Bollywood movie adaptations. Take a look!

Five Point Someone (3 Idiots)

Five Point Someone – What not to do at IIT! is a 2004 novel written by Chetan Bhagat. The novel is about the adventures of three mechanical engineering students (and friends), Hari Kumar (the narrator), Ryan Oberoi, and Alok Gupta, who fail to cope with the grading system of the IITs. The book set a record by being purchased by 30,000 people in one month, and has gone on to become a top seller in Hindi. Even though the book was made into two movies, namely, 3 idiots and Nanban (Tamil), they were not perfect adaptations of the novel. The movie was so successful that there have been plans to make a Chinese as well as a Hollywood remake of the movie.

Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire/Crorepati)

Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat, published his first book in 2005 called Q & A telling the story of Ram Mohammad Thomas, a young waiter who becomes the biggest quiz show winner in history, only to be sent to jail on accusations (but with no evidence) that he cheated. It was adapted into a movie, Slumdog Crorepati by the Hollywood director, Danny Boyle in 2008. It was a smashing hit, bagging 8 Academy awards and numerous other honours as well.



The Citadel (Tere Mere Sapne)

The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. There are, in total, three Indian adaptations of the movie including Tere Mere Sapne (1971) in Hindi, Jiban Saikate in Bengali and Madhura Swapnam in Telugu. The Bollywood adaptation stars actors such as Dev Anand, Vijay, Mumtaz, and Hema Malini. This movie is, undoubtedly, considered as one the evergreen hit of the late, Mr. Dev Anand.



Black Friday – The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts. (Black Friday)

Black Friday – The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts is a book by S. Hussain Zaidi about the 1993 Bombay bombings. Director, Anurag Kashyap attempted at recreating those events in 2004. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angelesand was a nominee for the Best Film (Golden Leopard) award at the Locarno International Film Festival. The film was appreciated by critics all over the world.

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