Not-So-Adapted Films by raccoonleaf

Stephen King has repeatedly voiced his disappointment over Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, but a 1992 King film “adaptation” starring Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan borrows absolutely nothing from King’s short story other than the title. What's the shared title?

The Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend has had… let’s call it 4 film adaptations. The most recent one is The Asylum’s “mockbuster,” which doesn’t even credit Matheson at this point. It's title is a bit of a mashup of the titles to previous adaptations. What's the title of the "mockbuster" adaptation?

By the time Peter Jackson got around to a third Hobbit movie, he had run out of book. His solution: take all of *maybe* 5 pages, extend it to about two and a half hours using Tolkien's expansive legendarium, and rake in the ducats. What is the subtitle of this third Hobbit movie?

One of Ian Fleming’s short stories about James Bond takes place at a dinner party in the Bahamas. It involves an allegory about a husband’s lack of compassion for his wife, which gave the story its title. None of that shows up in the adaptation; in fact, the title of the movie simply alludes to the organization Bond fights. What’s the shared title?

The original novel Starship Troopers has been described as “fascist” and “militaristic” in no uncertain terms, but the film adaptation is arguably a satire. That may be in part because it was based on a wholly original script. What was the original title of the script?

Other than a pair of brothers named Paul (a farmer) and Eli (an evangelist), the Upton Sinclair work about a certain industry bears little resemblance to its Oscar-winning film adaptation by Paul Thomas Anderson. What are the titles of the Upton Sinclair work (with proper punctuation!) AND its film adaptation? (Two answers required)

Philip K. Dick’s post-apocalyptic novella “The Golden Man” is about a feral mutant named Cris with seductive gold skin who can see all possible outcomes of future actions. Played by Nicolas Cage, the main character of the 2007 adaptation 1) is named Cris and 2) can see into the future. That's it. What's the title of the film adaptation?

Both the book and the movie involve an investigation into a murder. Unlike the movie, the title character in the book is the one who is murdered (necessitating a title change), and the story continues with his stunt double. Many of the main characters are the same, but all of the cameos were replaced with new ones for the movie. What word got changed from the original title, AND what did it get changed to? (Two answers required)

Max Brooks wrote this "oral history" novel made up of multiple narratives documenting a global conflict following a specific event. The 2013 film adaptation pretty much sets aside the book to become a fairly straightforward genre film. What's the shared title?

Bret Easton Ellis refused to see this adaptation of his debut novel after hearing about all the changes that were made. Robert Downey Jr. co-stars in the movie as a drug addict before becoming (in his words) "an exaggeration of the character" in real life. What's the shared title?

Only two films in this (as of 2018) 5-film series are book adaptations. The first book kills off one of the film adaptation’s most beloved characters in the epilogue, so the author had to find a way to bring him back to be the main character in the sequel. Other than sharing the same main character and the setting, the book and the movie for this first sequel are pretty different animals. The same character also makes an appearance in the latest entry into the franchise. What's the name of the series?

For the last question, I’m going to turn things around and ask about an adaptation returning to the source. Most Frankenstein movies more closely resemble the 1931 Universal film (which itself was based on earlier adaptations) than the original 1818 novel. Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 adaptation, which bore the full title Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, sought to reclaim the original story. Who played “The Creature” in this version?