Hayley breaks down the films and TV series based on books due to hit screens in the coming months.
Superman
DC Comics’ attempt at matching the span and success of the MCU might be dead in the water, but nothing is stopping them from taking another crack at it, so they are. A new Superman will be kicking off the new DCU, with Twisters star David Corenswet taking up the mantle from Henry Cavill in the fourth big screen representation of the iconic superhero. Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn is at the helm of a film full of light and colour with a pretty classic feel, at an absolute contrast to the gritty, noirish look of its 2022 counterpart, The Batman (though they won't actually share the same universe–who can keep up?) The new story centres Supes in a circle of familiar characters from the comics, including his girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and arch-nemesis Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), as well as fellow superheroes Hawkgirl and Green Lantern.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
I Know What You Did Last Summer
I was unsure about whether this belongs in the post since it’s technically a sequel to the second film in the series, but it also kind of has the same plot from the first film and Lois Duncan’s novel, and it has the same title, so I’m counting it. I Know What You Did Last Summer compiles a new group of young friends, including Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders, who accidentally kill someone in a car accident, cover it up and try to continue on with their lives, only to be stalked by their own murderer who–you guessed it–knows what they did last summer. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. are returning to reprise their roles from the first two films, making it more of a nostalgia-fuelled “requel,” in the vein of its fellow slashers Scream and Halloween, than a straight-up reboot.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
With Disney finally getting their hands on the rights to the Fantastic Four characters after their acquisition of 20th Century Fox, another reboot was instantly on the table, bringing Marvel’s beloved family into the fold of the MCU. The previous two attempts under Fox have been… less than fantastic, with the 2005 film and its sequel doing moderately well at the box office but tanking with critics, while the 2018 rehash will probably go down as one of the biggest blockbuster bombs of all time from every angle. Disney’s Marvel Studios is undoubtedly desperate to get it right this time with The Fantastic Four: First Steps, dropping an all-star cast of Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach into a retro-futuristic new world to take on baddies Galactus and the Silver Surfer.
The Friend
The second Sigrid Nunez adaptation to hit theatres within a year, The Friend joins the previously released The Room Next Door, both of which premiered in the fall festival season of 2024, five thousand miles and three days apart at Telluride and Venice, respectively. Based on Nunez’s National Book Award-winning 2018 novel of the same name, The Friend stars Naomi Watts as Iris, a writer living in New York City who finds herself bequeathed with an enormous Great Dane when her friend Walter (Bill Murray) dies; a dog that is grieving the loss of his master and has her at risk of losing her rent-controlled apartment in the West Village. A new entry to the canon of Dog Movies, this is sure to be a tear-jerker, though it’s said to be missing some of the bite from the novel.
The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman’s ridiculously popular Thursday Murder Club series is finally coming to the screen, with one hell of a cast and crew behind it. Directed by Christopher Columbus (Home Alone, the first two Harry Potter films) and produced by Steven Spielberg (credits not required), the film is coming to Netflix with a distinctly Knives Out-ish vibe, no doubt riding on the boom that murder mysteries have experienced on the screen as well as the page. Celia Imrie, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley star as the central quartet of septuagenarian amateur detectives, who meet every Thursday in their retirement village to solve cold cases, until an actual current murder is committed on their doorstep and they find themselves in deeper than they’ve ever been.
The Long Walk
In news that shocks no one, least of all me, we already have our third major Stephen King adaptation of the year so far (and there's still another two coming!) with The Long Walk, based on one of his earlier novels, published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1979. While the book has never seen an adaptation, it has a long history of passing hands in Hollywood, with George A. Romero and Frank Darabont attached at different times since 1988. It eventually landed with Francis Lawrence, director of all films in The Hunger Games series, bar the first (a pretty on-the-nose choice considering the similarities). Set in an alternate dystopian version of the United States, The Long Walk follows a barbaric walking contest that sees young men pitted against each other for a prize of the winner’s choosing, with one principal rule: walk or die.
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