Throughout the years, some of the most popular movies or shows to hit the big screen have been evolved from book series from incredible authors around the world.
We can go back to the early 2000’s when J.K. Rowling's book series “Harry Potter”, grew into one of the most popular movie adaptations to this day in age. There are the heart wrenching Nicholas Sparks novels that tugged at your heartstrings even more when we got the opportunity to watch the love play out on the screens in front of us, rather than just through written word. To think about the large dystopian era of the 2010 decade that flooded our theaters because of authors writing marvelous novels such as “The Hunger Games”, “Maze Runner”, and “Divergent”.
When we are reading a book, the world is being brought to life in our minds, as we are being taken on a journey alongside the characters, almost as if we are there right beside them the entire time. If you connect with the book in some way, you get the privilege of being invited into an entire universe that is separate from the reality your body is in.
That is the beauty of writing and reading that we all get to experience at some point in our life. However, it all can grow and change when a book has the ability to actually become a movie in front of you, rather than just in your mind. This can be both a good and bad thing to the avid reader.
The ability to see the different adaptations of something you love is beautiful, yet the truth comes that the movie will not be how you imagined the book to look like as it played through your mind as you read. There are always things that are left out of the movie, even parts that were specifically important to you, and the characters never seem to perfectly match how you dreamed every person would look like if it was brought to life.
Which means it is always incredibly important to go into these types of movies with a completely open mind. To know that it will not turn out exactly as you hoped, but it does have the ability to be better than you wished for. The characters on the screen have the ability (and job) to bring the characters to life in a way you had never been able to see before, and that is magic in its own way.
A book that is currently in its exchange from merely just novel to film is the TikTok famous, bestselling novel written by Colleen Hoover known as, “It Ends With Us”. A story about a young woman named Lily Bloom who grew up in a home where walking on eggshells was normal for most of her life. As she grows into an adult, she spends her days trying to figure out what love is actually supposed to mean. Is it supposed to be kind? Will she end up in the same situation as her mom? Is her love the boy with a warm soul from when she was young, or is it the put-together doctor she has found in the city of her dreams?
To go on the adventure next to Lily Bloom is to see what life and falling in love looks like through her perspective, while feeling like you are there next to her every step of the way. That you are also falling in love and experiencing the people in her life, as if the story was written solely for you. That is the magic of reading a novel.
The New York Times Bestseller grew a following incredibly quickly and loudly, that the love story is now being made into a movie to be in the theaters in the next few years. With this information came a million opinions from fans all over the world. Specifics about who needed to exactly be casted to make the characters perfectly align with the movie that ran in our minds as we flipped the pages, and what scenes 100% needed to be provided to make the movie worth it.
Justin Baldoni, the man behind making the book into a movie, is taking the fans' thoughts into full swing, allowing, for what seems like the first time, for a film to be pieced together by the same humans that are in love with the book, as much as they possibly can.
Baldoni began announcing characters they have found to be perfect for the film, with Lily Bloom being played by Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni deciding to be Ryle, and most recently, Brandon Sklenar being casted as Atlas Corrigan.
This casting has had mixed reviews as fans have slowly been kept in on what is happening behind the scenes of the movie, and are making sure their opinions are loud and clear for Baldoni and Hoover to hear.
It is that transition from book to movie, where the trust of your imagination is being placed into the hands of the director and writers, with hope that the book that you have loved becomes at least partly what you dreamed it would be.
“It Ends With Us” is an incredible novel and the people involved with making it into a movie are all putting their hearts into making it what the supporters are hoping for. All it takes is a little trust, imagination, and an open mind to fall in love with a movie adaptation, just as you did with the novel the first time you read it.
Edited By: Youssef Eljarray
