Books
30 Books To Read Before They Become Movies In 2020
We're sick of the age-old argument that Hollywood has run out of ideas. Just because all ten of the highest-grossing films of 2019 were book adaptations, sequels, or remakes doesn't show a lack of faith in innovative screenplays from up-and-coming writers, and Disney's slow but steady monopoly of the entertainment industry isn't worrying in the slightest. We're excited to meet our rodent overlords!
In honor of the Mouse and his bibliophile friends, we've compiled this list of 2020 movie adaptations based on our favorite books. Most of these films have been a long-time coming, and we can't wait to finally see them make it to the big screen.
P.S. I Still Love You
YouTube
Noah Centineo and Lana Condor are back for the hotly-anticipated sequel to Netflix's surprise hit To All The Boys I've Loved Before, based on Jenny Han's novel P.S. I Still Love You. Jordan Fischer will be joining the dynamic duo as a rival love interest for Lara Jean's heart, the final recipient of her missent letters. While To All The Boys I've Loved Before 2: P.S. I Love You is premiering just in time for Valentine's Day on February 12, 2020, production has already begun on the trilogy's final film, Always and Forever, Lara Jean.
Artemis Fowl
Walt Disney Pictures
Disney's Artemis Fowl was originally slated to release in August 2019 before being delayed seven months, likely due to a revamped distribution schedule caused by Disney's acquisition of Fox. Based on Eoin Colfer's children's series of the same name, Artemis Fowl follows a wealthy prodigy who discovers faries living under the Earth's surface and uses them to his own advantage. The Artemis Fowl film has been in development since 2001, with August's delay being the most recent in nearly two decades of disruptions and difficulties. Hopefully, its May 2020 release date sticks.
Stargirl
Disney+
Not to be confused with the DC Universe series of the same name, also premiering in 2020, Stargirl follows a girl who is first embraced, then shunned by her high school peers for her nonconformity and is given decidedly unhelpful advice from her boyfriend Leo, who encourages her to assimilate into "normal" society. The 2000 novel by Jerry Spinelli inspired Stargirl Societies across the nation promoting nonconformity and acceptance, and its film adaptation will be coming to Disney+ sometime in 2020. Starring America's Got Talent winner Grace VanderWaal, the film will likely be released sooner rather than later.
The Secret Garden
The latest retelling of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden released its first teaser trailer in September 2019, revealing Dixie Egerickx as Mary Lennox, a 10-year-old British girl who moves from India to her reclusive uncle's English home following her parent's death. Colin Firth joins Dixie as Uncle Archibald Craven, following a 1987 TV movie performance as Mary's cousin Colin. Although The Secret Garden has yet to secure a domestic release date, it arrives overseas in April 2020, and with Dixie's casting as a series regular on HBO's new Game of Thrones prequel, we're sure STX Entertainment will be eager to find a place for it in their 2020 lineup.
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Lionsgate
The Knife of Never Letting Go's big-screen adaptation, Chaos Walking has received its fair share of bad press after a disastrous first cut resulted in reports that the film was "unreleasable" by The Wall Street Journal, IndieWire, and apparently anyone else unfortunate enough to see the $100 million YA adaptation before its major reshoots in 2019. The Lionsgate film features Tom Holland as Todd Hewitt, a man led to believe a pathogen killed all of the women in his colony world, giving the surviving men the ability to hear inside people and animal's minds. Daisy Ridley also stars as Viola Eade, a mysterious woman who causes Todd to question everything he knows about the New World.
The Devil All the Time
Another Tom Holland flick coming in 2020, The Devil All the Time follows an ensemble cast in rural Ohia and West Virginia from the end of World War II through the 1960s. Tom is joined by Bill Skarsgård hot off his spooky turn in It: Chapter 2, a pre-Batman Robert Pattinson, and the Winter Solider himself, Sebastian Stan. Riley Keough, Mia Goth, and Mia Wasikowska round out the Jake Gyllenhaal-produced psychological thriller's heavy-hitting lineup, with Netflix set to distribute the 2020 movie adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock's novel of the same name.
Two Kisses for Maddy
Matthew Logelin's Two Kisses For Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love was originally envisioned as a vehicle for actor-producer Channing Tatum in May 2015, but in January 2019, it was announced that stand-up comedian Kevin Hart would be replacing the Magic Mike star after the project changed hands from TriStar Pictures to Columbia. Now entitled Fatherhood, the tale of a father raising his daughter as a single parent following his wife's death 27 hours after she gave birth to their child. Barry scene-stealer Anthony Carrigan also stars in this 2020 movie adaptation, scheduled for an April 3 release.
Death on the Nile
20th Century Fox
Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as Hercule Poirot in this Agatha Christie 2020 movie adaptation alongside Gal Godot, Armie Hammer, and Letitia Wright. Poirot investigates the murder of a young heiress in the classic detective tale first published in 1937 and retooled into countless film, radio, video game, graphic novel, and television productions during its 83-year history. Envisioned as a sequel to 20th Century Fox's 2017 Murder on the Orient Express, also starring and directed by Kenneth, the multi-hyphenate told AP he has plans for an entire cinematic universe of films centered around Poirot's exploits.
Dragon Rider
Constantin Film
Corenila Funke's bestselling children's novel Dragon Rider will be getting the 2020 movie adaptation treatment with an animated film written by Gnomeo & Juliet's Johnny Smith for an August release. The impressive voice cast includes Rogue One's Felicity Jones, Sir Patrick Stewart, and Freddie Highmore, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster who will tell the story of silver dragon Firedrake, mountain spirit Sorrel, and young orphan Ben as they search for a new dragon habitat in the Himalayas after Firedrake's valley becomes uninhabitable. A rare European animated blockbuster, Dragon Rider has yet to find a domestic distributor but has been sold to a host of international territories according to Variety.
The King’s Man
Walt Disney Studios
A prequel to 20th Century Fox's successful Kingsman film series based on Marvel's Secret Service comic series, The King's Man is scheduled for a February 2020 release with Ralph Fiennes starring as The Duke of Oxford. A third film in the modern Kingsman franchise was filmed directly after The King's Man, which focuses on the formation of the titular spy agency, with a spin-off Statesman film and an eight-hour television mini-series soon to follow. Originally slated for a November 2019 release, The King's Man is another 2020 movie adaptation affected by Disney's Fox acquisition.
The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle
This isn't Eddie Murphy's Doctor Dolittle. In case you were wondering whether Tom Holland's career would flourish in a post-Spider-Man world, let his inclusion in yet another 2020 movie adaptation ease your mind. Here, the twenty-something voices one of many cartoon animals aiding Robert Downey Jr.'s incarnation of the famous veterinarian, joined by a VO ensemble of Emma Thompson, Michael Sheen, Rami Malek, Ralph Fiennes, Selena Gomez, Antonio Banderas, and every other actor you can name off the top of your head. Based on Hugh Lofting's 1922 novel of the same name, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle will be released on January 17.
The Turn of the Screw
Universal Pictures
Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw has been transformed for the big screen as The Turning, a 2020 movie adaptation starring Finn Wolfhard and Brooklynn Prince as children placed in the care of a young governess by their uncle following the deaths of their parents. The governess, played by Mackenzie Davis, discovers that both the children and the house in which they reside are harboring evil secrets. Deadline Hollywood reports that The Turning has been in development since March 2016, when Steven Spielberg picked it up as a horror passion project before personally pulling the plug in September of the same year. With a new creative team, the film has been given a January 24 release date.
Call of the Wild
River/MEGA
The Revenant meets Snow Dogs in this story original published by Jack London in 1903. Call of the Wild follows a St. Bernard/Scotch Collie named Buck during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush who was stolen from his California home into sled dog service, where he becomes progessively more feral in his fight to survive the wild. The live-action CGI remake of 1935's Call of the Wild film will star Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Karen Gillian, and Bradley Whitford. Before you ask, no, they're not all playing dogs. This isn't Cats: The Musical: The Movie. Call of the Wild will be hitting the silver screen on February 21, 2020.
Peter Rabbit 2
Columbia Pictures
Margot Robbie will have two films coming out on February 7, 2020. Which one you see will say a lot about where you're at in life. Do you enjoy comic books, bad*ss women, and hotly-anticipated blockbusters? You'll probably see the other one. If you're more of a "stay at home with your kids" type or you're in desperate need of a conversation with your inner child, you might find yourself watching Peter Rabbit 2, a follow-up to 2018's Peter Rabbit starring Margot, Daisy Ridley, and Rose Byrne. Truly, something for everyone.
The Good Shepherd
Dreamworks Distribution
C.S. Forester's 1955 war novel The Good Shepherd has been rebranded Greyhound for Tom Hanks's 2020 passion project. The Oscar-winning actor wrote the screenplay and stars alongside Elisabeth Shue and Devin Druid in the story of a Navy commander during the early days of World War II who encounters a ground of German U-boats in the North Atlantic. Greyhound has been given a May 8, 2020 opening after being pushed from its original March 22, 2019 release date in January of that year.
The Invisible Man
Universal Pictures
Coming off an incredible featured role in Zendaya’s HBO hit Euphoria, Storm Reid co-stars alongside Elisabeth Moss and Oliver Jackson-Cohen in Blumhouse Production's modern adaptation of The Invisible Man. Jason Blum's namesake company is best known for genre-bending low-budget horror films like Get Out, Happy Death Day, and Paranormal Activity, and the Duke of Dread is bringing his signature style to the H.G. Wells sci-fi classic in February 2020. In this modern reimagining, Elisabeth's Cecilia is trying to build a better life after her abusive boyfriend kiss himself, but mysterious happenings make her question whether he's really gone.
Bloodshot
One of Rotten Tomatoes most anticipated movies of 2020, Bloodshot follows Valiant Comic's amnesiac super-soldier as he tries to discover who he is and what forces are controlling him. The assassin's relaunch series made a strong case for Bloodshot as the superhero that puts Sony's new Valiant Cinematic Universe on the map, with a Harbinger film not far behind him. In 2015, Sony inked a five-picture deal with Marvel's prodigal son — Valiant was founded by a former Marvel editor-in-chief during the late '80s — and this Vin Diesel vehicle will prove if Valiant has what it takes to compete with the MCU. Now that Spidey's back at Sony, maybe he'll find his way into a new multi-verse...
Without Remorse
Coach
You had us at Michael B. Jordan. The Black Panther actor takes center stage in Paramount's 2020 movie adaptation of Tom Clancy's Without Remorse, the tale of former Navy SEAL John Kelly, who seeks vengence on Baltimore's brutal drug cartels after losing his lover in a brutal gangland attack. Without Remorse will set the stage for another book-to-film adaptation, Variety reports, with Michael starring and producing in Rainbow Six, which follows his character as the head of a counter-terrorism unit. Thriller fans might know John Kelly better as John Clark — Without Remorse is the origin story of the Jack Ryan character, and it sounds like Paramount is ready to go all-in on the franchise starting with Without Remorse's release in September.
The Woman in the Window
IMDb
No one jadedly looks out of windows quite like Amy Adams. Her Enchanted days feel long in the past, with HBO's Sharp Objects exemplifying her transformation from IRL Disney princess to world-weary basket case, and May's The Woman in the Window seems like a natural next step. 2020's answer to Rear Window, Woman's peeping Tom is an agoraphobic woman living along in New York City who accidentally witnesses a disturbing act of violence. She's joined by Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore, and Anthony Mackie in this adaptation A.J. Finn's psychological thriller.
Minamata
IMDb
We (Hollywood) forgave Johnny Depp pretty quickly, huh? The accused domestic abuser and cultural appropriator (if you ask Mandatory) takes the lead in Andrew Levitas's Minimata, an autobiographical account of war photographer Eugene Smith's Japanese tour documenting the devastating effect of mercury poisoning throughout the county's coastline. The title Minimata comes from a western city of the same name that was poisoned by a local chemical plant in the mid-1950s and became one of the first exposures to the severe neurological consequences of mercury poisoning.
Fear Street
Forget Stephen King — R.L. Stine invented horror fiction. Attributed to hundreds of children's thrillers, most notably Goosebumps and Mostly Ghostly, the artist formerly known as Robert Lawrence has kept a shockingly low profile on the silver screen, exclusively focusing on television adaptations before 2015's Goosebumps film and its 2018 sequel. After 34 years of literary excellence, that 2020's Fear Street is only the second R.L. Stine series to make it to the big screen seems sillier than a cave-dwelling snowman being your biological father.
The Witches
Spooky SZN 2020 is taking things to the next level with October's adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches. Co-written by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris, this adaptation of Roald's dark fantasy is meant to stay closer to its source material than the 1990 attempt, but it won't be a cut-and-dry retelling of the supernatural children's tale. The novel's pasty English-Norwegian lead will be replaced by an African-American actor, and its 1980s England setting has been swapped for 1960s Alabama. If you're not intrigued, you're not paying attention.
Mulan
Walt Disney Pictures
March 2020's Mulan is, first and foremost, the latest in an unending string of live-action Disney remakes that no one asked for but everyone will pay to see. We've brought this upon ourselves. The triumph of Beyoncé's Lion King in 2019 (and, let's be honest, it was *Beyoncé's* Lion King) basically erased any leftover PTSD from March's Dumbo attempt, and this crazy whirligig of fun shows no signs of stopping. Mulan is best-known by American audiences for making a man out of us all back in 1998, but the film was inspired by an ancient Chinese legend immortalized in a 6th-century epic, The Ballad of Mulan.
The New Mutants
Walt Disney Pictures
Supposedly, Josh Boone's take on The New Mutants will finally nab a theatrical release in April 2020, but we've been fooled before. Nearly two years after the thirteenth and final X-Men film was pushed back for reshoots to make the film more frightening, wild rumors started flying around that Marvel has wiped the Maisie Williams thriller of all references to the X-Men franchise to allow The New Mutants into the MCU as a mini-franchise in its own right. We're not really buying that one, either, but if The New Mutants is half as good as it looks in previews, we won't be getting rid of the X-Men anytime soon.
No Time To Die
MGM
That's right — James Bond was a book first! You probably already knew that, but we were pleasantly surprised that the most prolific (and problematic) secret agent came from a series of novels written by British journalist Ian Fleming in the 1950s and '60s. Bond superfans are looking forward to a special cameo during Daniel Craig's fifth outing as 007. No, not Rami Malek returning as the Moriarty to Bond's Sherlock Holmes — the official James Bond Twitter account revealed that Bond's quintessential Aston Martin DB5 will be making an appearance on the streets of Southern Italy.
Enola Holmes
The Stranger Things kids are taking over Hollywood. By the end of 2020, sleeper star Finn Wolfhard will have more silver screen clout at 16 than most actors three times his age, but unsurprisingly, his on-screen GF Millie Bobbie Brown is preparing to turn her career up to eleven. First, she'll headline Harry Bradbeer's Enola Holmes adaptation, with household names like Helena Bonham Carter, Henry Cavill, and Sam Claflin at her flank. As the title character, Millie will follow in big brother Sherlock's footsteps as she tries to solve her mother's disappearance and a handful of other crimes before her peskily shrewd siblings get in the way.
The One and Only Ivan
HarperCollins
Helen Mirren's sense of humor has been underrated for far too long. The Documentary Now! hostess, When Harry Met Sally 2 with Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren namesake, and Fast & Furious franchise star will make her first appearence of 2020 in The One and Only Ivan, an animated aventure fit for a Dame. Sam Rockwell voices the titular Ivan with Angelina Jolie as his elephant BFF, Stella. Listen for appearances from Bryan Cranston and Danny DeVito as well because when Hollywood hears Helen has signed on, all bets are off.
Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier's masterclass in gothic romance is either your favorite book from high school or the bane of your existence. The radiant Lily James takes on our tragic heroine Mrs. de Winter with Greek God Armie Hammer as her mysterious husband. And suddenly, Rebecca makes a lot more sense. We'd fight a dead b*tch for Armie Hammer, too. This star-studded affair is a Netflix Original, and we imagine a production of this caliber will reawaken the industry argument over streaming movies winning big at the Oscars. That being said, if the streaming giant manages to mess this one up, we'll be flaming mad.
Birds of Prey
Warner Bros.
Keep talking about Joaquin Pheonix's white terrorist Joker and Pete Davidson's Suicide Squad casting. We'll be right here, waiting for Birds of Prey to finally hit theatres in February. Obviously an adaptation of the Birds of Prey-centric DC Comics (which totally count as books, BTW), we've been looking forward to Margot Robbie's bad*ss vision of Harley Quinn's fantabulous emancipation since Jared Leto was putting on a happy face in 2016. With a cinema-exclusive teaser trailer airing right before It: Chapter Two and a poster straight out of Taylor Swift's Lover-induced fever dreams, DC knows they've got a hit on their hands.
Dune
'90s kids don't get all the fun. (Well, technically, '90s kids get very little of the fun considering the mess our economy is in — thanks, Boomers!) When David Lynch married his otherworldly direction with the film debut of Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan in 1984's adaptation of Dune, an entirely new breed of Gen X-er was born: the type that understands great movies don't have to be very good. While we'll never forget the OG cult classic, Dune fans are long overdue for an undeniably HQ retelling of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic. With Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgård, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem onboard, December 2020's Dune is guarenteed to be a feast for the eyes at the very least.
