Writers Have Pride...

Earlier today, I saw that HBO Studios had released the names of the actors who were going to play the roles of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley in the upcoming Harry Potter series. This particular series is one that has generated a lot of buzz, most notably for the casting of a black man in the role of Severus Snape.

As an avid Harry Potter fan, I’m looking forward to the show. I’ve read all the books and seen all the movies, and it’s something that I’m definitely looking forward to. I have to say, this might be the first show based on a book that I’ve read before watching it. As in, I can literally tell you everything that happened right from the first book up until the very end. That’s how much of a fan I am.

And I’m sure that seeing as J.K. Rowling, the author, would be heavily involved in it, there would be little margin for error. Because I’ve come to see that shows and movies based on already existing material usually flop unless the original writers are heavily involved. For the Harry Potter movies, J.K. Rowling was immensely involved and had so many clauses in her contract so that nothing happened to the integrity of the story.

They followed as closely as possible what happened in the story, and that could be why it was such a success. The same can be said for Game of Thrones; everyone agrees that the best seasons were the initial ones until the original writer of the books left them, and that’s when things started going downhill. Let’s leave HBO and study other successful shows based on books: Reacher, Wheel Of Time, Vampire Diaries, Shadow Hunters… these were all successful and widely loved because of how closely the showrunners followed the source material.

Take Shadow Hunters for instance, before the series, there was the movie called Mortal Instruments that was a major flop, and I heard that the original author of the book didn’t like how they treated it at all, which was why she took part in the series herself. And see what we got.

The halls of Hollywood are lined with movies and shows made based on source materials, but turned out to be flops because the producers didn’t follow said materials. And it can be annoying when people suddenly make changes to characters that you’ve come to love and know very well. It’s especially annoying when they suddenly change the race, gender, and even personality of some of your greatest characters.

But the truth is, as a writer, I can understand. One of the greatest fears of every writer is not having their voice heard, and every writer will do whatever they can to make their mark in whatever they do. So, even if they’re working on a book written by someone else, closely following that book would not feel original at all. They would want to make a mark, they would want to be unique from the source material. They would want to be original, in a way.

And many times, this only ends up ruining the experience for the fans. And it ends up bombing. It’ll be a case of what you ordered vs what you got. Imagine watching a Spiderman movie and instead of Uncle Ben and Aunt May, we have Aunt Benita and Uncle Mark. Or in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart we get Ogechi instead of Okonkwo. Or even if it’s still Okonkwo, but they change him so drastically, alter his character to the point that you, who read the book dozens of times, won’t even recognize the character at all.

And then, no writer likes people altering their works. And that’s why many of them are always producers on whatever movies or shows their books are featured in. It worked for Game Of Thrones, Percy Jackson and The Olympians, Reacher, and it would still work for Harry Potter, Chronicles Of Narnia, and whatever book-based movie is coming out next.

So, I guess it’s just a clash of wills here. Writers have pride, and they try to protect that. And many times, the fans get to suffer for it. Well, writers are learning and getting better. With time, I’m sure that they’ll be more receptive to working on other people’s works without feeling the need to make it explicitly theirs.