In Contrast, How Many Famous Films Are Based on Famous Novels?

What were the literary sources, if any, for the top 100 movies?

Reversing my approach in my earlier post “Do Famous Novels Make Famous Films” in which I saw how many novels that made the 1998 Modern Library Top 100 list had been adapted into excellent films (a fair number, but perhaps less than you’d expect), today I’m starting with the Internet Movie DataBase top 100 rated films and then looking up their printed word sources.

As I mentioned, the IMDB film ratings are skewed toward the tastes of younger males who are really into rating things. So they are biased in favor of more recent movies and they are not all that elitist due to the huge sample sizes, up to 3 million one-to-ten ratings for a single movie. (In contrast, the the Modern Library Top 100 novels were skewed highbrow and toward the first half of the 20th Century).

But, still, IMDB’s list is a not unreasonable list of what younger male film enthusiasts have been into in this century. So, it’s interesting to see where filmmakers are getting their ideas for memorable movies.

Here’s IMDB’s top 100 and their printed sources, if any. If I leave blank the source, that means the story and screenplay were all made up by film industry professionals for this film. E.g., Pulp Fiction never appeared on pulp. Instead, it’s an original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary.

I’ll put the last 65 movies and my notes and thesis below the paywall.