Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It’s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries. 

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Wesley Morris has served as critic at large at The New York Times since 2015, covering film, politics, and pop culture. He joins this week to discuss this year’s Academy Award nominations.

At the top, we discuss the omission of Greta Gerwig from the Best Director category, former Secretary Clinton on Barbie-gate, the ‘perversely effective’ nature of Killers of the Flower Moon, and the ways in which Bradley Cooper’s Maestro upends the traditional biopic. Wesley then reflects on his early adventures in moviegoing, the indie film boom of the late ‘90s, the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what the Best Picture nominations of 1988 can tell us about 2023’s slate, and the erosion of the ‘middle’ across film and culture.

In the back-half: Todd Haynes’ beguiling new film May December, Ava DuVernay’s Origin, the Academy’s fraught relationship to diversity, the function of Wesley’s work in 2024, and a reading of his moving, personal review about Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode: 

Sam Fragoso: What we’ve lost is the ‘middle’ of movies, the drama or comedy that has no great aspirations. It was not made to win or be nominated for awards. I want to try to unpack how—and why—we’re here. Do you see any parallels between the decline in film criticism with the decline in filmmaking? Did one precipitate the other?

Wesley Morris: Well, that’s a more complicated proposition, because the decline in film criticism is related to the decline of periodicals where film criticism thrived. I think the two things are related but not necessarily causal of each other. I do, however, think that in the last fifteen years, there’s been a sort of downgrading of what a review can do and should do. You know, there’s this tension between coming up with a review—liking something a lot, they love that—or really panning something. When I worked at The Boston Globe, for instance, we gave things stars. If I was like, “Killers of the Flower Moon: two stars” that would have superseded anything I would have necessarily wrote about it. That middle place, the middle of moviemaking is gone, a kind of mixed criticism… people have lost patience for that. That a movie can’t have things that work and don’t work. The disappearance of the middle— there are so many middles that have disappeared. Middle ground, middlebrow, middle class. There’s either, or. There’s very little room for not even debate and disagreement, but just complexity. I find it really interesting that none of the ten nominees on this Best Picture list include May December. Did you see that movie?

SF: I love it.

WM: Yeah, I did not the first time I saw it. Then I went and saw it again, and was like, “What was my problem?” I saw it the next day. That’s a movie that has so much going on. It’s so of a piece with where we are right now. It’s not telling you what it’s doing or how it’s feeling or what it even is. It’s like the weird touchless-ness of Todd Haynes, even though there is so much touching in this movie— the music is touching, the butterfly metaphors are touching you. His fingerprints are all over this thing, but it still feels like the hand guiding it is completely invisible and these characters are just doing whatever it is that they’ve been set on this earth to do. To sit down and talk about this movie and what is happening here… it is really deep and really satisfying to unpack it or argue with people about it. Like, I leave a movie and do not trust my response to it. And in the case of May December, I just went the next day and saw it again. It was like seeing something dead come to life right before your eyes. I found that expansion of my mind exhilarating.

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Sam Fragoso is the host of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, a weekly series of conversations with artists, activists, and politicians. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and NPR. After conducting seminal interviews with icons like Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and Noam Chomsky, he independently founded Talk Easy in 2016.

Mean girls make everything better, at least when it comes to storytelling. Without them, there’d be no conflict, no plot, no grit. And only in the last two decades or so have female characters been increasingly free to be awful, which is its own kind of liberation.

With the release of the new Mean Girls musical movie, the original Mean Girls celebrating its twentieth anniversary in April, and my new book about Mean Girls’ history and legacy, So Fetch, out now, it’s the perfect time to consider why we love spiky heroines like Cady Heron and genuinely terrifying villains like Regina George.

The following books about “mean girls,” from the Cadys who can’t help being attracted to the apex predator lifestyle, to the Reginas who rule by manipulation and fear, show us the inescapable power dynamics of living in any social system. Everyone can relate: reality stars, powerful professionals, publishing assistants, nineteenth-century socialites, MFA candidates, moms, and anyone trying to survive in Hollywood.

Here are some of the best books about “mean girls,” from classics to modern tales, fiction and non.

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Mona Awad, Bunny

Samantha Heather Mackey is a loner attending an elite MFA program on scholarship, but finds herself surrounded by wealthy girls with a cult-like devotion to calling each other “Bunny.” But everything changes when she finds herself mysteriously invited to the Bunnies’ infamous “Smut Salon,” and soon she’s leaving behind her friend Ava to join what turns out to be a social circle with a dark vortex.

Mean Girls meets Heathers meets cutthroat academia: What’s not to love?

Andrea Bartz, The Herd

There’s no better setting in which to examine mean-girl dynamics than a chic all-female coworking space (a la the once-powerful Wing). In The Herd, workspace CEO Eleanor Walsh, the quintessential girlboss, vanishes on the night she’s scheduled to give a high-profile press conference. The subsequent investigation exposes secrets and lies among the friends who have helped her to get where she is—and ridden her coattails.

The twists to come reveal the ways young professional women are taught to see each other as rivals, and the ways they struggle desperately to keep up perfect appearances, even, especially, among “friends.”

Anna Bogutskaya, Unlikeable Female Characters

Regina George herself is cited as her own genre of “unlikeable” female character in this nonfiction exploration of, as the subtitle says, “the women pop culture wants you to hate.” Bogutskaya traces the evolution of major characters from good girls to true anti-heroines, and ultimately celebrates the liberating effects of such characters, which give women permission to be their bitchiest, messiest selves.

Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl

This gripping supernatural thriller, since adapted into a Hulu series, tells the story of young publishing assistant Nella, who’s thrilled when the company she works for, Wagner Books, finally hires another young Black woman, Hazel. But their quick friendship begins to falter as Hazel becomes the new office star at the expense of Nella—maybe intentionally, maybe not.

And then some really strange stuff starts going on, indicating that whatever is happening goes far beyond their Nella and Hazel’s Cady/Regina dynamic.

Caroline Kepnes, Providence

Kepnes is known for the engrossing You series (and its maniacally compelling murderer-narrator Joe Goldberg), but here she weaves sci-fi elements into her tale of Jon and Chloe, will-they-won’t-they best friends who seem destined for a rom com ending…until he’s kidnapped by their H.P.-Lovecraft-obsessed substitute teacher. While mourning Jon’s disappearance, Chloe enters classic mean girls territory, hoping to crack the cool-kid crowd now that she’s set adrift.

Things take many weird turns from there, but at its core, Providence s about the eternal human longing for friendship and fitting in, especially during the young-adult years.

Leah Konen, Keep Your Friends Close

Mom friends aren’t immune from mean girls tendencies. In Konen’s forthcoming thriller (out February 20), newly divorced Mary is desperate for connection as she mourns her marriage and fights a custody battle, so she’s thrilled to meet Willa, a charismatic fellow mom at a Brooklyn park. After Mary reveals a secret about her ex to her new friend, Willa disappears from her life…only to reappear months later when Mary relocates to upstate New York.

Stranger still, Willa is now calling herself Annie and has an entirely new family. And then Mary’s ex suddenly turns up dead. Via this twisty murder mystery, Keep Your Friends Close tackles everything from mom cliques to mom-friend ghosting, and one scene even directly evokes the Mean Girls cafeteria.

Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister and The Luckiest Girl Alive

Knoll is a surefire bestseller for a reason. Her women are remarkably, unapologetically complicated, and her success only proves how eager female readers are to see themselves, at their barbed best and worst, reflected in their books. In The Favorite Sister, Knoll tackles reality TV tropes and sisterhood at their gnarliest, and in her debut, The Luckiest Girl Alive, she combines mean-girl high school politics with school shootings and the pressure to make good as a wife and mother for an incendiary commentary on modern womanhood.

Knoll knows how to make a mean girl human, and how to make a mean-girl experience meaningful.

Kirthana Ramisetti, Advika and the Hollywood Wives

Ramisetti’s novel is an Alice in Wonderland-like journey into the vertigo-inducing world of high-rolling Hollywood. Aspiring screenwriter Advika Srinivasan is working as a bartender at the Oscars afterparty when she’s suddenly whisked to the upper echelons of showbiz power via a flirtation with legendary director Julian Zelding, which quickly progresses to courtship and marriage.

Just one month after their wedding, though, Julian’s first wife, famous actress Evie Lockhart, dies and stipulates in her will that her ex’s “latest child bride” is to receive $1 million of her fortune and a mysterious film reel, but only if Advika divorces him. What appears at first to be a case of a Regina wreaking havoc from beyond the grave becomes an empowering tale of female solidarity as Advika begins to investigate her new husband’s past through his three ex-wives.

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

Want to go more classic to get your mean girls fix? Wharton’s 1905 novel follows Lily Bart, a beautiful socialite struggling to maintain her place in wealthy New York circles of the Gilded Age. She lives with her aunt and longs for lawyer Lawrence Selden, but feels she must pursue someone wealthier to improve her situation; she lost her parents at age twenty, and has gambling debts but no inheritance.

Things heat up when she discovers that Lawrence used to be romantically involved with mean girl Bertha Dorset, and many North Shore High-like machinations follow from there.

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So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (and Why We’re Still So Obsessed with It) by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong is available via Dey Street Books.

Studio system Hollywood horror films featured Black monsters only when the films were based in “deepest, darkest Africa.” There were savages running around, worshipping big gorillas like King Kong or making do as cannibals eager to dine on white meat. The classic Universal horror creatures were far out of reach of the few Black actors big enough to play them.

Hollywood would never turn Sidney Poitier into a teenage werewolf like Michael Landon, nor would Paul Robeson be cast as Dr. Frankenstein (though he got close enough to that level of madness in The Emperor Jones). Negroes couldn’t even play the Invisible Man, not Ralph Ellison’s version and certainly not H.G. Wells’s. And viewers couldn’t even see him! Mummies were also off the table, even if they did come from Africa.

In January 1972, at the same time Warners was making Super Fly in New York City, director William Crain was in Los Angeles to begin production on the first monster film to feature a Black vampire. Of course, American International Pictures (AIP) made the title a play on “Black Dracula,” calling the film Blacula.

Inspired by the previously successful idea of casting a stage veteran like Vincent Price to class up their low-budget literary adaptations, AIP hired Shakespearian actor William Marshall to portray Prince Mamuwalde, the man who would be Blacula. Marshall was six feet, five inches tall, the same height as the white guy who held the monopoly on vampires in 1972, Christopher Lee. Like Lee, he was also a classically trained opera singer who rarely got to employ that talent onscreen.

Born in Gary, Indiana, in 1924, Marshall had already been working for almost thirty years before he was cast in his signature role. He made his Broadway debut in Carmen Jones in 1944 before being directed by Marty Ritt in Dorothy Heyward’s play Set My People Free in 1948. In 1950, he understudied the role of Captain Hook for fellow monster movie legend Boris Karloff in Peter Pan (in addition to playing Cookson) and, a year later, played De Lawd in a revival of The Green Pastures.

It was seeing that Pulitzer-winning racist musical onstage that made Marshall, then eight years old, want to be an actor. He studied at the Actors Studio before journeying to Europe to play in numerous Shakespeare plays, most notably the lead in Othello (no blackface necessary). The London Sunday Times called him “the best Othello of our time,” which really must have burned Sir Laurence Olivier’s ass with a vengeance! Marshall used his deep, bass voice with preternatural precision, whether as the US attorney general in Robert Aldrich’s excellent 1977 thriller, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, or as the King of Cartoons on the ’80s children show Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

Such an awesome voice also made Marshall a formidable bad guy, though in the case of Blacula, his villainy is far from certain. The screenplay by Joan Torres and Raymond Koenig has an unusual amount of sympathy for Mamuwalde. His tale is tragic, and his lust for blood is more out of need than desire. Even so, their script doesn’t scrimp on the genre goods; Blacula has a large body count, even if the bodies don’t stay dead for long. It also has an ending that destroys its monster in an unconventional fashion.

“‘You’re joking,’ I said, when I was asked to do it,” Marshall told Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times. “But I thought it had possibilities. I had damn near many pages of criticism as there were in the script itself.” AIP declined most of those changes, but some of Marshall’s demands for historical context wound up on the screen: Mamuwalde is African royalty, and he gets to speak a bit of Swahili and educate the viewer on African art and rituals. He never looks less than regal in his human form, carrying himself with a distinguished carriage that matched that incredible voice.

In a pre-credits sequence set in 1780, the powerful Mamuwalde and his beautiful wife, Luva (Vonetta McGee) visit the Transylvanian palace of Dracula (Charles Macaulay). Mamuwalde hopes to get his host’s assistance in stopping the African slave trade, but Dracula does not take too kindly to uppity Negroes who don’t know their place. To quote Gene Siskel’s positive review in the Chicago Tribune, “Dracula, it seems, was a redneck.”

As punishment, Dracula bites Mamuwalde, but not before lecturing him. “You shall pay, Black prince. I shall place a curse of suffering on you that will doom you to a living hell. I curse you with my name. You shall be Blacula!” An even worse fate befalls Luva; she’s left in mortal form to starve and die while listening to Mamuwalde’s anguished screams for blood.

A pause here to pay tribute to Charles Macaulay, whose characters were responsible for the creation of two of the first major movie monsters played by Black actors. Before his Count Dracula turned William Marshall into a vampire, his Dr. Gordon turned Marshall’s future co-star, Pam Grier, into the Panther Woman in The Twilight People. That film, a very-low-budget riff on H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, opened in cinemas in June 1972, a month before Blacula.

Grier told the audience at her 2022 TCM Film Festival tribute that she enjoyed playing a character who was strictly an animal. Her enjoyment is in every frame of her performance. Despite some hideous makeup, Grier is a convincing half-human, half-panther creature who, like Mamuwalde, racks up an impressive body count before her demise.

Blacula’s reign of jugular vein puncturing starts when the film jumps to the present day. Two homosexual interior decorators, an interracial couple named Bobby and Billy, buy Mamuwalde’s coffin and ship it back to Los Angeles. They both think it looks fierce! What’s inside it is equally fierce. Mamuwalde has been starving for blood for two hundred years, so the couple become his first victims and, by extension, his first minions.

At the funeral home, Tina (McGee again) and her sister Michelle (Denise Nicholas) mourn their friends. Tina gets Mamuwalde’s attention because she looks exactly like his former love, Luva. Bobby’s corpse gets the attention of Michelle’s man, pathologist Dr. Gordon, because it is completely drained of blood. Gordon is played by the Blaxploitation ubiquitous actor Thalmus Rasulala. Soon after, Bobby disappears from the funeral home, returning home to his master.

Mamuwalde is obsessed with Tina, and she falls for him despite his inability to appear in the daytime. A photographer friend of hers accidentally takes a picture of the two of them, signing her death certificate because vampires cast neither a reflection nor a photographic image. A taxicab driver, Juanita (Ketty Lester) also gets sucked dry after she runs Mamuwalde over with her cab. Now a vampire, she figures in the most terrifying scene in Blacula, a slow-motion run down a morgue hallway. Her prey is the hapless mortician Sam, played by film noir legend Elisha Cook Jr. in a cameo.

Despite all that biting and sucking, Blacula is a love story where the viewer hopes Tina is indeed Luva reincarnated. She’s surprisingly understanding when Mamuwalde explains why he’s pursued a relationship with her. It’s too bad Dr. Gordon figures out who the Blacula in the title is. Along with Peters (Gordon Pinsent), a cop who gets a sobering lesson in the existence of vampires at Sam’s morgue, the good doctor tracks down his foe. Meanwhile, Tina is hypnotized to follow the bat version of Mamuwalde (yes, he turns into a fake bat on a string) to his hideout.

Just when it looks like the two lovers will be reunited forever, Tina is accidentally shot dead by the cops. After bringing her back to “life” with a vampire bite, Mamuwalde puts her in his coffin. When Peters opens that coffin expecting to find its owner, he stakes Tina instead. Having lost his true love twice in one lifetime, Mamuwalde does something unprecedented in horror movie history. He gives up.

Marshall plays his last scene with a haunting dignity and resignation. Here is a tired Black man, done so wretchedly by bad luck that his only recourse is to end it all. “That won’t be necessary,” he says somberly when Dr. Gordon attempts to stake him. Mamuwalde walks past him and into the daylight, frying himself to death. There’s a sense of relief in his demise, for at last the evil curse put upon him by white racism has been lifted. Blacula ends with a very lousy (but still gross) melted head special effect.

When it opened on July 26, 1972, Blacula didn’t do too poorly with the critics. In addition to Siskel, Variety gave the film a good review, as did the Chicago Reader and the Miami Herald. Audiences liked it as well, bringing in $3,000,000 in ticket sales against a $500,000 budget. Along with Shaft, it was one of the few Blaxploitation films to win an award, earning Best Horror Film at the inaugural sci-fi- and horror-based Saturn Awards.

Though it featured educated Black characters and a lead that was far from a stereotype, Blacula still drew the ire of Junius Griffin. A month before he created the Coalition Against Blaxploitation, he started a beef with Marshall over the actor’s dream project, a film version of Martinique poet Aimé Césaire’s play The Tragedy of King Christophe. King Christophe was a real-life Haitian revolutionary hero, a great opportunity for Marshall, but he was outranked by Anthony Quinn’s competing project, Black Majesty. The Mexican-American Quinn had intended to play the Black lead role himself, causing all manner of controversy. To everyone’s surprise, Griffin endorsed Quinn’s project.

“If Black actors can play demeaning roles in Blacula,” Griffin told Daily Variety, “I could hardly oppose Quinn’s portrayal.” The head of the Los Angeles NAACP did not look good approving a white Latino actor playing a Black character in blackface. As a result, Griffin was forced to resign his post, freeing him up to be a thorn in the side of Blaxploitation. Blacula’s director, William Crain, was on record saying Griffin tied him to a chair to prevent him from working on 1976’s Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde.

Vengefully, Blacula rose again in 1973’s Scream Blacula Scream. Bob Kelljan took over for Crain, but Torres and Koenig returned as scriptwriters. This time, voodoo is added to the mix courtesy of Pam Grier’s Lisa Fortier. It’s how Mamuwalde is reborn. He’s not happy to return, at least until he casts his eyes on Pam. Marshall is a more brutal vampire this time around, and he’s been given a Renfield in the guise of a soul brother named Willis Daniels, played by Richard Lawson in his film debut. Lawson is hilariously over-the-top, going full jive ass at some points before Mamuwalde chews him out for his stupidity.

Like most sequels, Scream Blacula Scream is bigger but not better. The plot is muddled, and the audience sympathy is no longer with Mamuwalde. On the plus side, Marshall and Grier were a dream team for fans, and Grier proves herself worthy of being in the same scream queen fraternity as Jamie Lee Curtis. She didn’t have to go that route, however, because when Scream Blacula Scream hit theaters, Coffy was already making Pam Grier a Blaxploitation star.

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Excerpted from Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxpoitation Cinema by Odie Henderson. Copyright © 2024. Published by Abrams Books.

Megan Hunter’s 2018 novel, The End We Start From, has been adapted for the screen by director Mahalia Belo and stars Jodie Comer. We asked Hunter about the experience.

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How does it feel to see your characters come to life on screen?

It’s an experience that’s very hard to describe; there’s something genuinely life changing about seeing aspects of your imagination take physical form in that way. When I walked onto the set of the flooded flat (which was a real house) I cried—it was somehow exactly as I’d imagined it, down to the water marks on the walls.

There was a real shift in my experience from that moment on, the whole process having an emotional force I was unprepared for, a kind of reliving not only of my experience of writing but of aspects of my own life. Then when I first saw the film I again realized some of its images were just as I saw them when as I was writing; there was something haunting in this, like an echo of a memory filtered through fiction and then the lens of a camera years later.

For all this talk of recognition it is so important to say that the film is something completely new—a work of art in its own right—so beautifully directed by Mahalia Belo, brilliantly written by Alice Birch, and with stunning performances by Jodie Comer and many others. I feel extremely lucky to have had my work adapted—and transformed—by such a dream team of visionary people. I am aware that it’s quite unusual to feel such faith that an adaptation will retain the spirit of the book, but I always did. So each glimpse—and then each viewing of the film—has been a confirmation of this.

But then I also love the parts where the film diverges from the book and adds something new and unexpected. There’s this whole section towards the end which expresses something visually about a woman (and baby) in nature that the book couldn’t have done. There is a scale and beauty there that is unique to the film. I loved seeing that: it felt like something I hadn’t seen before on screen and that it was exciting entirely in its own right, cinematically.

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What’s the best part of having your work adapted for film? 

I think it’s that sense of the work opening out—in new directions, to new people, having your story re-imagined and then worked on in so many different ways—by another writer initially and then by casting, costume, set design, cinematography and so on. There is something magical and thrilling about this in its breadth and opportunity.

When I visited the set I was astonished to see, in person, just how much work goes into every single element, and by so many different teams of people. The collaboration is happening through the work itself, seeing your work become part of someone else’s work, witnessing people finding their own meanings and perspectives within the story.

This process has also helped to awaken my own interest in adaptation and in writing for screen—I’m currently adapting my second novel, The Harpy, for television and also working on other screen projects, and have discovered a real love of this form of writing and collaboration.

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What’s your favorite book to movie adaptation (other than your own)?

I am partial to The Price of Salt/Carol—I read the book first, swiftly followed by the film, and the two are somehow joined in my mind while still remaining distinct in their own identities. There is a dialogue between the forms, a way that the film manages to express the book’s essence visually, and most of all a subtle emotional potency (particularly in the final scene!) that can be read between the two: it’s as though you can look at them simultaneously, without discord or contradiction, or (as in the case of lesser adaptations), that awful sense of something falling short, being unable to capture the original. It’s a failure to achieve its own life, I think, this sense, to literally live up to its source material. But Carol does create its own reality, while holding the heart of the book close.

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What notes or pieces of inspiration for the story/characters did you share with the creators?

I met with Alice Birch before she wrote the script—I’m a huge admirer of hers—and one of the things we discussed was names; in the book everyone is known by their initials, and the narrator is nameless. Alice asked me how I felt about this in relation to an adaptation, and we discussed its importance in giving the book a certain universal, but also mysterious and perhaps even timeless quality.

This was kept in the script and the film, as well as the book’s emphasis on the name of the baby: Zeb. He is the only one with a name, and it’s wonderful to see how many babies played “Zeb” in the movie! I also loved seeing the credits roll and the long list of initials at the end. It felt playful but also fitting, just as I hope it does in the book.

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How was your relationship with the book changed during the process of adaptation?

There is a sense in which the work becomes less personal to me, in this form, and I welcomed that—it was interesting to have another stage in the publishing process, from the intense attachment of the writing of the book, to publication when there is a loss, in some sense, of the book to the world, and then this rare opportunity for another stage, when the book becomes something else, when there is a metamorphosis into an entirely new form.

I am always wary of the book/parenthood analogy but I can see something here in the process of letting go, seeing something become independent from you but always with that origin, that root in your creation. There is also something personal in this for me as the book has ‘grown up’ alongside my children—they were 3 and 6 when I wrote the book and will be 11 and 14 when the film comes out…

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It’s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries. 

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Over the past decade, writer and actor Dan Levy rose to prominence for his work on Schitt’s Creek. After co-creating the series with his father, Eugene Levy, he turned to a more personal project.

Said project is his heartfelt directorial debut, a film entitled Good Grief. At the top of our conversation, Dan shares the origin of this story  and we discuss the importance of friendship, his experience working as a director, and a pivotal, full-circle moment from his time in London. Then, we discuss how he charted his course as a co-host on MTV Canada, the red carpet experience that clarified his path forward, and his ultimate arrival at making Schitt’s Creek.

On the back-half, we unpack the pure, timeless nature of the hit series, Dan’s journey to making Good Grief after the show’s momentous conclusion, a powerful scene from the film, the universality of loss, and the responses that encourage him to continue creating.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode: 

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It’s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries. 

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Over the past 15 years, filmmaker Ava DuVernay (Selma, Queen Sugar) has become something of an institution in Hollywood. As a writer, director, and producer she’s worked to make our industry more just and diverse—creating opportunities for voices that have historically been underrepresented both in front and behind the camera. In many ways her latest film, Origin, examines a hierarchy she’s worked to upend through a bold body of work.

And so we begin today’s episode discussing her creative adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s best-selling book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents and the timely questions she hopes to pose as we begin 2024. Then, Ava reflects on the influence of her Aunt Denise, what a typical Saturday looked like in the DuVernay household, her formative years as an underground emcee at UCLA, and how working on Michael Mann’s Collateral inspired her to direct.

On the back-half, we talk about the making of Ava’s first narrative feature I Will Follow, a life-changing review from Roger Ebert and the resulting decade as a director. We also wade through this past year in Hollywood, her hopes for ARRAY in the years to come, and the words of Angela Davis that keep her moving forward.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode: 

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Ava DuVernay is a filmmaker. She has won an Emmy Award, the NAACP Image Award, and BAFTA awards as well as been nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Her latest film is Origin.

Sam Fragoso is the host of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, a weekly series of conversations with artists, activists, and politicians. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and NPR. After conducting seminal interviews with icons like Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and Noam Chomsky, he independently founded Talk Easy in 2016.

Happy 2024—may it be better than 2023 2022 2021 2020 you expect. To that end, here are a selection of literary films and tv shows hitting screens large and small in the year to come. Might as well entertain ourselves while the world burns. (NB that premiere dates are subject to change, and plenty haven’t been announced yet, especially in the second half of the year.)

January

Fool Me Once
January 1, Netflix

Literary bona fides: based on Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben (2016)

You can always count on Harlan Coben for a twisty mystery—in this one, a woman is shocked when she sees a mysterious man on her nanny cam, not least because the man is her husband, who was murdered two weeks previously. Or so she thought… Daniel Brocklehurst’s eight-part limited series adaptation transports the events of the novel to the UK and stars Michelle Keegan, Adeel Akhtar, Joanna Lumley and Richard Armitage. Early reviews are mixed, but apparently fans are digging it.

Society of the Snow
January 4, Netflix

Literary bona fides: based on Pablo Vierci’s Society of the Snow: The Definitive Account of the World’s Greatest Survival Story (2009)

In 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force flight carrying 45 passengers and crew, including 19 members of the Old Christians Club rugby union team, crashed in the Andes. 72 days later, 16 survivors were rescued. Journalist Pablo Vierci, who knew many of the players, interviewed all of the survivors for his book, which he says seeks to chronicle not just the grueling facts but “what happened in the minds and hearts” out there in the snow; the film too focuses on the emotional story, to great effect.

The Bricklayer
January 5, Vertical Entertainment

Literary bona fides: based on The Bricklayer (2010) by Noah Boyd (Paul Lindsay)

The latest from Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) looks as formulaic as can be: an ex-CIA operative hauled out of retirement for One Last Job, a sexy location, a sexier handler, an international conspiracy, Aaron Eckhart. But appetite for action thrillers is apparently bottomless, and maybe it will be good?

He Went That Way
January 5, Vertical Entertainment

Literary bona fides: based on Conrad Hilberry’s Luke Karamazov (1987)

It sounds interesting—an animal trainer (Zachary Quinto) transporting a once-famous-but-now-down-on-his-luck monkey named Spanky picks up a teenage hitchhiker (Jacob Elordi) who turns out to be a serial killer. Road trip with a monkey, a serial killer, and Old New Spock? I’m listening… but unfortunately, early reviews aren’t great.

Monsieur Spade
January 14, AMC

Literary bona fides: based on Dashiell Hammett’s beloved character

In this neo-noir series from Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) and Tom Fontana (Oz), a certain detective you may have heard of called Sam Spade (Clive Owen) has retired to the South of France. But detectives you’ve heard of aren’t allowed to retire! New murders and old adversaries conspire to ruin (or enhance?) Spade’s golden years, as of course they must, and plenty of intrigue ensues.

Death and Other Details
January 16, Hulu

Literary bona fides: inspired by Agatha Christie, and also every literary detective ever

All right, it’s not an adaptation, but don’t you want to see Mandy Patinkin as a details-obsessed detective in a “post-fact” present, stuck on a lavish ocean liner? I do—especially because writers and executive producers Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams are big Agatha Christie fans. “We love Agatha Christie novels,” they told EW. “We’ve read everything she’s ever written. We wanted to capture the atmosphere of those works and drag her style into our contemporary world.” Fun.

The End We Start From
January 19, Paramount

Literary bona fides: based on Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From (2017)

This adaptation of Hunter’s poetic debut novel, adapted by Alice Birch (Normal People) and directed by Mahalia Belo, stars Jodie Comer as the central mother character, who flees a flooded London with her infant, along with Katherine Waterston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Stron, and Joel Fry. Here’s hoping it will do the book, which isn’t an obvious candidate for adaptation, despite the fact that Cumberbatch’s production company acquired the rights before it was published, justice. Early signs are good.

Origin
January 19, Neon

Literary bona fides: inspired by—and about—Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents (2020)

Ava DuVernay takes an unusual, ambitious approach to Isabel Wilkerson’s bestselling nonfiction book, which frames American racism as part of an unacknowledged caste system in this country. “The film is not so much an adaptation of Caste but an attempt to translate it into the vernacular of narrative cinema,” wrote Bilge Ebiri in a review for Vulture. “To do this, DuVernay goes back to basics: She presents Wilkerson herself (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as the protagonist of this drama and portrays the author’s very personal journey as she’s pulled into this subject, even as her life is falling apart. But she also rifles through history to present case studies from Wilkerson’s research—sometimes through extended sequences, sometimes through mere flashes. The results are incredibly ambitious and, frankly, devastating.” Interestingly, despite the fact that DuVernay’s screenplay for Origin was classified as original by the Writers Guild of America, it will be considered an adapted screenplay for Oscars consideration—the same judgement the Academy made for Barbie.

Which Brings Me To You
January 19, Decal

Literary bona fides: based on Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott’s Which Brings Me to You (2005)

Two people meet at a wedding, and sparks fly. Unfortunately, both of them (Lucy Hale as Jane, freelance writer, and Nat Wolff as Will, photographer) are pretty terrible at relationships. The book this movie is based on is an epistolary love affair, as the two spill their guts through written letters; the film crams all the confessing into a 24-hour spree. Could be a sort of fun meta rom-com, or could be a romantic burnout—we’ll have to see.

The Peasants
January 26, Next Film

Literary bona fides: based on Władysław Reymont’s The Peasants (1909)

If you saw the experimental Van Gogh biopic Loving Vincent (2017), which was the very first fully painted feature film, you’ll probably be pleased to learn that directors and writers DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman are back with another movie that uses the same animation technique—this one based on Polish writer Wladyslaw Reymont’s, novel, originally published in installments between 1904 and 1909. Reymont won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1924, with the Academy specifically citing The Peasants as “his great national epic.” Early reviews are mixed, but if nothing else, the film looks beautiful.

Expats
January 26, Amazon Prime Video

Literary bona fides: based on Janice Y.K. Lee’s The Expatriates (2016)

When, one wonders, will directors stop torturing Nicole Kidman? In this six-part series, created by Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Kidman plays Margaret, a wealthy American expat living in Hong Kong, whose young son disappears on a crowded street, paralyzing her with guilt and grief. Newcomer Ji-young Yoo plays Mercy, the young woman who is blamed for the disappearance, and Sarayu Blue plays Margaret’s friend and neighbor, who is contending with her inability to have children at all. As the parent of a toddler, I will absolutely not be watching this, but early buzz is good.

Feud: Capote vs. the Swans
January 31, Hulu

Literary bona fides: based on Laurence Leamer’s Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era (2021)

For the second season of his Feud series, Ryan Murphy takes on a legendary piece of literary gossip—the time Truman Capote backstabbed all his fancy, hard-won, high-society lady friends (whom he of course called his “swans”) by publishing a thinly veiled short story, “La Côte Basque 1965”—an excerpt from his then-unpublished novel Answered Prayers—in Esquire, revealing a few too many of their secrets. Capote then found himself, to his shock, resoundingly excommunicated, and neither he nor his career ever really recovered (though his legacy is fine). Tom Hollander plays Capote, and Calista Flockhart, Diane Lane, Naomi Watts, and Chloë Sevigny star along with Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, and Ella Beatty. This looks faintly ridiculous, in the best way.

February

Argylle
February 2, Universal Pictures/Apple Original Films

Literary bona fides: Probably not an adaptation, definitely about a novelist

The latest addition to the micro-genre of movies about writers whose books come true (are there many more than Stranger Than Fiction and Ruby Sparks?) is this goofy, deranged-looking spy action comedy, directed and produced by Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Kick-Ass, the Kingsman movies) and written by Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman). Perhaps you remember the minor media mystery over Elly Conway, who was listed as the unknown author of the debut book this big-budget “adaptation” was based on? Ha, ha, it was all a publicity hoax, it seems, because it turns out that Elly Conway is the writer in the movie, whose unpublished spy novel-in-progress begins to come true, making her the target of lots of guns and killing. And the movie is real, you see? This might have worked better if more people cared about the identity of writers…but perhaps that is the whole point of this film? Head-exploding emoji, as the kids would never say.

The Promised Land
February 2, Magnolia Pictures

Literary bona fides: based on Ida Jessen’s The Captain and Ann Barbara (2020)

Mads Mikkelsen makes anything good—so if you’re in the market for an epic historical drama about the common man vs. the aristocracy vs nature vs. chaos vs. good vs. evil, this adaptation of Ida Jessen’s Danish best-seller is a pretty good bet.

The Tiger’s Apprentice
February 2, Paramount+

Literary bona fides: based on The Tiger’s Apprentice by Laurence Yep (2003)

This animated adaptation of the first book in Yep’s The Tiger’s Apprentice trilogy has been delayed for literal years, but will finally be released to streaming in February. In it, Chinese-American teenager Tom Lee, who’s minding his own business in San Francisco until he discovers he’s connected to a group of magical protectors called the Guardians—and they need him. Of course. For kids or kids at heart.

One Day
February 8, Netflix

Literary bona fides: based on David Nicholls’ One Day (2009)

Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall star in this limited series adaptation of David Nicholls’ bestselling novel (in which two people meet every day, on the same day, for 20 years, cue the swoonage), the book’s second chance at a screen life after the disappointing 2011 feature film.

Nancy Rivera/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

It Ends With Us
February 9, Sony Pictures

Literary bona fides: based on Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us (2016)

The behemoth of all CoHo behemoths was optioned in 2019, even before its BookTok-fueled resurgence—the final product, directed by and starring Justin Baldoni along with Blake Lively, from a screenplay by Christy Hall, will be in theaters just in time for Valentine’s Day. It will almost certainly make money.

Lisa Frankenstein
February 9, Focus Features

Literary bona fides: very very loosely based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)

Look, the idea of Frankenstein (say it with me: Frankenstein is the doctor) has firmly transcended Mary Shelley’s novel at this point, so whether we can really count this as a “literary film” is arguable. But mad scientist or no, this is my list, and I mean, teen goth resurrects Victorian hottie in a tanning bed, and then murders ensue—as written by Diablo Cody? My deep nostalgic love for the age of Heathers and Weird Science demands that I’ll give it a whirl.

Drift
February 9, Utopia

Literary bona fides: based on Alexander Maksik’s A Marker to Measure Drift (2013)

Directed by Anthony Chen from a screenplay by Susanne Farrell and Alexander Maksik, Drift stars Cynthia Erivo as a young Iberian refugee who lands on a Greek island, where she meets and bonds with American tour guide Alia Shawkat while she tries to move on from her past. Early reviews are mixed, but Erivo is always worth watching.

Shōgun
February 27, Hulu

Literary bona fides: based on James Clavell’s Shōgun (1975)

Clavell’s epic bestseller, itself loosely based on the true story of William Adams, one of the first Englishmen to reach Japan, has already been adapted into a beloved (or at least constantly shown on TV) 1980 miniseries. FX’s new adaptation looks pretty spectacular, though, starring Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Toranaga, Cosmo Jarvis as Adams-stand-in John Blackthorne, and Anna Sawai as the translator/samurai Toda Mariko.

March

Spaceman
March 1, Netflix

Literary bona fides: based on Jaroslav Kalfař’s Spaceman of Bohemia (2017)

Adam Sandler is Jakub Procházka, a Czech astronaut sent on a dangerous mission, leaving his wife (Carey Mulligan) behind. Paul Dano plays the giant talking space spider, and for those who have not read the novel, that is all I will say about that. I’m always glad to see Sandler in a role like this; I have high hopes for this movie.

Dune: Part Two
March 1, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Picture

Literary bona fides: based on Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965)

The long-awaited follow-up to Dune: Part One—let’s be honest, you already know whether you’re going to see it. (Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken are in this one!)

Manhunt
March 15, Apple TV+

Literary bona fides: based on James L. Swanson’s Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (2006)

Monica Beletsky’s historical thriller, based on Swanson’s bestselling and Edgar Award-winning nonfiction book, follows Edwin Stanton in the days after Lincoln’s assassination, as John Wilkes Booth leads him on a “wild, 12-day chase” across the country. Starring Tobias Menzies as Stanton and Anthony Boyle as John Wilkes Booth.

Palm Royale
March 20, Apple TV+

Literary bona fides: based on Juliet McDaniel’s Mr. & Mrs. American Pie (2018)

In 1969, striver Maxine Simmons (Kristen Wiig) tries with all her might to make it into Palm Beach’s “high society.” Fun. The costumes already have my attention, and so does the cast: Wiig is joined by Ricky Martin, Josh Lucas, Leslie Bibb, Amber Chardae Robinson, Mindy Cohn, Julia Duffy, Kaia Gerber, with Laura Dern, Allison Janney and “extra special guest stars” Bruce Dern and Carol Burnett. Whew.

3 Body Problem
March 21, Netflix

Literary bona fides: based on Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (2008)

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones) are back, bringing in Alexander Woo to adapt Chinese novelist Liu Cixin’s beloved apocalyptic science fiction epic, which even Obama loved. “The scope of it was immense,” he said. “So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty—not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade!” Hopefully this series will bring us the same level of escape as we stare down the maw of 2024.

Arthur the King
March 22, Lionsgate

Literary bona fides: based on Mikael Lindnord’s Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home (2016)

Mark Wahlberg, making friends with a dog, and then bringing him along on a 435-mile race in the Dominican Republic. Ah sure, why not?

One Life
March 22, Warner Bros. Pictures

Literary bona fides: Barbara Winton, If It’s Not Impossible…The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton (2014)

Anthony Hopkins stars in this heartfelt biopic about Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who helped hundreds of Jewish children escape German-occupied Czechoslovakia in the months leading up to WWII—and who, decades later, got to meet some of those children on the BBC television show That’s Life.

Mickey 17
March 29, Warner Bros. Pictures

Literary bona fides: based on Edward Ashton’s Mickey7 (2022)

In the latest film from the brilliant and terrifying Bong Joon-ho’s new film, in which Robert Pattinson plays an “expendable” worker on a space mission to colonize an ice planet—expendable because of technology that can regenerate his body if anything goes wrong. Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo also star, and according to the WGA credits, Charles Yu contributed “additional literary material” for the film. Highest hopes for this.

Lousy Carter
March 29, Magnolia Pictures

Literary bona fides: a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad lit prof movie

I will simply paste the logline for this movie, which stars David Krumholtz, Martin Starr, and Olivia Thirlby, here: “Man-baby Lousy Carter struggles to complete his animated Nabokov adaptation, teaches a graduate seminar on The Great Gatsby, and sleeps with his best friend’s wife. He has six months to live.” Seems painful—but maybe in a good way.

Wicked Little Letters
March 29, Sony Pictures Classics

Literary bona fides: it’s about the power of (swear) words, gang

This is another film that I will be counting as literary: a black comedy starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley (based on an actual scandal in 1920s England), in which a slew of mysterious, obscene, and insulting letters begin arriving in the postboxes of all the fine, upstanding citizens of a small town. Obviously, the first move is to blame the least conforming woman in town—because if she isn’t doing it, who is?

NBCU

Apples Never Fall
March, Peacock

Literary bona fides: based on Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall (2021)

A mystery miniseries about secrets—aren’t they all? But if you’re wondering what to expect, Liane Moriarty wrote the book that Big Little Lies was based on (also called Big Little Lies)—that should be elevated by a star-studded cast, which includes Annette Bening, Sam Neill, Alison Brie, and Jake Lacy.

And Beyond:

Civil War
April 26, A24

Literary bona fides: written and directed by Alex Garland

Obviously, by now Alex Garland is more of a filmmaker than he is a novelist, but he’s still a literary one. This speculative action film (A24 doing action!) follows a group of reporters helmed by Kirsten Dunst as they try to cover, and survive, an all-consuming American Civil War. Looks terrifying, to be fair.

The Idea of You
May 2, Amazon Prime Video

Literary bona fides: based on Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You (2017)

Michael Showalter directs and Gabrielle Union produces this adaptation of the novel written by actress Robinne Lee, in which a 40-year-old divorcée (Anne Hathaway) takes her daughter to Coachella and winds up falling for the famous lead singer of a boy band (Nicholas Galitzine), who was inspired by—you guessed it—Harry Styles. Why not, I ask you?

Horrorscope
May 10, Sony Pictures

Literary bona fides: based on Nicholas Adams’s Horrorscope (1992)

In which a group of friends have their horoscopes read and then begin dying—in ways related to their fortunes. (Gotta love a 90s horror premise.)

The Watchers
June 7

Literary bona fides: based on A.M. Shine’s The Watchers (2021)

Ishana Night Shyamalan—the daughter of a certain director—makes her feature directorial debut with The Watchers, in which a young artist (Dakota Fanning) finds herself lost in the Irish wilderness. Then she finds what seems like shelter—but is actually something more like a cage, presided over by the mysterious creatures who rule the forest.

Cold Storage
June 20

Literary bona fides: based on David Koepp’s Cold Storage (2019)

Obviously, David Koepp, who is most famous as a screenwriter—ever heard of Jurassic Park or Mission: Impossible?—wrote the screenplay for this feature adaptation of his 2019 biohazard thriller. The film is produced by Gavin Polone (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and stars Liam Neeson and Joe Keery; whatever the result, the writing should be top-notch.

The Bikeriders
June 21

Literary bona fides: based on The Bikeriders by Danny Lyon (1967)

Delayed half a year due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Jeff Nichols’ latest film is based on an iconic photo-book by influential documentary photographer Danny Lyon, who embedded with the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club from 1963-1967 and emerged with incredible photographs and stories. The film, which tracks the club’s transformation over a decade, stars Jodie Comer, along with Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, and Norman Reedus.

Firebrand
June 21

Literary bona fides: based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s Queen’s Gambit (2013)

Divorced, beheaded, she died; divorced, beheaded, survived—this film, directed by Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz from a screenplay by Henrietta Ashworth and Jessica Ashworth, tells the (revisionist) story of the only queen to make it through being married to Henry VIII—Katherine Parr, played by Alicia Vikander. Jude Law plays the king (Henry wishes).

Harold and the Purple Crayon
August 2, Sony Pictures

Literary bona fides: based on Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955)

The still-mysterious live-action adaptation of what feels like a pretty unadaptable book has been pushed back twice, and will now supposedly hit theaters this summer. It stars Zachary Levi, Lil Rel Howery, and Zooey Deschanel, and was directed by Carlos Saldanha.

The Wild Robot
September 20, DreamWorks

Literary bona fides: based on Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot (2016)

Based on Peter Brown’s bestselling middle-grade novel, the film follows a robot—designed for an urban world—that gets shipwrecked on an island and must adapt to the landscape and ingratiate itself to the wildlife. Will it be the new WALL-E?

White Bird
October 4, Lionsgate

Literary bona fides: based on R.J. Palacio’s White Bird (2019)

In October, Wonder fans will be treated to a spin-off based on 2019 graphic novel of the same name by R.J. Palacio. This is another film that has been massively delayed—it was originally scheduled for fall 2022.

The Amateur
November 8, 20th Century Studios

Literary bona fides: based on Robert Littell’s The Amateur (1981)

Rami Malek stars as Charles Heller, a CIA cryptographer whose wife is killed in a terrorist attack—and like all good spy thriller heroes, decides he must take matters into his own hands to avenge her. Rachel Brosnahan, Caitríona Balfe, Laurence Fishburne, and Adrian Martinez also star.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
December 13, Warner Bros.

Literary bona fides: based on a story from the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

The LOTR universe goes anime. I have mixed feelings about the infinite adaptation possibilities Tolkien left us, but I do not have mixed feelings about Brian Cox, who stars in this installment as the voice of Helm Hammerhand.

Also anticipated and expected—but unconfirmed—for 2023:

The Sympathizer
TBD, HBO Max

Literary bona fides: based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015)

This limited series based on Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is “an espionage thriller and cross-culture satire” that stars Hoa Xuande as the Captain, a biracial mole and spy during the Vietnam War who becomes an exile in the US. Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar co-showrun and executive produce, along with Robert Downey Jr., who apparently plays more than one role. Can’t come quickly enough, really.

A Gentleman in Moscow
TBD, Showtime

Literary bona fides: based on Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow (2016)

Showtime’s series adaptation of Towles’s big bestseller stars Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov who, after the Russian Revolution, is sentenced to house arrest in a hotel attic by a Bolshevik tribunal—but discovers a rich world within.

Janet Planet
TBD, A24

Literary bona fides: written and directed by Annie Baker

Anything from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker is worth a look; her feature directorial debut, which stars Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Sophie Okonedo, and Will Patton, focuses on the interior life of an 11-year-old who is just beginning to free herself from her mother’s orbit.

Turtles All the Way Down
TBD, HBO Max

Literary bona fides: based on John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down (2017)

The film adaptation of Green’s bestselling YA novel about a teenager with OCD is directed by Hannah Marks from a screenplay by Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker, and stars Isabela Merced.

Trust
TBD, HBO Max

Literary bona fides: based on Hernan Diaz’s Trust (2022)

This may or may not actually make it to screens in 2024, given that Kate Winslet, who stars, also headlines another HBO original limited series, The Regime, which airs in March (that show gets an honorary place on this list, because Gary Shteyngart is one of the writers). Perhaps they’ll want to spread out the Kate, but we can hope.

The Spiderwick Chronicles
TBD, Roku

Literary bona fides: based on Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black’s The Spiderwick Chronicles (2003-2009)

Fans of the children’s fantasy series will be pleased to learn that Roku picked up this eight episode series after it was dropped in 2023 by Disney+; it is slated to air in early 2024.

The Shrinking of Treehorn
TBD, Netflix

Literary bona fides: based on Florence Parry Heide’s The Shrinking of Treehorn (1971)

How will Ron Howard adapt this wonderful, weird little book, originally illustrated by Edward Gorey, about a child who mysteriously begins to shrink (much to the disinterest of his parents)? I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

Lady in the Lake
TBD, Apple TV+

Literary bona fides: based on Laura Lippman’s Lady in the Lake (2019)

Lippman’s bestselling psychological noir, set in 1960s Baltimore and based on two real-life murders from the era, has been given the miniseries treatment by Alma Har’el (Honey Boy), and stars Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram.

Dark Matter
TBD, Apple TV+

Literary bona fides: based on Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter (2016)

Joel Edgerton stars in Crouch’s series adaptation of his novel, about Jason, a physicist who winds up in a parallel universe created by a choice he made 15 years before—the choice not to marry his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly). Turns out there are many Jasons, and they are angry. Should be fun!

The Legacy of Mark Rothko
TBD

Literary bona fides: Lee Seldes’s The Legacy Of Mark Rothko (1974)

Russell Crowe plays legendary abstract expressionist Mark Rothko in this film, directed by by Sam Taylor-Johnson, which focuses on the battle over his estate after his suicide.

Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It’s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries. 

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As we begin the new year, we’re returning to our conversation with brilliant actor Michelle Williams.

We walk through the making of Showing Up, Williams’ fifteen-year partnership with director Kelly Reichardt, and her upbringing in Montana and San Diego. Then, she describes coming of age on the set of Dawson’s Creek, her pivotal turn in Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe, and her path to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.

On the back-half, we discuss a healing passage from Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Williams’ memorable performances in Blue Valentine and My Week with Marilyn, and her final day shooting The Fabelmans. To close, she shares how she remains present as a mother, a formative Walt Whitman quote, and how—at age 42—she’s begun to create from “a place of peace.”

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode: 

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Sam Fragoso is the host of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, a weekly series of conversations with artists, activists, and politicians. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and NPR. After conducting seminal interviews with icons like Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and Noam Chomsky, he independently founded Talk Easy in 2016.

Say what you will about 2023, but the year did bring us some top-notch book-to-screen adaptations, from the long-awaited film version of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. in the spring to Oppenheimer in the summer, Killers of the Flower Moon in the fall, and American Fiction and Poor Things here at the end. Lit Hub’s film critics have been voting on their favorite adaptations from 2023, presented here for your consideration. And a big shoutout goes to The Color Purple, which premieres on December 25th. We’ll see you at the theater! (In spirit, of course.)

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Orion Releasing LLC

American Fiction
Based on: Erasure by Percival Everett

The promos for American Fiction will have you believe that it’s simply a satire, but it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a razor-sharp, rip-roaring send-up of the publishing industry, the literary world, and the fake-woke approach to race in liberal America, but I also want to say upfront that, like its source text, it is an incredibly moving, quite sad story about growing older, about coming to terms with who you are (personally and publicly).

It’s a film whose worth isn’t tied only to its successful commentary or keen referentiality, but its understanding that the absurdities of life exist within life, and that life is often sad and lonely and full of regret. Like its scintillating source text, American Fiction is kaleidoscopic in its insights and interrogations about life and identity, and especially when these things get further complicated by the beasts of capitalism, commercialism, and media.

–Olivia Rutigliano 

Searchlight Pictures

Poor Things
Based on: Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Poor Things is definitely Lanthimos’s best English-language film, most likely his best film overall. A neo-Frankenstein tale about female desire based on the 1992 novel Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer by the postmodern writer Alasdair Gray, the film follows the adventures of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a human created by the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). At the start of the movie, her brain is at the developmental level of an infant, despite her adult anatomy; over the course of the film, her mind grows to match her physical age and bodily urges. With its Gaudí-esque Victorian setting, Poor Things presents a dreamlike, imaginary history of the era that birthed the modern Western world; Bella bounces around the great ideas and minds of the moment, like a philosophical Forrest Gump, she assimilates them. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is an interesting one.

–Olivia Rutigliano

Lionsgate

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Based on: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume

First, a confession: I didn’t read Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. until a week before the movie premiered. (I was a Beverly Cleary gal through and through; not that the two are mutually exclusive, that’s just how the cookie crumbled.) Anyway, having not grown up on AYTGIMM in no way precluded me from absolutely adoring this film. I went in optimistic thanks to my colleague Olivia’s review and left positively chuffed: writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig nailed it, and then some.

Certainly, Fremon Craig was operating under pressure—Blume had refused to sell the film rights for 49 years, until the right filmmaker came along—but not only does she stay cool under pressure, she actually made a film that Blume called better than the book. Mainly, I think, that’s because Margaret’s grandmother (played by a career-high charming Kathy Bates) and mother (played by a sweetly melancholic Rachel McAdams) get their own storylines in the film, making it a much more multigenerational viewing experience. But Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret manages to never be dimmed by the Hollywood powerhouses around her; she captures the awkwardness and frustrations of adolescence without missing a beat—ditto for her comedic timing. This was one of my favorite movies of the year. If you haven’t seen it yet, I must INSIST.

–Eliza Smith

Universal Pictures

Oppenheimer
Based on: American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Oppenheimer is a biopic that should not work as well as it does—it’s never really a good idea for biopics to attempt to do what biographies do (and this movie is based on a doozy of a biography). A biography is responsible for capturing a sense of a person, often across their whole lives. If a movie does that, it might lack an arc. Because people’s natural lives don’t have arcs. But Oppenheimer manages to present the life of Manhattan Project supervisor J. Robert Oppenheimer across decades while also tracing character development, having a thesis, and making an argument. The point of Oppenheimer (and the realization that Oppenheimer has) is about the impossibility of keeping things at the level of the theoretical. Oppenheimer oversubscribed to theory as a methodology, and by the time he realizes that there’s no such thing, it’s too late. Incredible.

–Olivia Rutigliano

Apple Studios

Killers of the Flower Moon
Based on: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Sorry to be that guy, but Martin Scorsese really does do it like no other. Killers manages to capture all the intricacy of David Grann’s 2017 book without feeling like an overproduced info dump. It’s a dark and complex love story, an emotional epic, a biting take on the Western genre. It renders an unspeakably immense tragedy through a small cast of characters. Scorsese brings humanity to the screen in a way that feels visceral and raw and painful and true. He gives Killers room to breathe, he lets the story take its time. So yes, the movie is three-and-a-half hours long—but sometimes that’s just how long it takes. It’s worth it, I promise.

–McKayla Coyle

Neon

How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Based on: How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm

This is an interesting adaptation, as it doesn’t seek to directly adapt the original work so much as put the work into action. Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a philosophical manifesto that calls for direct action and environmental terrorism in order to save the planet. The movie is a fictional, narrative film about a group of young people who decide to take direct action by literally blowing up a pipeline. It’s smart and fast-moving and has the shape of an action heist movie with the heart of a cli-fi drama. The movie does a great job of taking a philosophical text and applying it to the real world. I’d love to see more of this type of adaptation, the kind that really engages with the definition of adaptation.

–McKayla Coyle

Neon

Eileen
Based on: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

Eileen! This adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut thriller, which is basically perfect almost all of the way through, snuck onto my radar only a few weeks ago. Anne Hathaway rocks a portrayal of a sultry, secretive psychologist at a young men’s prison in Massachusetts. She, Rebecca, is the first bright spot in a while that Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie), who works in the prison, has experienced, and it’s not long before Eileen begins to grow veeeeeery interested in her. The movie builds its tension very well, but a late-in-the-film monologue from Marin Ireland brings the house down. (If I have any issues with the narrative of Eileen, they are ones that I also have about the book; let this promise you textual fidelity.) Still, I found the movie more psychological, a deeper, more immersive bath in the themes of the original novel.

–Olivia Rutigliano

Janus Films

Orlando, My Political Biography
Based on: Orlando by Virginia Woolf

For Orlando, in Woolf’s eponymous titled book, time, gender, and the act of writing become both inextricably linked and trans: ever ongoing, moving across and beyond binaries with unbridled delight. And yet, the topic of Orlando’s body as a trans body has never been so culturally or cinematically underscored until Paul B. Preciado’s documentary Orlando, My Political Biography (2023) premiered at Berlinale this year.

…

Preciado’s film is not solely a retelling of Woolf’s story; it is also about Preciado’s experience as a trans man navigating state apparatuses, such as psychiatry and pharmacology, which systematically inflict violence and erasure on bodies that are not cis, male, middle-class, or white. In the spirit of performative, self-reflexive documentaries like Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet (2017) and Ruth Beckermann’s Mutzenbacher (2022), Preciado’s film is a meta-commentary on its own making, just as Woolf’s novel is as much about the act of writing a biography as it is the story of Orlando’s life. We see multiple trans actors auditioning for, or acting the part of, Orlando.

In between reading aloud from Woolf’s book, they also share their own histories with and hopes for dating, hormones, clothing, surgery, and utopian futures. One, a high school student, remembers his first crush as various crew members change the set design and lighting behind him. Culled from a panoply of voices and perspectives, Orlando, My Political Biography champions the ways in which writing is an inherently communal act. As Preciado says in voiceover, “Every individual life is a collective history.”

Read our critic’s full review here.

–Hannah Bonner

A24

The Zone of Interest
Based on: The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis

Jonathan Glazer has finally returned to cinema after a decade-long hiatus. His newest feature, The Zone of Interest, is nothing short of a masterpiece. The film is a fully immersive experience into the domestic life of real-life camp commandant Rudolf Höss (played by Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their family who live outside of Auschwitz. Loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis—who passed away the day after the film’s premiere—Glazer takes many liberties with the source material, using it more as a foundation for his vision as opposed to creating a straightforward translation to the screen.

Glazer succeeds at making a Holocaust film that is completely unlike any we have seen before. The violence and brutality occuring within the camps that are often depicted on screen isn’t portrayed in the film, which uses the Höss family’s indifference to what happens beyond the walls of their idyllic home as a way to communicate the full scope of their evilness. We see them throw parties, have picnics, and spend time tending to their sprawling garden, while the outside horrors continue to loom.

Read our critic’s full review here.

–Jihane Bousfiha

Pathe UK

The Lost King
Based on: The King’s Grave by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones

The Lost King! This absolutely wonderful movie is an adaptation of The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones. Written by Steve Coogan and Joe Pope and directed by Stephen Frears, it is the beautiful, triumphant story of one of the most important historical discoveries of all time, completed by an amateur in the face of constant belittlement by the academic establishment. Philippa, played by Sally Hawkins, is middle-aged and working as a marketing executive when she discovers a passion for Richard III and grows invested in tracking down his remains, which have been lost to history.

She, who suffers from chronic illness that people constantly dismiss as made-up, is told time and time again that a gravesite for the maligned (also disabled) monarch might not even exist, and that many (more qualified) others have tried and failed to locate it. But she does not give up…. and, thanks to her phenomenal research, she finds him! The thing is, the film argues, that if a story about a passionate amateur who makes one of the most important historical discoveries of the last fifty years does in fact feel too contrived or unrealistic or far-fetched for you, then you might need some serious deprogramming. The Lost King is a clear condemnation of the kind of gatekeeping that governs academic spaces, as well as the psychological frameworks that exist in our own society that result in not taking people (especially if they are disabled) seriously.

–Olivia Rutigliano

Nimona
Based on: Nimona by ND Stevenson

I read the Nimona graphic novel when I was in high school and it was one of those books that stuck with me. I think of it often and fondly. It was a story that reintroduced me to how a story could be and what it could do. The animated Nimona movie adaptation is similarly thoughtful and weird and fun. It’s a queer kids movie that doesn’t beat you over the head with pedantic explanations and textbook definitions of queerness.

Instead, Nimona simply allows its characters to be queer and complicated and depressed and more than a little feral. As a queer person, I actually felt seen and represented. This is the kind of movie that would have Changed Me as a kid, and that I’m still grateful for as an adult. It’s also genuinely a lot of fun.

–McKayla Coyle

Netflix

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar / The Rat Catcher / The Swan / Poison
Based on: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl

I’m a Wes Anderson fan forever and always—Asteroid City was one of the best films of the year, and maybe the closest we’ve ever gotten to understanding the animating passions of the man behind the always-centered camera—and the marriage of his careful whimsy and Roald Dahl’s acerbic fables continues to bear fruit. This surprise quartet of… well, what are they? Individual short films? Or are they four pieces that make up a whole, as four short stories might sit next to one another to make a short story collection?

Whatever they may be, and despite Netflix (in a total but unsurprising failure of imagination) having no clue how to package or explain these, they are trinkets that nevertheless shine interesting light on both of their creators. Anderson leans into his theatricality here, giving the pieces a real “kids putting on a show” energy, and the result is sometimes silly (these must have been a blast for the actors involved) but never slight. I hadn’t read these stories since I was a kid and going back to them, first through Anderson’s lens and then on the page, reminded me of why Dahl’s work continues to excite children and challenge adults—and why Anderson continues to be divisive as well. But I’d take a thousand half-as-good curios from unswerving artists like Anderson in lieu of the vapid and unnecessary boardroom-ified misuse of IP that was Wonka.

–Drew Broussard

Disney+

American Born Chinese
Based on: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

The series moves between the realms of heaven and the American suburb, quickly establishing Jin’s dilemma: he is ready to grow up, but he doesn’t know what kind of person he is. He is torn by the choices that seem binary to him: whether he should join the soccer team or the cosplay club, be a jock or a nerd, act American or Asian. As the series moves forward with its multiple storylines and complex relationships between its characters, Jin continues to contemplate his choices and figure out who he is.

Bringing a colorful pantheon of Chinese folklore heroes, the show looks, sounds, and feels like a reunion of long-separated genres of Asian and Asian American cinema. Family drama flickers in and out of action-packed Hong Kong kung fu movies and Chinese fantasies with nonsequitur humor, creating a soundscape and visual collage that feel familiar in the Asian American experience.

Read our critic’s full review here.

–Yao Xiao 

Curiosa Films

The Pot-Au-Feu (The Taste of Things)
Based on: The Passionate Epicure by Marcel Rouff

Loosely based on Marcel Rouff’s 1924 novel The Passionate Epicure, The Pot-Au-Feu (renamed The Taste of Things ahead of its US release) emerged as an unexpected standout at this year’s Cannes Film Festival—so much so that Anh Hùng took home the prize for Best Director. A mouthwatering feast for the eyes, the film is a sensual experience that delicately captures the ritualistic act of cooking through the characters of Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) and Eugenie (a sublime Juliette Binoche).

Dodin, who has been nicknamed “the Napoleon of culinary arts,” and his personal cook/collaborator of over 20 years have a relationship built on trust and a mutual respect for each other’s craft. He spends his days developing recipes, and she flawlessly executes them with the assistant of their maid Violette (Galatea Bellugi) and Violette’s young niece, Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire). Leisurely paced, the 2.5-hour film opens with a 40-minute sequence dedicated to the pair putting together an extravagant four-course meal for Dodin and a small group of his friends. Watching someone maneuver through a kitchen as they chop, stir, roast, braise, sear, strain, and bake food has never looked more mesmerizing.

Read our critic’s full review here.

–Jihane Bousfiha

20th Century Studios

A Haunting in Venice
Based on: A Haunting in Venice by Agatha Christie

Look, even if you don’t like Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot, you can’t deny that A Haunting in Venice was the clear best of his three Agatha Christie adaptations, an elegant supernaturally-tinged mystery (very) loosely adapted from a lesser-known Christie novel, Hallowe’en Party. But Branagh’s film is a carnival(e) of cinematography and camerawork, a spooky visual extravaganza. I guess the third time really is the charm!

–Olivia Rutigliano 

British director Andrew Haigh has spent much of his career telling intimate queer stories that defy genre expectations, finding the poetry in our ordinary yet captivating realities. His characters grapple with self-consciousness, feeling as though they are constantly being observed and judged by a largely indifferent straight society. They carry the weight of their gay identity within a world that may no longer care either way, until it suddenly does.

His new film, All of Us Strangers, explores how gay men hide from themselves. It’s a companion piece to his 2011 masterpiece Weekend, a melancholy meditation on hook-up culture centered on two British guys in their 30s whose 72-hour affair is cut short by one of them leaving for America.

In All of Us Strangers, two men again connect against dramatic obstacles after a one-night stand. The paradox of Haigh’s approach is that his meticulous realism, capturing faces teetering on the edge of rejection, reaches for the extraordinary. He has remained true to his original, gritty vision of queer life, even as Hollywood executives clamor for a certain stripe of adult gay tragedy, in the vein of Brokeback Mountain or Philadelphia, or now increasingly, YA hits like Heartstopper and Red, White and Royal Blue.

Gay vulnerability is a crucial aspect of Haigh’s creative process—especially evident in All of Us Strangers, arguably his masterpiece. Haigh adapted the script from Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, a metaphysical ghost story set in Tokyo. The book revolves around a divorced man who starts an affair with a woman named Keiko, the only other tenant in his apartment building, while simultaneously encountering manifestations of his long-dead parents as they appear to him from childhood.

This plot unfolds like a universal metaphor for the modern mind, alienated in an impersonal cityscape, yearning for sexual fulfillment as well as the safety and familiarity of home associated with one’s inner child. The protagonist reconnects with his estranged son at the novel’s end, subsuming his grief over his parents into the duty of fatherhood.

He has remained true to his original, gritty vision of queer life, even as Hollywood executives clamor for a certain stripe of adult gay tragedy.

When the film opens, the middle-aged protagonist, Adam (Andrew Scott), is struggling to work out a screenplay about his closeted childhood. The top of his laptop screen reads “EXT: 1987,” conjuring an image of a young boy growing up on the outskirts of London with conservative parents. This is the era of homophobia streamed on airwaves with the rise of Margaret Thatcher’s election, and the spread of HIV/AIDS; one can imagine a structure toggling between past and present.

But Haigh, in line with his previous films, deliberately steers away from flashbacks. What sets All of Us Strangers apart not only from its source material but other LGBTQ+ movies is the specificity of its central question: How can queer people contend with the grief of losing parents before getting a chance to reveal their true selves?

Haigh films his desolate London cityscape like an eerie dream. His opening shot captures the apartment building Adam lives in alone—or, almost alone. There are only two lighted windows. The person occupying the other apartment is Jake (Paul Mescal), a younger, thickly accented hot guy. We meet him holding a bottle of whiskey as he knocks on Adam’s door. His flirty banter carries an apocalyptic tone as he jokes (or does he?) that they live in the type of building designed to make people want to jump right out of it. Jake insists that since they are the only people in this building, they may as well get to know each other.

There is a hurried, rapid urgency on Jake’s face, the sort of pained longing familiar to many struggling gay men, scrolling apps at three in the morning, hoping for a stranger beside them to quell the unease of loneliness. But, as Jake stands helplessly at the threshold like a lost puppy looking for a home, Adam shuts the door: he is a stranger, after all.

Quite unlike the original source material, Haigh also proves attuned to the psychosexual dynamic between father and lover that the story suggests in thoughtful editing. When Adam strolls through a park and comes across a stranger who seems as if he’s cruising in the bushes, the man (Jamie Bell) tilts his head back like a proposition. But Adam—and by extension the audience—are instead led back to his childhood home.

This stranger is not a potential lover, but Adam’s dead father in early-middle-aged form. Adam’s parents died in a bicycle accident when he was 12 years old; the scenes that follow with their ghosts play out like a lost soul searching for catharsis and resolution in a fantasy. Adam comes out to his mom (Claire Foy) in the way he wishes he could’ve when she were alive. His Mom expresses worry that he could get AIDS, but Adam assures her,“It’s different now.”

How can queer people contend with the grief of losing parents before getting a chance to reveal their true selves?

The next day, after rekindling a relationship with his parents, Adam finally welcomes Jake into his apartment. They proceed to talk about semantics of queerness, Jake complaining that replacing the word queer with “gay” has taken the “cock-sucking” out of the whole thing. Adam admits he feels like his (straight) friends have abandoned him to raise kids in the suburbs. The heterosexual suburban fantasy connotes loss for Adam, both in childhood and adulthood.

Haigh takes advantage of the novel’s urban atmosphere to present a tragically relatable fable about what it means to be gay in the modern world, drawn to places and people which ultimately reveal themselves as intangible, even haunted. The camera’s steady, unsentimental lens, however, never steers the story into soap.

Instead, the unraveling of Adam’s metaphysical experience makes for Haigh’s most experimental, trippy filmmaking to date. In one scene, Adam attempts to introduce Jake to his parents; the house is empty. Riding the Tube back to London, Adam screams like he’s just heard the news his parents have died all over again and the screen rends itself apart like a Francis Bacon painting.

In Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life, recently adapted for Broadway, tragedies constrict the central queer protagonist’s personality so tightly that he seems like little more than a collection of symptoms, almost presented as a dish to arouse the reader’s appetite for sorrow. All of Us Strangers, however, takes a different approach to trauma and characterization. The film delves into why Adam’s loss of his parents, who have never rejected him, results in profound sexual shame in adulthood. It lingers on the question rather than the answer.

What sets Haigh’s adaptation apart is his use of Yamada’s source material to contemplate why trauma exerts such an addictive grip over all of us and hinders our ability to form genuine connections with others. Adam and Jake, representing different generations of gay men, serve as foils for exploring broader themes of the universal experience of alienation among gay men throughout time.

As Adam aptly puts it about gay life to the ghost of his mother, “It’s different now,” but in some ways, it remains the same. After all, the only ghosts that can haunt anyone are those we willingly invite through the door.