ABSTRACT

This book offers a new perspective on adaptation of books to the screen; by focusing on endings, new light is shed on this key facet of film and television studies. The authors look at a broad range of case studies from different genres, eras, countries and formats to analyse literary and cinematic traditions, technical considerations and ideological issues involved in film and television adaptions.

The investigation covers both the ideological implications of changes made in adapting the final pages to the screen, as well as the aesthetic stance taken in modifying (or on the contrary, maintaining) the ending of the source text. By including writings on both film and television adaptations, this book examines the array of possibilities for the closure of an adapted narrative, focusing both on the specificities of film and different television forms (miniseries and ongoing television narratives) and at the same time suggesting the commonalities of these audiovisual forms in their closing moments.

Adapting Endings from Book to Screen will be of interest to all scholars working in media studies, film and television studies, and adaptation studies.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

On adapting endings

part I|40 pages

Creating an ending

chapter 1|10 pages

Structuring story

Beginnings and endings

chapter 2|15 pages

The head and the crown

Ending Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King

part II|26 pages

The politics of endings

chapter 4|9 pages

Adapting and subverting Richard Slotkin’s Regeneration Through Violence

The ending of Deliverance (James Dickey, 1970; John Boorman, 1972)

chapter 5|15 pages

Lee Daniels’ The Butler

From the headlines to the front line

part III|37 pages

Adapting to the small screen

chapter 6|12 pages

Serial adaptation

An endless series of endings? The strange case of Jekyll (BBC One, 2007), or, the last page and its doubles

chapter 7|11 pages

The ouroboros of television prequels

Endings and beginnings in Hannibal (NBC, 2013–2015)

chapter 8|12 pages

How to end with an opening

TV series continuity and metadaptation

part IV|45 pages

Questioning endings

chapter 9|13 pages

Alter egos and alternative endings in The Scapegoat

Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Robert Hamer’s and Charles Sturridge’s adaptations

chapter 10|12 pages

Adapting unsettling endings and harlequinization

Neil LaBute’s Possession and Joe Wright’s Atonement