North Texas Daily

Netflix is the undisputed king of the streaming world.

It produces and releases hundreds of original movies and television shows on its service every single year, while also putting other films by different studios on its service, too. While some of the movies and television shows may be questioned for Netflix’s overall quality, you will certainly be searching for hours through a multitude of content across many genres and eras.

One of the most popular television shows in the recent year is Netflix’s own “13 Reasons Why,” which was adapted from the novel by Jay Asher of the same title.

The show garnered massive attention, but was met with some extreme controversy for its depiction of teenage suicide, with an audience specifically targeted to teens.

What the show did do right, however, was how well it was adapted from its source material.

Books are a very expansive medium ripe for adapting on screen, especially the small screen. Books are able to be fleshed out more accurately in television because shows have multiple seasons and longer episodes. Things like character development or certain plot points which may not be seen as inherently “necessary” in a film adaptation could be included in a television adaptation of whichever book.

When books are adapted into films, they have more restrictions under certain runtimes and budgets used for one whole product, while the budget of a television show can be spread across multiple episodes.

Netflix is a huge company known for often taking risks when selecting what it produces. So, it is literally the perfect studio to start adapting more books into television shows rather than big studios scooping up the rights for certain books and adapting those into just one movie.

How many times have you been let down by a certain film adaptation of a book you just loved (the “Divergent” series, anyone?) because of certain scenes in the book you were so desperately looking forward to seeing come alive on the screen, only to be completely left out of the film adaptation of it (the “Harry Potter” series, ladies and gentleman)?

If those long-running, ginormous books had possibly been adapted for a Netflix series, maybe all of those scenes you wanted to see might have made it in there.

I am not saying we should discredit book to film adaptations at all, because some are genuinely great. But, if more books were adapted into television shows, maybe they all could be more true to their respective source materials.

So Netflix, if you are reading this, lets start adapting everyone’s favorite books into television series so we can get the true, faithful adaptations we have always wanted for all of those books we love so much.

Featured Image: Illustration by Gabby Evans