The Housemaid’s Director Broke Down The Challenges Of Making A Book-To-Screen Adaptation (And It Makes So Much Sense)

For as long as there have been films, popular novels have been one of the most common places to find source material. Of course, no movie that’s a couple of hours long can include everything that a book that consists of hundreds of pages contains. Making a book-to-screen adaptation might seem easier since the story is already written, but as The Housemaid director Paul Feig says, it’s actually a very delicate process.

Paul Feig has experience doing book adaptations, having previously directed A Simple Favor to success so great it earned a sequel. Now he’s behind the mind-trip of a thriller called The Housemaid, which is based on Freida McFadden's wildly popular novel. Speaking with Rolling Stone, he talked about the difficulty of deciding what to include and what to remove in an adaptation, and how difficult that can be. Feig said…

People generally love to see their favorite books turned into films. Normally, one can only imagine what a favorite scene in a story would look like, but as a movie, you get to see it come to life. But therein lies the rub. As Feig says, everybody wants to see their favorite moments on screen, but you can’t include them all.

Usually, there are key plot moments that you have to include in order for the story on screen to follow the one in the book. However, many moments from a story, including some that might be fan favorites, aren’t strictly necessary in order to tell the story. Some of these will run the risk of being cut. But as Feig says, fans won’t like that.

While Paul Feig doesn’t specify the “water cooler moments” that he tried to include in his latest movie, it sounds like some of the moments from The Housemaid novel may have been originally cut, but saved by him. There are probably some very happy fans even if they don't know it.

I’m certainly guilty of being frustrated when my favorite moments from a beloved book aren’t in the movie, or are changed to the point of being unrecognizable. Although sometimes changes to the source material actually make for better movies. The Housemaid itself changes up its ending, potentially making for a much better story. Considering that there are sequel novels to The Housemaid, one imagines fans of those books are now hoping to see their favorite moments hit the screen as well.