I think the whole Hollywood machine has evolved into something inbred and truly weird these days. It's too full of ego's, and yes men who won't tell the big men when their ideas are bad. There is so much money involved in feature films and there are so many supremely unqualified people trying to exert their influence on what is made that the end result is something designed by committee. ..I believe this is in part why the powerful directors, with final-cut approval, are some of the few who can (sometimes) pull good films out of the Hollywood machine: they have the influence and power to be able to stop some bad decisions being made.

In my opinion, the ultimate example on why the original story is ignored or butchered so much: Day of the Jackal. Best selling book by a very big name author, and what do they do? They threw away the story and made a new one. All that remains is the title. It still made money.

Actually, I can think of one other place where sub-par licences are regularly made: computer/console games. Many incredibly bad or derivative games come out every year, based on very good films or celebrities. Why? The name and the publicity sell it. ..so maybe the consumer is to blame too? Too apathetic to what it released, we watch what they tell us we should watch. The fans watch and are disappointed, and the rest watch because they've heard it was a popular book, so naturally the movie must be good.

Personally I think the biggest blame can be laid at the feet of the Hollywood machine: too many people making decisions, and too many out-of-touch people in management trying to change it into what they like, or what they believe 'the public' wants. (Rememeber back when almost every movie had to have a love-scene? It's stupid ideas like that.) And then they have focus groups and try to avoid offending anyone. The end result, a bland product that says nothing.

But there's something else prevalent there: a lack of respect for writers. I think a story is viewed as a raw product, the status of the writer meaning little in ego-centric Hollywood. Books are just a first draught. You can get a final script quickly, and you'll get 'fans' into the theatre too. Bonus! :)

Wow, I hope that didn't come off sounding too cynical. hehe.
Source(s):
Various media podcasts .. and me. :)

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They are two different media.

Example: Micheal Crichton wrote lots of books that eventually became films. In his career, he wrote a bunch of books, took a break and directed some films, then went back to writing books. He was pretty deeply involved in the first Jurassic Park movie, and look how differently it turned out from his book. (A major character dies in the book, yet survives the film.)

Now look at the sequel. (_The Lost World_) WAY different. The dead guy from the first book is still dead in the second book, but alive again in the second movie. Two children in the book get amalgamated into one. (Or, I guess you could say that 3 children in the book are amalgamated into two in the film.) A bunch of different stuff happens. Why? Dunno. Film ain't books.
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I agree with hartwell. They really are two different media.

Novels, as an art form, can be enjoyed at an individual's leisure for a long period of time. Novelists are encouraged to develop many characters and to explore relationships in a way that would take more than just a few hours to absorb.

Films, on the other hand, must be condensed into, usually, about two hours. It would be impossible to develop the typical Stephen King novel into a single, two-hour film. The filmmaker must alter and abridge elements of the story to fit the medium.

Think of it from a formalist point of view. An art form should be utilized to display all the things that cannot be displayed in other art forms. If filmmakers were required to plot out novels identically scene for scene, beat for beat, a significant amount of the artistic element and originality is removed. Would you really prefer classic films like The Shining or The Godfather to follow their origin novels exactly? I think I prefer The Godfather without 20 minutes discussing Sonny's girlfriend's vagina.

I remember hearing all this originally from my screenwriting professor Richard Walter. He said that a screenwriter owes absolutely nothing to the original novel or its author. A film is a completely different beast and should be treated as such.
Source(s):
http://www.amazon.com/Screenwriting-Craft-Business-Television-Writing/dp/04...

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You have to take into mind that so many people get an input into a movie, that the script changes drastically from the original adapted script to what you see on film.

I think it's important to remember that movies are just adaptations of a book, not the book in visual form.

I work in the television industry and I've seen scripts completely butchered from their original version because so many changes are made along the way. Too many cooks in the kitchen at each stage and here's why:

Mostly, it comes down to politics. Are the executives on the project wanting to justify their job by making meaningless notes? Probably. Also, the director likes telling their own story instead of using someone else's, so they add their own spin on it (who cares about the fans). Plus, the movie is all about making money, so whatever is cheapest and looks best in the trailers are going to make it into the film.

Hope that clarifies it.
Source(s):
Working in the entertainment industry

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Well, there are many reasons, some good, some bad. The core is that a movie is a different sort of experience from a book, it's an audiovisual medium, it has a relatively fixed length (you can write a 1000 page book if you like, but a movie should really be around 2 hours or less if you want people to actually watch it), and has to actually show things happening rather than being able to describe things like the internal mental state of the characters. Some things which work fine in books don't work at all in movies, or only work in very specific situations (third person narration, for one). So when you go to make a movie out of a book, you may actually need to change quite a bit to try to be true to the spirit of the book, sometimes even to the point of adding extra characters (or taking people out) or adding or subtracting large amounts of material either to make the story more concise or fill in gaps. This can be done well, or poorly, and I think we've seen examples of both.
Let me give you an example of an upcoming movie. Coraline is a movie based on a story by Neil Gaiman, in the movie version they added a character (a friend of the main character) who is not present in the book at all because the book is told from the point of view of the main character, and her mental state is often important. They needed to give the main character somebody to talk to in order to make that happen and seem natural. This was done with the full approval of the author, who also agreed that it was a beneficial addition to the movie version (I would like to give you a movie that's out and you could have seen, but this is the one example where I've seen interviewers with both the director of the film and the author and I know what they both think about it)
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