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Much shorter and more interesting lists could be made of movies that actually improved upon the novels.
The Godfather is (IMHO) an example of a movie that far outstripped its source material. The Mario Puzo novel is, at best, a screen treatment, and at worst (which is most of the time) pretty dreadful pulp fiction.
About a Boy is another. I enjoyed the novel by Nick Hornby, but I thought the movie did a terrific job of capturing the spirit of book, retaining all its best scenes while improving the ending, which in Nick Hornby's novel tied the book to a very specific moment in time.
I'm currently reading P.D. James' The Children of Men, am over a third of the way through, and am so far thinking that the screenwriters did a pretty amazing job in taking the essence of the book and distilling it into something cinematic. So far, there hasn't been a single overlapped scene, but the filmmakers got it.
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