18 Authors Who Loved The Movie Adaptations Of Their Books

Stephen King considers Stand by Me to be the best film adaptation of any of his books. As he told Rolling Stone, he considers Rob Reiner's 1986 film to be "true to the book," and faithful to the story's "emotional gradient." After Reiner screened the film for King at The Beverly Hilton, a tearful King gave him a hug.

When it was time to turn her 1997 novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, into a movie, J.K. Rowling's top priority was finding a film company that would faithfully execute her story. She rejected several offers before finally deciding on Warner Bros. Rowling was anxious the first time she saw the film, but in the end she was satisfied with the result. "At the end of the film, I was happy," she told Closer Weekly. "There is an awful lot of my book up there. All the important bits, I'd say. It's my plot and I think it's a very faithful adaptation."

As Stephen King would tell you, having a legendary filmmaker adapt your novel doesn't necessarily mean you're going to like it. But author Robert Bloch was "delighted" with Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 adaptation of Psycho. He particularly appreciated how close the movie was to his book. "It was about 90% from my book... the characters, the setting, various devices, all came from the book, right down to the last line," he told Jean-Marc Lofficier.

Hitchcock's two major changes were expanding on certain scenes from the book that Bloch hadn't described fully, and making Norman Bates younger. Bloch thought aging Bates down was an especially good idea, because he thought a middle-aged Bates would have been too obviously villainous.

Blade Runner was Ridley Scott's 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And although the movie only loosely follows the book's plot, Dick loved it. The author hadn't even seen a full cut when he wrote a letter to producer Jeff Walker praising the film. "This indeed is not science fiction," Dick wrote. "It is not fantasy; it is exactly what [star] Harrison [Ford] said: futurism. The impact of Blade Runner is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people - and, I believe, on science fiction as a field. [ ... ] Nothing we have done, individually or collectively, matches Blade Runner."

Dick viewed the Blade Runner movie as the culmination of his life's work, but he passed six months before the premiere. The film underperformed at the box office, but since then it's become one of the most highly regarded films ever made.

Chuck Pahlaniuk is one of the rare authors who thinks the movie adaptation of his book is better than the original. According to Pahlaniuk, not only does the film of Fight Club streamline the book's plot, it also makes thematic connections that he himself missed. "There is a line about 'fathers setting up franchises with other families,' and I never thought about connecting that with the fact that Fight Club was being franchised and the movie made that connection," Pahlaniuk told DVDTalk. "I was just beating myself in the head for not having made that connection myself."

Altogether, nine of John Grisham's novels have been made into movies, and he's enjoyed almost all of them. But when asked to pick a favorite, Grisham's choice was Francis Ford Coppola's 1997 drama, The Rainmaker. "To me, it's the best adaptation of any of my books," Grisham told Entertainment Weekly. "I love the movie, it's so well done." Critics mostly agree with Grisham, since the film currently has an 83% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.