{"id":1055,"date":"2026-10-30T09:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1055"},"modified":"2026-10-30T09:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:52:12","slug":"free-ip-and-fresh-eyes-how-hollywood-is-reinventing-the-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1055","title":{"rendered":"Free IP and Fresh Eyes: How Hollywood Is Reinventing the Classics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tSome stories refuse to stay on the page. <\/em>The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Beyond the Book<\/a> column explores what happens when books<\/a> make the leap to screen and beyond \u2014 unpacking what stayed, changed, how it was done and why it matters with the creatives who made it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tEast of Eden<\/a><\/em> showrunner Zoe Kazan has had her eye on adapting John Steinbeck\u2019s family saga since she first read it at 15. \u201cSomebody has to put the thing onscreen that I see in my head,\u201d she told The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/a>. And after \u201ca good 20 years\u201d of carrying that feeling, the opportunity to translate the story to screen finally came to fruition, with Kazan\u2019s vision unfurling as an eight-episode Netflix<\/a> limited series.<\/p>\n

\n\tHollywood has never been shy about mining the classics, with Pride and Prejudice<\/em>, To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> and Little Women <\/em>among the staples of film and TV\u2019s page-to-screen catalog.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year, Kazan\u2019s dip into the classic canon is joined by the likes of Christopher Nolan, who has taken on Homer\u2019s The Odyssey<\/em>, Emerald Fennell\u2019s adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s Wuthering Heights<\/em>, and new versions of Jane Austen\u2019s Sense and Sensibility<\/a><\/em> and Charles Dickens\u2019 A Tale of Two Cities<\/a><\/em>. Steinbeck, Austen and Dickens come with name recognition, a built-in audience and, as Sense and Sensibility<\/em> screenwriter Diana Reid puts it, \u201cfree IP.\u201d But the prestige and name recognition only get a project so far with audiences desperate for something fresh.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year, the writers behind Netflix\u2019s East of Eden<\/em>, Focus Features<\/a>\u2019 Sense and Sensibility<\/em> and MGM+<\/a>\u2019s A Tale of Two Cities<\/em> used that audience demand to do something different: leave the novels\u2019 worlds intact and rebuild the people inside them.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Kazan, that meant rereading Steinbeck\u2019s Cathy. For Daniel West, it was giving Dickens\u2019 Lucie a pulse. Reid let the Dashwood sisters Marianne and Elinor each grow into a bit of the other.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd while a famous novel might spark initial curiosity, it offers no inherent road map once development begins. So rather than reimagining these books through a modern lens, each writer chose to lean into the ways the stories already transcend time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou don\u2019t need to spoon-feed the audience the modernity of it,\u201d West says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tWhy a Classic Novel Already Has Appeal\t<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tEsm\u00e9 Creed-Miles stars as Marianne Dashwood and Daisy Edgar-Jones<\/a> as Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Focus Features<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tReid is the first to admit the commercial logic of adapting a classic. \u201cI think they are classic for a reason,\u201d she says. But the appeal runs deeper. In an era of surface-level connection, she argues, audiences crave something that feels substantial.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more satisfying as an audience than encountering someone who\u2019s superficially very different from you \u2014 they live in another time, they have different values and customs, they dress in a bizarre way \u2014 and then realizing that emotionally you have the same inner life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe also knows she won\u2019t be the last to take on Austen. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to be part of such a big catalog. On one hand, it\u2019s an honor and on the other, it takes pressure off, because it\u2019ll be one of many. It doesn\u2019t need to be definitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWest\u2019s pitch for A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>, a four-part series that premiered on MGM+ last month, started with what he calls a \u201cunicorn\u201d: a book with a huge cultural footprint that, by his account, hadn\u2019t had a major screen adaptation in nearly 40 years. He and star and executive producer Kit Harington<\/a> had been talking about adapting Dickens\u2019 1859 novel for roughly a decade, noting that there \u201chasn\u2019t really been a seminal TV or film adaptation\u201d of the story.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was done quite a lot in the first half of the 20th century, but then it petered out. So a large part of the draw was the opportunity: There was this huge built-in audience that already knew the book, or at least knew of it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe story itself is incredibly timely,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s about a disenfranchised, broken society that is pushing back and reaching a crisis point. Within that, there\u2019s a very personal, intimate love story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKazan has a personal tie to East of Eden<\/em> \u2014 her grandfather, Elia Kazan, directed the 1955 film \u2014 but part of her motivation for making a series was to tell more of the novel than that film did. Though Steinbeck\u2019s book was published in 1952, she says, \u201cthere\u2019s this beautiful continuum between us and the past,\u201d which is part of what makes revisiting a classic so appealing.<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking backward and forward at the same time, she adds, \u201cis a profound part of what makes us human.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s the opposite of AI. It\u2019s not regurgitation, not spitting back up what we\u2019ve already digested,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s why we should read these books. They\u2019re like a bow shot across time from one human to another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\tRethinking the Novels\u2019 Protagonists\t<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tMirren Mack as Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarcell Piti\/Federation Studios\/MGM+<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tStill, none of the three writers treated an established title as a safety net. Instead, their adaptations declined to modernize the novel\u2019s setting and embraced finding new ways into the protagonists.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile developing A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>, West and his producers considered a contemporary reimagining early on before dropping it. \u201cThe issues these characters are dealing with, the injustice and the way it bleeds into vengeance and cruelty, already feel very 2026,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat he changed instead was characterization. In Dickens\u2019 novel, heroine Lucie Manette is \u201cprone to a lot of weeping\u201d and \u201cquite a lot of fainting,\u201d West says. \u201cShe\u2019s not the most compelling heroine in large passages of it. So we made some fundamental changes. We made her much more intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe wanted Lucie to be \u201cthe central pivot of the entire story\u201d and \u201cthe investigative force\u201d of the opening episodes, pushing against the walls of \u201cbuttoned-up Georgian London.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was a fairly big modernization from the book,\u201d he says. Of Mirren Mack, who plays Lucie in the series, he adds: \u201cLucie is the central component of the whole thing, the sun at the center of the solar system, and then an actor arrives who delivers all of that and more and elevates it through her own interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also replaced Jarvis Lorry and Miss Pross \u2014 who he felt were \u201cserving a similar purpose\u201d and were too \u201cbig and colorful\u201d for the series\u2019 taut, volatile tone \u2014 with a new character, Hester (Sharon Duncan-Brewster). \u201cShe isn\u2019t a proxy father figure to Lucie. She\u2019s an inherited family member, almost an inherited stepmother. \u2026 As the story goes on, they discover that they mean a lot to each other and are more than just inherited relations. They really are family, but they come to that on their own terms. That gives them a larger emotional distance to travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTh\u00e9r\u00e8se Defarge (Roxane Duran) marks another departure. \u201cWe wanted to see somebody become, for want of a less anachronistic word, radicalized,\u201d West says. \u201cShe starts as part of her community. She has a warmth and generosity. Because of what happens to her within the story, we see that crack begin to metastasize into something really sinister and ugly, and by the end, murderous. When we meet her in episode one, she\u2019s a completely different person from what we see at the very end of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Fran\u00e7ois Civil as Charles Darnay and Kit Harington as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarcell Piti\/Federation Studios\/MGM+<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tDickens\u2019 book centers on a couple, but West wanted to \u201cintensify that\u201d and \u201ctwist it slightly into much more of a triangle and make it more live and more complex\u201d between Sydney Carton (Harington), Lucie (Mack) and Charles Darnay (Fran\u00e7ois Civil). \u201cThat way we don\u2019t really know which way Lucie is going to go until she does, toward the back end of the story. I also wanted both men to be equally attractive, equally intriguing and volatile, each speaking to a different side of her, so we really feel the pull, the tension and the dilemma she\u2019s wrestling with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKazan\u2019s rereading centered on Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh<\/a>), the character who first hooked her in Steinbeck\u2019s story. Writing the series, which released on Netflix on Oct. 1, she realized something she hadn\u2019t anticipated: Cathy \u201cis almost always telling the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA fresh perspective also helped Kazan see the story as a love story between brothers Adam (Christopher Abbott) and Charles (Mike Faist), one that Cathy interrupts. \u201cBy watching Chris and Mike interact, I understood how much these characters loved each other,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tRespecting the Literary Blueprint \u2014 and Knowing When to Change It\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tCreative liberties, the writers insist, aren\u2019t changes for the sake of it. Reid describes her approach as \u201crespect rather than reverence.\u201d<\/a> Her biggest liberty is a duel between Herbert Nordrum\u2019s Colonel Brandon and Frank Dillane\u2019s John Willoughby, which Austen mentions but keeps offstage. \u201cHearing about things secondhand in a novel is not so confusing, but onscreen, hearing a character describe it isn\u2019t very interesting,\u201d she says. \u201cYou need to see it to reveal the drama.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAusten\u2019s voice also served as a guide for balancing drama with wit. \u201cWhen I read the book, I made a note of the lines that made me laugh, and a lot of those ended up verbatim in the film. Jane Austen\u2019s just really funny,\u201d Reid says.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tCathy \u201cis almost always telling the truth,\u201d Kazan says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKirsty Griffin\/Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tKazan\u2019s challenge was the opposite: too much book. She was only interested in adapting it as a series because \u201cthe book is simply too big,\u201d and even with seven episodes, \u201chalf is not in our series.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>, West\u2019s key structural decision was genre. \u201cI always wanted it to be a thriller: a very taut, limited story,\u201d he explains. \u201cFour episodes felt like the perfect length to keep the pace and stakes up, and to never let any of the characters settle. I really wanted to make sure that all the characters, whether they\u2019re in London or Paris or moving between the two, are always in a state of agitation. Their feet are never quite on solid ground, so we feel the jeopardy and the volatility of their world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\tWhy We Keep Going Back\t<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\tLeft to right: Mike Faist, Christopher Abbott and Florence Pugh in Netflix\u2019s East of Eden.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAsked why classics keep returning, each offers their own perspective. West points to archetypes and longevity. A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>, he says, \u201cis the archetypal sacrificial story,\u201d with \u201cstrong parallels in that act of sacrifice to the Bible and all the stories that form the basis of our narratives and our emotional map of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tClassics \u201cstill feel timeless, and they still feel as resonant today,\u201d West adds. \u201cThe key thing for us as creatives is to find a new way of telling those classic stories, an angle and something new to say about them. That doesn\u2019t mean reinventing the wheel. It just means giving yourself the license to look at them with fresh eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReid returns to the idea that classics are \u201cclassics for a reason.\u201d She explains that \u201cwhen an audience doesn\u2019t feel patronized\u201d and an adaptation allows \u201cthe classic to exist in its own time, that makes for incredibly powerful viewing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKazan sees adaptations as a way to lower the barrier for new readers. \u201cOne thing these adaptations can do is make a general audience feel they have access to East of Eden<\/em>, The Odyssey<\/em>, Wuthering Heights<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile they have differing ideas about what keeps the classics coming back, all three writers share the same hope: that viewers will pick up the book. Classics haven\u2019t disappeared from school reading lists, but students are reportedly reading significantly fewer <\/a>full-length books than in past decades.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs long as we don\u2019t ban and burn these books, everybody will continue to have access to them,\u201d Kazan says. \u201cThere are so many books I came to as an adult that changed my life, and if I\u2019d read them in high school, I wouldn\u2019t have cared or understood. The most important thing is to let kids feel they can have pleasure in reading.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s already evidence that these adaptations are sending people back to the page. Since the series\u2019 Oct. 1 debut, sales of East of Eden<\/em> have risen <\/a>nearly 200 percent across all formats, according to publisher Penguin Classics. The novel also hit No. 1 on Amazon\u2019s best-sellers list \u2014 74 years after it was published. The Economist<\/em> <\/a>reports that U.S. sales of The Odyssey<\/em> have quadrupled this year, while Wuthering Heights<\/em> topped Britain\u2019s best-seller list.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnything that can nudge people back toward bookshops and toward discovering those works again can only be a good thing,\u201d West says. \u201cThe reason the work of classic storytellers like Dickens, Shakespeare and Austen still resonates is that they\u2019re saying something about the human condition, about what we\u2019re all struggling with, yearning for and reaching for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt would be amazing if people went back to the book,\u201d Reid says. If Sense and Sensibility<\/em> \u201ccould make Austen and the classics feel less intimidating, and encourage people to see themselves in it and find emotional truth in a story they thought was too remote, that would be amazing!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIt would be amazing if people went back to the book,\u201d Sense and Sensibility <\/em>screenwriter Reid says. <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Focus Features<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some stories refuse to stay on the page. The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Beyond the Book column explores what happens when books make the leap to screen and beyond \u2014 unpacking what stayed, changed, how it was done and why it matters with the creatives who made it. *** East of Eden showrunner Zoe Kazan has had<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}