Books into film and television

The Naked chef

Tie-in book by Jamie Oliver

Naked Lunch

From the novel Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.

The namesake (2006)

Based on the 2003 novel The namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Nancy Wake

Tie-in book by Peter Fitzsimons

The Nanny Diaries

Emma McLaughlin and Nicole Kraus had a hit with their 2002 novel about the experiences of a working class girl from New Jersey who is enrolled at New York University and gets a job as a nanny to a wealthy family referred to simply as the Xs. The wife is a social butterfly who treats her nanny as a general dogsbody, shades of Private Eye’s hilarious column of the ghastly Polly Filler who writes fluffy drivel for a newspaper and treats her au pairs appallingly. Scarlett Johansson plays the nanny with Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti as the parents of her charge and Chris Evans, Donna Murphy and Alicia Keys also starring. Read the Book ~ About the Film

Nanny McPhee

Emma Thompson has adapted the three Nurse Matilda novels - Nurse Matilda (1964), Nurse Matilda goes to town (1967) and Nurse Matilda goes to hospital (1974) - into a film that features herself as the nanny. The stories are about seven wayward children who are tamed by a magical nanny after their father is widowed. Christianna Brand is best known as a mystery novelist but she drew on her experience as a governess for these children’s novels. Colin Firth is the male lead and Angela Lansbury plays the aristocratic great-aunt of the children. Read the Books ~ About the Film

National Velvet

From the novel National Velvet by Enid Bagnold

Naughty Marietta

From the musical play Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert

Navigating the heart

From the 1988 book Fishing with John by Edith Iglauer

Nazi gold

Tie-in book by Tom Bower

Needful things

From the novel Needful things by Stephen King.

Nell

Based on a 1989 play Idioglossia by Mark Handley

Nero Wolfe: The Doorbell rang

From the 1963 novel The Doorbell rang by Rex Stout

Never cry wolf

From the book Never cry wolf by Farley Mowat

The Neverending story

From the novel The Neverending story by Michael Ende

And never let her go

From the 2000 book And never let her go by Ann Rule

Never let me go

The story of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel follows a young woman who was raised at a private school in the English countryside where children were sheltered from the outside world and told their well-being was crucial for the dystopian society they would eventually enter. When two former students come back into her life, they uncover the truth about their childhood and their lives. The film version is directed by American Mark Romanek whose background is music videos and novelist Alex Garland has adapted the novel for the screen. Keira Knighley leads the cast with three of the more talented younger English actresses: Sally Hawkins (from Mike Leigh’s Happy go lucky), Casey Mulligan (from the much praised An education) and Andrea Riseborough (who played Margaret Thatcher on British T.V. recently). The supporting cast includes Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Garfield and Nathalie Richard.
Read the book ~ About the film

 

Never say never again

From Ian Fleming’s novel Thunderball

Never tell me never

From the book Never tell me never by Janine Shepherd

New moon

No need to say much about his except it’s the inevitable adaptation of the second novel in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart return in the leads and this time the director is Paul Weitz.
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The New Zealand Wars

The tie-in book to the series is The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian interpretation of racial conflict by James Belich

The Newton Boys

Based on the 1994 book The Newton Boys: Portrait of an outlaw gang by Claude Stanush

Next

Philip K. Dick’s short story The golden man first came out in the 1987 collection The father thing. It’s about a man who can see two minutes into the future and the FBI want to recruit him to fight a terrorist threat in Los Angeles. The man with the foresight is played by Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore is an FBI agent and Jessica Biel is a woman with whom Cage becomes involved. Peter Falk and Thomas Kretschmann also star and the director is New Zealand’s own Lee Tamahori.
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Nicholas Nickleby

From the novel Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Nicholas' gift

Not based on a book but the story is told in The Nicholas effect by Reg Green

Nigella bites

Tie-in book by Nigella Lawson

Night at the museum (2006)

From the 1993 picture book, Night at the museum, by Milan Trenc

Night falls on Manhattan

From the 1993 novel Tainted evidence by Robert Daley

The Night Listener

Armistead Maupin’s novel is a much darker work than the Tales of the city titles for which he is most famous. It’s about a gay late-night radio personality whose show is a huge success but whose life is in a mess. One of his listeners is a very troubled AIDS-infected 13 year old boy who has been rescued by a doctor from a life of terrible abuse. The radio man is played by Robin Williams with Rory Culkin as the boy, Sandra Oh and Toni Collette.
Read the Book ~ About the Film

The Night of the hunter

From the 1953 novel The Night of the hunter by Davis Grubb

Night ride home

From the 1998 novel Night ride home by Barbara Esstman

Night sins

From the novel Night sins by Tami Hoag

Nightmare: The Birth of horror

Tie-in book by Christopher Frayling

Nightmares of nature

Tie-in book by Richard Matthews

Nights in Rodanthe

Three bestselling novels by Nicholas Sparks have already made it to the screen and there’s no reason why this one won’t do well with audiences who like a nice sentimental romance. This novel from 2002 is about a doctor who spends a night at a hotel in the country where he meets a woman who is contemplating divorce and… Richard Gere and Diane Lane play the romantic couple with James Franco, Scott Glenn and Christopher Meloni in the supporting cast.
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Nights In The Gardens Of Spain

The 1995 Witi Ihimaera novel is destined for television this year. The novel, regarded as a semi-autobiographical tale, is about an academic, married with children, who leads a gay life that he eventually acknowledges to all. Katie Wolfe directs the film and the lead roles are played by Dean O’Gorman, Pana Hema-Taylor, Scott Cotter and Charlie McDermott.
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Night train

Nicolas Roeg has not had much luck since his glory days of films like Don’t look now with his last film, an adaptation of Fay Weldon’s Puffball getting a strong thumbs down from both critics and audiences. His latest is an adaptation of the 1997 Martin Amis novel about a female homicide detective who is investigating the supposed suicide of a young woman who is both a friend and the daughter of her former boss. The novel is something of a pastiche of a crime noir but much subtler. The film version has Sigourney Weaver in the lead with Nick Nolte, Toby Jones and Michael Madsen in the cast.
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Nim’s island

Wendy Orr’s 2001 children’s novel is about the adventures of a young girl named Nim who lives on an island with her father and an assortment of marine animals as friends. When the father’s boat runs into trouble, Nim has to take care of the island with the help of her friends. The novel has been adapted by Jennifer Flackett, Joseph Kwong and Mark Levin (who wrote the tennis movie Wimbledon) and directed by Flackett and Levin. Nim is played by Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler and Jodie Foster are the other leads.
Read the Book ~ About the Film

Nine

This musical – book by playwright Arthur Kopit and music and lyrics by Maury Yeston – is an odd choice for a big scale movie as it isn’t the same mass market pleasing piece that Chicago and Hairspray were. It’s based on the classic Fellini arthouse film Eight and a half. It premiered on Broadway in 1982 and then had a turn later in 1983 with Antonio Banderas playing the film director who is having trouble with his next production and reviewing his relationships with the women in his life. Banderas was to repeat his performance in the film but he’s been replaced by Daniel Day-Lewis. The director is Rob Marshall who made Chicago. The women in his life are played by Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson and Sophia Loren.
Read the Book ~ About the Film

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Based on the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

The Ninth gate

From the novel The Dumas club by Arturo Perez-Reverte

No 2 (2006)

From the play No 2, first produced 2000, by Toa Fraser

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel (the title comes from the Yeats poem Sailing to Byzantium) is about a hunter who finds himself in the middle of a drug war after he stumbles across (and pockets) $2 million in cash near the Texas-Mexico border. The bad fortune that comes from grabbing bad money was a similar theme in Scott Smith’s novel A simple plan, filmed in 1998. McCarthy’s novel is less of a thriller and more of a dark picture of Texas in the 1980s. The film has been adapted and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and the cast includes Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly MacDonald, Woody Harrelson and Tess Harper.
Read the Book ~ About the Film

No greater love

From the novel No greater love by Danielle Steel

No trains, no planes

From the 1995 Dutch novel Broederweelde by Jean-Paul Franssens

Nobody’s fool

From the novel Nobody’s fool by Richard Russo

Noises off

From the play Noises off by Michael Frayn

None but the lonely heart

From the novel None but the lonely heart by Richard Llewellyn

Nora

From the book Nora by Brenda Maddox

North

From the 1984 novel North by Alan Zweibel

Nostromo

From the novel Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

North Country (2006)

"Inspired by" the 2002 book North country by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy

Northern lights

From a play Northern lights by John Hoffman

Not as a stranger (1955)

From the 1954 novel Not as a stranger by Morton Thompson

Not me (2004)

From the 2001 novel, not translated into English, Io no, by Lorenzo Licalzi

Not without my daughter

From the book Not without my daughter by Betty Mahmoody

The notebook

Nicholas Sparks has made a career out of tearjerkers and two of them (Message in a bottle, A walk to remember) have already made it to the screen. This one is based on his first bestseller, which first appeared in 1996, and it’s about a retired salesman (James Garner) who visits an elderly lady (Gena Rowlands) suffering from Alzheimer’s and living in a retirement home. He reads to her from a notebook which tells of two young men in 1946 both courting the same girl. No surprises for guessing who the girl is. Read the Book ~ About the Film

Notes from a small island

Tie-in book by Bill Bryson

Notes on a scandal

Zoe Heller’s 2003 novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize of that year. The novel is about a lonely schoolteacher in her 60s who befriends a younger woman teaching at her school. When the younger woman has an affair with an underage student and there is a resulting scandal, the older woman takes on the role of defender. Noted theatrical director Richard Eyre take the reins and the novel has been adapted by playwright Patrick Marber. The two women are played by Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett with others in the cast including Bill Nighy and Emma Kennedy.
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Nothing is private (2007)

From the 2005 novel Towelhead by Alicia Erian.

Nothing too good for a cowboy

From the 1955 nonfiction book Nothing too good for a cowboy by Richmond P. Hobson

Now voyager (1942)

From the 1941 novel Now voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty

Nowhere boy

An adaptation of the memoir by John Lennon’s half sister, Julia Baird, Imagine this: growing up with my brother John Lennon. It marks the directing debut of Sam Taylor-Wood, the well known British conceptual artist. It will focus on the influence his mother and his Aunt Mimi had on him. Lennon is played by Aaaron Johnson and Aunt Mimi by Kristin Scott Thomas. Anne-Marie Duff plays Lennon’s mother. Thomas Sangster is Paul McCartney and Sam Bell is George Harrison.
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The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

The first of the Alexander McCall Smith novels that also have this series title came out in 1998 and has been on the drawing board for some time. Anthony Minghella has filmed the novel on location in Botswana and has given the plum part of Precious Ramotswe to singer Jill Scott in her film debut. Her secretary, Grace Makutsi, is played by Anika Noni Rose (from Dreamgirls) with Lucian Msamatias Precious Ramotswe’s suitor.
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Number 17

Based on the play Number 17 by J. Jefferson Farjeon, first produced 1925

The Nun and the bandit

From the 1935 novelThe Nun and the bandit by Grant Wilson

The Nun’s story

From the 1956 book The Nun’s story by Kathryn Hulme