As you’ll see every year around this time, there are quite a few lists making the rounds of what we can look forward to in the next twelve months. Some of these lists are about book adaptations. However, almost all of these lists include the Fifty Shades of Grey film. Nobody is looking forward to that. So here’s a list that includes movies you can actually get excited about.
5. 'Victor Frankenstein' directed by Paul McGuigan
With last year’s release of I, Frankenstein, it’s understandable that any films with Frankenstein in them are going to leave a bad taste in our mouths. However, screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle) has penned a script that actually might not suck. Told from the perspective of Igor, Victor Frankenstein looks like a prequel to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, covering the early friendship of Igor and Victor Von Frankenstein back when he was a young medical student. James McAvoy (Shameless, X-Men: First Class) stars as Frankenstein and Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) stars as Igor. Victor Frankenstein has a release date of October 2nd.
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4. 'Dark Places' directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Last year, Gone Girl blew up. And for good reason. It was a great film adapted from an even better novel. Gillian Flynn is a masterful crime novelist, which makes her catalog prime material for film adaptations. Fans of Gone Girl will love Dark Places, as it’s even more insane. It tells the story of a woman whose parents are murdered when she was a child. She testifies and helps send her own brother away for the crime. Then, twenty-five years later, with the help of a murder-obsessed group of amateur detectives called “The Kill Club”, she begins investigating the crime again. There’s no solid release date on this one, just sometime in 2015. Dark Places stars Charlize Theron, Christina Hendricks, Nicholas Hoult, and Chloe Grace Moretz.
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3. 'Dermaphoria' directed by Ross Clarke
Although this technically was released in 2014, I’m cheating and including it here, because it was only released at film festivals and I still haven’t been able to see it. Most people haven’t. Dermaphoria is based off of Crag Clevenger’s cult novel about a chemist with amnesia. The film adaptation stars Joseph Morgan (The Vampire Diaries), Walton Goggins (Justified), and Ron Perlman. No official release date has been announced, but I’m guessing it’ll be available to watch sometime this year. I mean, it has to be. I’ll go crazy if it isn’t.
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2. 'High-Rise' directed by Ben Wheatley
J.G. Ballard is a hell of a writer. High-Rise is probably his best novel. When I saw a film was being adapted a few weeks ago, I was genuinely surprised. For those who don’t know, High-Rise takes place in a luxurious apartment block during a brutal class war. It’s Lord of the Flies inside an apartment. It’s violent and insane and wonderful. I expect the film to be just as crazy. It stars Tom Hiddleston and Jeremy Irons. Look for this one September 17th.
Editor's note: directed by Ben Wheatley, fuck yeah!
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1. 'The Martian' directed by Ridley Scott
Andy Weir’s The Martian was one of my favorite reads of 2014, so learning that a film adaptation is in the works totally made up for reading dozens of articles about the Fifty Shades of Grey movie. I praised The Martian in my best-of-the-year list last month, and for good reason. An astronaut is stranded on Mars for seemingly forever, and he has to use a mystical force known as “science” to survive. It’s an intelligent and humorous look at a man fighting for his life against a planet that really wants to kill him. The film adaptation will be directed by Ridley Scott and star Matt Damon as Mark Watney. This one comes out November 25th.
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And that wraps up the five film adaptations I’m most excited about this year. There are many others I could have talked about, but honestly? They look like garbage, so what’s the point? The five listed above at least have a chance of being decent. Here’s to hoping that Dermaphoria actually becomes available this year, because this is a film we all need to see. In the meantime, I suggest picking up any of the five books in this list and giving them a read. They’re all worth your time, and the adaptations probably will be, too.
About the author
Max Booth III is the CEO of Ghoulish Books, the host of the GHOULISH and Dog Ears podcasts, the co-founder of the Ghoulish Book Festival, and the author of several spooky books, including Abnormal Statistics, Maggots Screaming!, Touch the Night, and others. He wrote both the novella and film versions of We Need to Do Something, which was released by IFC Midnight in 2021 and can currently be streamed on Hulu. He was raised in Northwest Indiana and now lives in San Antonio.
