Top book adaptations to watch out for in 2026

MUMBAI: As the new year starts, it inevitably heralds the dawn of questions like “Have you seen the new..?”

Whether it’s a trailer dropped overnight, a casting announcement that sets social media buzzing, or a beloved book finally making its way to the screen, the year ahead is already brimming with anticipation.

We’re here to keep you as informed and as excited as possible. From seasoned professionals to first-time authors, here is a rundown of our picks for this year’s book adaptations. We’ve got some reliable box office hits in the charts, and are taking a chance on some newbies. Both domestic and international, we are offering you a selection of films spanning sci-fi to thriller, fantasy to romcom.

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë’s storm-lashed lovers are heading back to the screen—this time through the sharp, unsettling lens of Emerald Fennell. The filmmaker, known for Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, turns to Wuthering Heights for her third feature, reworking the 1847 gothic classic with her signature blend of obsession, cruelty and desire.
At the heart of the film is the feral bond between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw: a love that is intoxicating, corrosive and impossible to escape. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi lead the cast, joined by Alison Oliver, Owen Cooper and Hong Chau.

Adding a modern jolt to the windswept moors, the film’s score will feature original music by Charli XCX, promising a soundtrack as disruptive and emotionally charged as the relationship it showcases. Fennell’s Wuthering Heights looks set to strip the story of nostalgia and deliver Brontë’s tragedy as something raw, contemporary and deeply unsettling.  

Ramayana

One of Hinduism’s most revered epics is being reimagined on an epic cinematic scale. Ramayana unfolds as the tale of a just prince and his devoted bride, whose wedding is followed not by celebration, but by exile — a banishment that sets in motion a battle between righteousness and ambition, love and loss, mortals and gods.

Ranbir Kapoor steps into the role of Ram, while Sai Pallavi’s Sita anchors the film with grace. Opposing them is Yash’s Ravana: powerful, charismatic and terrifyingly human. The world around them is brought to life by Sunny Deol as the mighty Hanuman, Ravi Dubey as Lakshman, Lara Dutta as the conflicted Kaikeyi and Arun Govil, returning to the epic as King Dashrath. Amitabh Bachchan appears as the noble Jatayu, with Mohit Raina making a divine turn as Lord Shiva.

Nitesh Tiwari directs the ambitious adaptation, with legend Hans Zimmer composing the score. Early footage from the teaser has generated strong buzz, establishing Ramayana as a big-screen retelling designed for modern audiences while staying rooted in the mythology’s emotional and moral stakes.

Sense and Sensibility

Three decades after Emma Thompson and Ang Lee’s celebrated adaptation, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is heading back to cinemas with a new interpretation of the 1811 classic. The upcoming film features Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles, Caitríona Balfe, Frank Dillane, Herbert Nordrum and George MacKay, and is set for release on September 25.

The story revisits the fortunes of the Dashwood sisters, whose lives are upended when their father’s death leaves them virtually destitute, their inheritance absorbed by a half-brother and his wife. As the family is forced to start anew, Elinor (Edgar-Jones) approaches love and loss with restraint and reason, while the impulsive Marianne (Creed-Miles) embraces emotion with abandon, determined to live — and love — on her own, unapologetically romantic terms.

People We Meet On Vacation

Tom Blyth and Emily Bader are packing their bags for a romantic reset. The duo will headline the big-screen adaptation of People We Meet on Vacation, one of Emily Henry’s most beloved novels, bringing its slow-burn chemistry and emotional tension to cinemas.

Bader, fresh off My Lady Jane, steps into the role of Poppy: restless, optimistic and quietly unhappy, while Blyth, seen in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, plays Alex, her introverted, steady counterweight. For years, the pair shared a tradition: one week-long holiday every summer. Then something broke. Two years passed without a word.

The feature is directed by Brett Haley, with a screenplay by Yulin Kuang alongside Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo. Production comes from Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey and Isaac Klausner.

Part romance, part second-chance drama, People We Meet on Vacation promises sun-soaked locations, unresolved feelings and the kind of emotional honesty Emily Henry readers have been waiting to see on screen.

Verity

Colleen Hoover’s most unsettling novel is headed to the screen with a starry trio and a thick sense of menace. Verity will see Dakota Johnson step into the role of Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer drawn into the eerie world of a bestselling literary dynasty after being hired to ghostwrite novels for Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway. Josh Hartnett stars as Jeremy Crawford, Verity’s husband, whose offer promises salvation and something far darker.

The film is directed by Michael Showalter, with a screenplay by Nick Antosca, building on earlier drafts by Hillary Seitz, Angela LaManna, and writing duo Will Honley and April Maguire. Hathaway, Hoover and Showalter are among the producers, alongside Antosca, Alex Hedlund, Stacey Sher and Jordana Mollick.

Verity continues Hollywood’s rush for Hoover’s page-turners, following the commercial success of It Ends With Us and the forthcoming Regretting You, cementing the author’s status as one of the industry’s most bankable thriller-romance exports.

The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan is heading back to the myths, reworking Homer’s The Odyssey into a vast, time-bending cinematic epic. Fresh off the triumph of Oppenheimer, the filmmaker turns to ancient Greece, anchoring the saga with Matt Damon as Odysseus, the war-scarred king condemned to a decade-long struggle to find his way home after the Trojan War.

The ensemble is suitably mythic. Tom Holland, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal and Mia Goth orbit Damon’s wandering hero, populating a world of gods, monsters and moral tests.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Apple TV plus is turning Rufi Thorpe’s buzzy bestseller into an eight-part drama powered by star wattage and sharp provocation. Elle Fanning leads as a young mother cornered by money troubles, who takes an unexpected detour into OnlyFans—guided, improbably, by her estranged father’s lessons from the world of professional wrestling. Michelle Pfeiffer headlines alongside her, with Nick Offerman and Thaddea Graham rounding out the ensemble.

The series is steered by David E. Kelley, the multi-Emmy winner behind some of television’s most compulsive dramas, who serves as showrunner and writer. Backed by A24, the project boasts heavyweight producers including Nicole Kidman, also an executive producer, along with Elle and Dakota Fanning, Per Saari, and Thorpe herself— promising a slick, daring adaptation that leans into ambition, reinvention and modern survival.

Project Hail Mary

Amazon MGM Studios is blasting Andy Weir’s cerebral sci-fi bestseller Project Hail Mary onto the big screen, with Ryan Gosling taking the cosmic leap. Gosling stars as Ryland Grace, a schoolteacher who wakes up alone on a spacecraft, his past erased and his purpose a mystery. As his memories slowly return, so does the terrifying truth: he is humanity’s last shot at averting an extinction-level catastrophe.

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the film pairs high-concept science with wit and emotional punch. Grace’s lonely mission takes an unexpected turn when he encounters an alien with a crisis of its own, turning survival into an interspecies collaboration. Sandra Hüller and Milana Vayntrub co-star, with Drew Goddard adapting the screenplay. The project marks Lord and Miller’s long-awaited return to the director’s chair since 22 Jump Street, promising a smart, high-energy take on space-bound suspense.

Seven Dials

Netflix is returning to Agatha Christie’s world of intrigue with a fresh three-part limited series, reimagined by Broadchurch creator and former Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall. At the centre of the mystery is Mia McKenna-Bruce, who steps into the role of Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent: an unexpectedly sharp and relentlessly curious young woman who finds herself drawn into a deadly puzzle.

Set against the opulent backdrop of a high-society country house gathering, what begins as a seemingly harmless prank spirals into something far more sinister.

The series boasts an ensemble cast including Helena Bonham Carter, Martin Freeman, Corey Mylchreest, Ed Bluemel and Nabhaan Rizwan. Chibnall serves as executive producer through his banner Imaginary Friends, alongside Suzanne Mackie (The Crown), Chris Sussman (Good Omens) and director Chris Sweeney, who helms all three episodes.

Dune Messiah

With the first two films bringing Frank Herbert’s epic Dune to the big screen, the franchise is now turning its focus to the author’s 1969 sequel, Dune Messiah. The upcoming third instalment will draw directly from the second novel, expanding the saga beyond Paul Atreides’ rise to power.

Set in the aftermath of Dune: Part Two, Dune: Part Three finds Paul (Timothée Chalamet) grappling with the consequences of his rule — attempting to hold the galaxy together while facing visions of mass destruction, seeking justice for his father’s murder, and navigating the emotional fault lines between Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) and Chani (Zendaya). The film is currently slated for a December 18 release.

Remain

It sounds like an unlikely pairing, but it’s very real: filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan and bestselling romance novelist Nicholas Sparks together wrote Remain, a supernatural romance novel released earlier this year.

The story follows Tate Donovan, an architect seeking refuge on the windswept shores of Cape Cod after his mother’s death. What begins as a quiet stay at a secluded bed-and-breakfast turns transformative when he strikes up a connection with Wren, an enigmatic local who seems to know more than she lets on. Love, grief and healing take centre stage — until the narrative tilts, and the shadows beneath the romance begin to surface in unmistakably Shyamalan fashion.

That tonal tightrope will carry over to the screen when Remain arrives in cinemas on October 23. Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor lead the film as Tate and Wren, anchoring a project that promises equal parts heartache, intimacy and unsettling surprise.

The Love Hypothesis

At this point on the watchlist, we’re entering speculative territory. These adaptations don’t yet have locked release dates, but all signs suggest they’ll land sometime in 2026.

Leading the pack is The Love Hypothesis, Ali Hazelwood’s wildly popular 2021 novel that began life as a Star Wars fan fiction before snowballing into a phenomenon. Set in the harried world of academia, the story follows Olive Smith, a doctoral student whose carefully curated life implodes into a fake relationship with the intimidating—and inconveniently attractive—Dr Adam Carlsen, a senior faculty member at her university. What starts as a ruse, of course, refuses to stay that way.

The screen adaptation casts Lili Reinhart as Olive opposite Tom Bateman as Adam, a pairing that has already sent the internet into overdrive. Reinhart’s behind-the-scenes TikToks from the set have only fuelled the frenzy, turning a much-loved romcom into one of the most keenly anticipated book-to-film adaptations on the horizon.