10 Books to Read Before Their 2025 Screen Adaptations Arrive
It’s no secret that plenty of great movies and TV shows were first conceived of as books — a great story is a great story, after all. Some of 2024’s buzziest projects began as novels, such as “Wicked,” “It Ends with Us,” “Bridgerton,” “The Perfect Couple,” and more.
2025 means plenty more outstanding books are coming to screens, from the eerie police and family drama of Philadelphia in Liz Moore’s “Long Bright River” to Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson and Lynne Ramsay putting their surely unique spin on Ariana Harwicz’s novel “Die, My Love.” While it’s a popular idiom that the book is always better, we have a good feeling about the below list, which feature stories that combine great plots with sharp characters portrayed by an exciting group of actors (Sarah Snook! Alexander Skarsg?rd!).
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If you’re looking for your next read, make it one of these, and you’ll be able to confidently tell your friends, “Well, actually, it wasn’t quite like that in the book…”
Looking for even more? While they are further off yet, some other memorable bestselling novels with adaptations officially in the works include “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” — a powerful story about friendship, grief, and video games that this reporter is obsessed with making everyone check out — as well as “Fourth Wing,” which Michael B. Jordan’s company is adapting for Prime Video and is the romantasy obsession of the moment. (The third book in that planned five-book franchise by Rebecca Yarros, “Onyx Storm,” will be released January 21, 2025.)
Add the below books — many of which don’t have official release dates but are expected this year — to your library list, stat.
1. “Long Bright River”
Starring: Amanda Seyfried
“Long Bright River” is an excellent book by Liz Moore, and has plenty of potential to be turned into a great series. The official logline says the limited series will tell “the story of Mickey (Seyfried), a police officer who patrols a Philadelphia neighborhood hard-hit by the opioid crisis. When a series of murders begins in the neighborhood, Mickey realizes that her personal history might be related to the case.”
“Long Bright River” was one 2020’s top-selling books, appearing on Barack Obama’s best of the year list as well as being a Good Morning America book club pick. Moore is adapting her book for the screen alongside Nikki Toscano, with both also serving as executive producers. A release date for the Peacock series has not yet been announced.
2. “The Woman Who Fooled the World”
Starring: Kaitlyn Dever
“Apple Cider Vinegar,” a narrative series based on the non-fiction book “The Woman Who Fooled the World” by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano will hit Netflix February 6: It tales the tale of an Australian influencer in the mid-2010s, Belle Gibson, who fakes a cancer battle for followers and builds an empire based on a lie.
The book and show will also tackle the wellness industry, and the appeal of these home remedies, especially for women who feel ignored by the male-dominated medical profession. The book particularly has a lot to say about the rise of Instagram/influencer culture which, of course, we are now all living with the results of. Fun!
3. “The Housemaid”
Starring: Amanda Seyfried (again!), Sydney Sweeney
The 2022 bestselling book by Freida McFadden is a twisty psychological thriller about a home so messed up you’ll be longing for the soothing embrace of a haunted house. The adaptation will star Sweeney as Millie, a young woman on her last chance who becomes a housekeeper for the well-to-do couple Nina (Amanda Seyfried) and Andrew. It isn’t long before Millie realizes things are pretty dang effed up in their home (there’s an attic door that only unlocks from the outside, for one…) — but, of course, Millie isn’t all she appears to be either.
Fans of “Gone Girl” and Paul Feig’s own adaptation of “A Simple Favor” will surely eat this dark mystery up — and good news: There’s already two published sequels by author Frieda McFadden (who has a boatload of fun thrillers, so be prepared to fall down that rabbit hole).*
4. “All Her Fault”
Starring: Sarah Snook, Jake Lacy, Michael Pe?a
The thriller by Andrea Mara follows an overwhelmed mom, Marissa, who goes to pick up her son Milo from a playdate, only to discover he’s not there — and the owners of the house have never heard of Milo. Her child has vanished into thin air with his new nanny, and it’s up to Marissa to track them down, with very little to go on, before it’s too late. The novel is a classic “you’ll be up until you finish it” pageturner, and expect the limited series, premiering on Peacock, to feature more of the same.
5. “The Hunting Wives”
Starring: Brittany Snow, Dermot Mulroney, Chrissy Metz
Set to be a Starz series, the plot description for the novel by May Cobb reads: “Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. …Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. As Sophie’s curiosity gives way to full-blown obsession, she slips farther away from the safety of her family and deeper into this nest of vipers. When the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation and her life spiraling out of control.”
6. “The Better Sister”
Starring: Jessica Biel, Elizabeth Banks, Corey Stoll
This domestic noir by Alafair Burke is your classic book club book: That means big twists, complicated characters, and plenty of moral dilemmas to dive into and debate. The plot follows two estranged sisters — estranged for what seems like obvious reasons, because wild child Nicky’s former husband Adam in the present day is married to Nicky’s type-A sister Chloe. Chloe is even basically mom to Nicky and Adam’s child, Ethan. When Adam turns up dead in their apartment one night police suspect teenage Ethan — and Chloe must dive into the women’s respective checkered pasts to prove his innocence.
The limited series adaptation will be directed by Craig Gillespie (“I, Tonya” “Cruella”) and is expected to premiere on Prime Video.
7. “Mickey 17”
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo
Bong Joon-ho’s first film since his triumph at the Oscars with “Parasite” is this science fiction comedy based on Edward Ashton’s novel “Mickey7.” The film, “Mickey 17,” boasts a terrific cast and a delicious premise: In an effort to leave earth, Pattinson signs up to be an “expendable” in a process where a new body will be generated with its memories intact after a previous version dies. The only problem comes when something goes wrong and Pattinson finds himself at war with one of his own iterations — the kind of thing that should offer Bong ample opportunities for the kind of genre-bending, sly black comedy at which he excels. —Jim Hemphill*
8. “Washington Black”
Starring: Sterling K. Brown, Tom Ellis, Charles Dance
The official description for Esi Edugyan’s Man Booker Prize Finalist reads: “Eleven-year-old George Washington Black — or Wash — a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, [and] two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self.”
The long-in-the-works adaptation reportedly completed filming in fall 2024.
9. “Die, My Love”
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield
Jennifer Lawrence plays a woman ravaged at the crossroads of love and madness (and ostensibly some kind of postpartum breakdown, given the source material), opposite Robert Pattinson as her onscreen husband and LaKeith Stanfield as her lover. Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte co-star in a movie Lynne Ramsay said diverges from the book, about a woman in a secluded French village dealing with mental health issues.
Ramsay has been known to take a loose approach to her source material, freely adapting Lionel Schriver’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and Jonathan Ames’ “You Were Never Really Here.” She wrote the script for “Die, My Love” with Edna Walsh and again works with DP Seamus McGarvey, who created a nightmarish swirl of hallucinatory images for “Kevin.” The movie doesn’t have a U.S. distributor yet, but I’d bet on at least a Cannes premiere (where Ramsay generally goes) and a distributor snapping this up quick. —Ryan Lattanzio*
10. “The Murderbot Diaries”
Starring: Alexander Skarsg?rd
The book series by Martha Wells follows “a sentient security android that calls itself Murderbot must mask its ability for free thought whilst completing dangerous assignments and is simultaneously drawn to humans and appalled at their weakness.”
The adaptation will be yet another science-fiction tale for Apple TV+, which has found a niche with this kind of futuristic project (think “Severance”). So far there are seven novels in the series, the first of which is titled “All Systems Red,” and which won the 2018 Hugo Award. Timely questions about AI are sure to delight fans of the genre, and, come on, who isn’t intrigued by a sentient robot?
* Indicates writeup comes from our list of IndieWire’s Most Anticipated Movies of 2025.
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