So many of the best screenplays are plucked from the pages of a novel. This year, we’ve already seen silver screen adaptations from books including Deep Water, Death on The Nile, No Exit and The Sky is Everywhere, but there are many more to look forward to in coming months.

Popcorn Podcast has the top book-to-screen adaptations in 2022 you need to add to your watchlist.

LITTLE TORNADOES

Set in 1970s Australia, Little Tornadoes follows newly single father Leo (Mark Leonard Winter) through a turbulent storm of change. Silvia Colloca plays Maria, a surrogate homemaker and mother figure to Leo’s two children. Written and directed by Aaron Wilson (Canopy) and co-written by The Slap author Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian drama explores immigration, the women’s liberation movement and anti-Vietnam War protests.

After its world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, this Australian feature received an honourable mention as one of ACMI’s best films of 2021.

You can watch endearing drama Little Tornadoes in select Australian cinemas from May 12, 2022.

PERSUASION

Another Jane Austen adaptation is in the works, this time for Persuasion, Austen’s last completed novel. The romantic period drama about second chances and lost love stars Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliot, Henry Golding as Mr Elliot and Cosmo Jarvis as Captain Frederick Wentworth.

Persuasion releases on Netflix July 15, 2022.

BULLET TRAIN

David Leitch, director of Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, brings us this screen adaptation of the Bullet Train novel by bestselling Japanese author Kôtarô Isaka. When a trained killer named Ladybug (Brad Pitt) boards a bullet train heading from Tokyo to Kyoto to collect a briefcase, he and the other competing assassins onboard discover their objectives are all connected.

The Lost City co-stars Pitt and Sandra Bullock reunite in this action-thriller as Ladybug and Maria Beetle. Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Logan Lerman, Michael Shannon and Hiroyuki Sanada are included in the ensemble cast.

Bullet Train shoots into cinemas July 28, 2022.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kya, a curious woman who raised herself in the marshes of the deep South. When a man she was once involved with is murdered, the outsider is quickly labelled the prime suspect.

Delia Owens’s 2018 novel of the same name is a New York Times Best Seller. With Reese Witherspoon producing, Luc Alibar writing and Olivia Newman directing, this drama-mystery adaptation boasts a female lens in front of and behind the camera.

Where The Crawdads Sing swoops into theatres August 11, 2022.

SALEM’S LOT

Another Stephen King novel is on its way to the big screen. Expected in September, Salem’s Lot is about a writer who travels to a town where people become vampires.

Written and directed by Gary Dauberman (writer of the Annabelle and It franchises), Salem’s Lot promises a horror-thriller full of blood and jump scares.

Salem’s Lot has recently confirmed its Australian release date for September 8, 2022.

Listen to Popcorn Podcast’s review of Stephen King horror It: Chapter Two

BLONDE

Golden Globe-nominee Ana de Armas is Marilyn Monroe in the American biographical drama Blonde, which will premiere at the 79th Venice Film Festival. Andrew Dominik’s Netflix adaptation also stars Adrien Brody as ‘The Playwright’ (aka Arthur Miller) and Bobby Cannavale as ‘The Ex-Athlete’ (aka Joe DiMaggio).

The film is based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates which chronicles a fictionalised life of Hollywood’s biggest movie star. After seeing a rough cut of the film, Oates called it “startling, brilliant, very disturbing and perhaps most surprisingly an utterly ‘feminist’ interpretation.”

Blonde will hit Netflix later this year.

WHITE NOISE

Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise is a postmodern classic about a Hitler studies professor whose small Midwestern town is evacuated after an industrial accident.

This is Noah Baumbach’s first adaptation feature film, but it is not his first time working with Adam Driver and spouse Greta Gerwig. The trio first collaborated on Frances Ha in 2013 and Baumbach has directed Driver in three other dramas – the latest being 2019’s Academy Award-winning Marriage Story.

White Noise is expected to premiere at the Venice Film Festival before a late 2022 hybrid release.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Legendary director Martin Scorsese and six-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Roth bring journalist David Grann’s non-fiction novel Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI to the screen. The story focuses on a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Oklahoma in the 1920s after oil deposits were found beneath their land.

The resurgence of Brendan Fraser’s career continues as he stars as W.S. Hamilton in the American crime drama alongside A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons. 

Killers of the Flower Moon is coming soon to Apple TV+, but a date is currently unconfirmed.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Shooting wrapped in May 2021 for Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front, the war-drama based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel of the same name. German director Edward Berger’s take stars Daniel Brühl as a young German soldier exposed to the horrors of World War I.

Lewis Milestone’s American film adaptation won three Academy Awards in 1930, including Best Picture so Berger has a lot to live up to.

All Quiet on the Western Front is expected to start streaming on Netflix in December.

STARS AT NOON

A24’s romantic thriller is based on Denis Johnson’s novel of the same name. In Nicaragua, 1924, a mysterious English businessman (Joe Alwyn) and a strong-willed American journalist (The Maid’s Margaret Qualley) spark an unlikely romance before becoming caught in a dangerous web of conspiracies forcing them to try to escape the country. Both Robert Pattinson and Taron Egerton were cast in the part of Daniel before Alwyn stepped in. 

Stars At Noon will compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival – the second film of director Claire Denis’ to be nominated after Chocolat (1988) – and an international release is expected soon after.

New adaptations of beloved tales, such as Peter Pan, Pinocchio and Matilda are also on the horizon, as well as Netflix films The School for Good and Evil, Luckiest Girl Alive and Florence Pugh-led The Wonder. It’s time to put that library card to good use!

Little Tornadoes is in Australian cinemas from May 12, 2022