Award shows must hate me. More precisely, networks hosting award shows must hate viewers like me. I don’t have the patience to listen to the speeches or sit through the commercials accompanying network award shows. I will confess to keeping one eye on my phone for updates on the winners, though. This past Sunday, the Academy Awards, the Mac Daddy of Hollywood award shows, aired its 97th ceremony.
After the nominations were announced in January, I was struck by the number of Best Picture nominations adapted from books this year: five out of 10. Book adaptions are nothing new to the Academy Awards – All Quiet on the Western Front (based on the book by Erich Maria Remarque) won Best Picture in 1930, just the third year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began handing out awards. Interestingly, a new German language version of All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for Best Picture in 2022. Though it didn't pick up that prize (losing out to Everything Everywhere All at Once), it did win four others, including Best International Feature, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design. (Under the heading of “You Never Know What You Will Find in the Library:” I happened to run across a graphic novel version of this classic in our collection.)
The list of books to films becomes almost overwhelming if you go beyond the Best Picture Oscar category. A Goodreads list from 10 years ago has 200 books that were adapted into Oscar-winning movies and cover a multitude of categories. I’ve always preferred reading a book before seeing the movie, but after perusing the Goodreads list, I realized how many books I’ve missed.
More recently, I have missed the books and movies listed as Best Picture nominees this year. Fortunately, there is still time to read and/or watch any on that illustrious list. Want to see what the fuss was all about? Here is a list of the 2025 Best Picture nominees adapted from a book. I’ve included book and movie reviews and an interview with the author. If you missed any (or, in my case, all) and want to catch up, this may help you decide whether to start with the book or the movie.
Wicked is based on the book by Gregory Maguire (it’s also a Tony-award-winning musical). It was nominated for 10 awards, including “Best Picture,” “Best Actress,” “Best Supporting Actress,” and “Best Original Score.” Notably, Maguire partly based Wicked on another Oscar-winning movie, The Wizard of Oz (it won Best Original Score in 1940, an epic year for movies - other winners include Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, to name just a few). Though influenced by the movie, Maguire cites as his true inspiration L. Frank Baum's original book, which spawned countless theater and film productions aside from the famous MGM movie (plus a century's worth of articles examining the book's political subtext). Wicked is notable for foregrounding the experience of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz's major villain, the Wicked Witch of the West, or Elphaba as she is known in Wicked. Played by Cynthia Erivo in the movie (nominated for Best Actress), Elphaba is born with green skin and must endure hostility and prejudice all her life, delivering a nuanced examination of whether she is, in fact, wicked at all. For more background, here are book reviews and movie reviews for Wicked.
- Conclave, which examines the behind-the-scenes intrigue when the Pope dies and the Catholic College of Cardinals comes together to choose his replacement, is based on Robert Harris's book of the same name. Both the book and the movie investigate what happens when a series of revelations shake the foundation of the Catholic Church, while the Cardinals vie for the position at the top of the Catholic power structure. With stellar performances from Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, and John Lithgow, Conclave was nominated for eight awards, including “Best Picture,” “Best Actor,” “Best Supporting Actress,” and “Adapted Screenplay.” Harris was interviewed earlier this year about his book and his writing, including the process of turning his books into movies. Interested in adding to your “to-read” and "to-watch lists? Check out these reviews of the movie and the book.
A Complete Unknown, a biopic about singer Bob Dylan, is based on the book Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the night that split the sixties
- Dune: Part II is based on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert, a sci-fi classic. Also starring Timothée Chalamet (I told you he was an internet boyfriend, not to mention the busiest actor in Hollywood), Dune: Part II is the second part of an epic space saga that follows Chalamet's Paul Atreides on the inhospitable planet Arrakis as he develops from a young, pampered boy to a Messianic figure. It was nominated for five awards, including “Best Picture,” “Best Cinematography,” and “Best Production Design.” Although Dune was initially published in 1965 (and David Lynch previously adapted it into a divisive 1984 film), as a foundational sci-fi text that examines philosophy, religion, colonialism, anti-imperialism, and environment exploitation, Dune has provided fertile ground for critics for decades. The latest movies, directed by Canadian Denis Villeneuve, received positive movie reviews and picked up numerous award nominations, unusual for sci-fi films, a genre the Academy has traditionally snubbed. For an inside look at Frank Herbert's writing process, check out this 1980 interview.
- The Nickel Boys is based on Colson Whitehead's novel of the same name. The book focuses on a young black man, Elwood, in 1960s Florida whose dreams of participating in the Civil Rights movement are derailed after he hitches a ride in an (unbeknownst to him) stolen car and is sent to the Nichol Academy for Juvenile Offenders as punishment. Based on Florida's Dozier School for Boys, where students were routinely subjected to harsh punishments, including vicious beatings, the horror of life at Nichol Academy gains exposure in the 2010s, as archaeological evidence and testimony from former students begins to receive media attention. The film is directed by RaMell Ross and was nominated for two awards, including “Best Picture” and “Best Adapted Screenplay.” In this interview, Whitehead discussed the heartbreaking true story behind his book. Here are the reviews for the book and the film.
Bonus! While it’s not nominated for Best Picture, the delightful film adaptation of Peter Brown's The Wild Robot was nominated for three awards, including “Best Animated Feature,” “Best Original Score,” and “Best Sound.” Both the book and film follow the futuristic story of a robot whose container-ship delivery goes awry, stranding her on a Pacific Northwest island surrounded by wildlife. Roz, the robot, adopts an orphaned gosling and slowly learns to overcome her programming to experience emotions, while the animals around her learn to work together to protect their island home. With standout voice work from Lupita Nyong'o as Roz
Do you have strong feelings about the collection of book adaptions this year? We’d love to hear about them. Or take our poll: Are you a bibliophile or cinephile? Where do you fall in with our blog followers?
Nicole Tassinari is an associate university librarian and oversees content development. She's the proud mom of three mostly grown children who love to tell her to "just Google it!"