A Comparative Study Between Chetan Bhagat's Novels and Their Film Adaptation

Abstract

A film adaptation is a pre-existing work that has been made into a film. Adaptations are often of literary or theatrical works, but musical theatre, best-selling fiction and non-fiction, comic books, children’s toys, and so on have also been regularly adapted for the cinema. Film adaptations are becoming increasingly popular. The Production Code Board estimates that something over 50 percent of the movies examined in 1955 were adapted from novels. Moreover, of the top ten all-time money-making films, five were adaptations. When talking about adaptations, a common thing one might hear is, "That’s not how it happened in the book!" But surely there is more to adaptations than simply loyalty between film and book. One must delve deeper to understand the relationship between books and films when an adaptation is made. In order to discuss the relationship between book and film in adaptations and the reasons behind the controversy of that relation, it is important to first look at the history of adaptations in order to understand the background surrounding that industry. By doing so, one can see the way adaptations have evolved throughout the years and the manners in which the opinions regarding adaptations have changed and varied and even adapted to the current era. This study is based on Chetan Bhagat’s novels adapted into films. This is a quantitative as well as qualitative survey of five books by Chetan Bhagat and their film adaptations. The results of the said survey imply that out of the two mediums, the book was chosen by the students in the age group of 17 to 23 years at an art college as more preferable than watching the movie because of the duration and quality of entertainment it provides.