Books, Movies, and their Influences on One Another

Here are the top 20 grossing movies of 2015 (as of mid August)

1. Jurassic World - series is book-based

2. Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron - comic-based

3. Furious 7

4. Inside Out 

5.Minions 

6. Cinderella - fairytale-based

7. Pitch Perfect 2 - original movie adapted from a book

8. Home

9. Fifty Shades of Grey - book-based

10. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

11. San Andreas

12. Mad Max: Fury Road - comic book based on movie

13. Ant-Man - comic-based

14. Insurgent - book-based

15. Spy

16. Tomorrowland

17. Get Hard

18. Terminator Genisys

19. Trainwreck

20. Ted 2

Source: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls073655785/

The movie industry is a hit-driven business, so filmmakers are constantly looking for new ideas that they think will make the next blockbuster film. What works well under one form of media frequently translates well into another, so it's no surprise that popular books often make popular movies. 

That's the case with many of this year's popular movies. Jurassic World, for instance, is this year's highest grossing movie so far and is the fastest movie ever to break $1 billion box office, achieving this feat in only 13 days. Jurassic World is the fourth movie of the Jurassic Park series. This series began as the novel Jurassic Park, written by Michael Crichton and published in 1990. The movie adaptation was released three years later, beginning the series. Although the third and fourth Jurassic Park series movies are not directly based on a novel, they draw heavily from the novels and continue the movie series that began as a novel adaptation. 

Two movies, Fifty Shades of Gray and Insurgent, were directly based on books. Pitch Perfect 2 is the sequel to Pitch Perfect, a movie which was loosely based on a book. Two more movies owe their base to comic books, and one to a fairytale. In total, 7 of 20 movies - 35 percent - owe some of their pedigree to printed media. One additional movie inspired a comic book. 

Most book based movies that are made by major studios were already popular; for instance, Fifty Shades of Gray has been a best-seller, while Insurgent has also enjoyed strong sales. But the movie does help the book along greatly in many cases. The Jurassic Park novel enjoyed increased fame and sales following the release of the 1993 movie.

A movie adaptation can greatly increase awareness and sales of a book, but typically the studios stick to the tried-and-true. While it seems that movies are more popular than books, they don't "overshadow" them, as evidenced by the great number of popular novels today, most of which never see a movie adaptation.