Five of the ten feature films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 2026 were born on the pages of a book, and four of them are vying for the Best Adapted Screenplay award. From Pynchon to Mary Shelley and Maggie O’Farrell, literature once again demonstrates its power as a source of inspiration for cinematic stories. Some are looser adaptations, like One Battle After Another and Marty Supreme; others are more faithful, but with a touch of originality, such as Hamnet, Frankenstein, and Train Dreams.

The following are reviews of these five films that reaffirm, yet again, the alliance between cinema and literature:

One Battle After Another

Inspired by the novel Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon

Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson

Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Wood Harris, and Alana Haim

13 nominations.

A story of paternal love surrounded by the echoes of the racial, social, and political revolution of the 1960s, and the military violence of a world on the brink of collapse. Paul Thomas Anderson weaves a web of interconnected stories, like a relay race, starting with the life of a retired revolutionary whose daughter is kidnapped, and who does everything he can to rescue her.

Anderson, “appropriates Pynchon’s world to expand it, although it has too much footage and lacks polish, but it confirms his technical mastery and command of different film genres, here in a cocktail of thriller-comedy-action parody, which manages to convey some of the unsettling atmosphere of Pynchon”, said WMagazín in its feature on the film and the book.

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Hamnet

Based on the novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell.

Screenplay: Maggie O’Farrell and Chloé Zhao

Directed by: Chloé Zhao. Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Jacobi Jupe, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson

8 nominations

This film explores the theory behind the event that inspired one of the greatest works of literature: Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. An intimate, sensitive, and profound story based on two real events: the relationship between the playwright and poet and Agnes, who helped him develop his career in London, and the death, at the age of eleven, of their only son. The story explores how this loss devastated the mother and father and how Shakespeare channeled some of his grief into the creation of his first great tragedy, Hamlet. Before his son’s death, he was writing comedies.

The novel, WMagazín wrote, “with a tone of fable and allegory, travels through the past and present of Agnes and her husband. She is the heart of it all. Shakespeare barely appears and is referred to only as the Latin teacher or the husband. We observe Agnes’s life and her romance with him; how she orchestrates everything so that her husband can fulfill his dream of creating in London, knowing that this was ‘his place of honor’; the way she raises her children alone (two girls and a boy); the path the tragedy took, from the other side of the Mediterranean, in a small box of threads that carried the Black Death on a flea; the anguish at the arrival of death, which snatches away her only son, an eleven-year-old boy; how she copes with the pain and grief that corrodes her soul and distorts her feelings toward Shakespeare and life; the reproaches, the guilt, and, in the end, she discovers how the former Latin teacher with whom she fell in love and whom she helped become a genius transfigured the pain of her son’s death beloved Hamnet in an immortal play”.

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Frankenstein

Based on the novel Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

Screenplay: Guillermo del Toro

Directed by: Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz

16 nominations

Mary Shelley’s classic tale about humanity’s ambition to create beings, as if it were a god, and unleashing all kinds of ethical, scientific, and human problems, takes on a unique perspective in this cinematic version. Dr. Frankenstein rejects the creature he has created from different parts of corpses because his physical appearance fills him with horror and fear, and he believes he lacks intelligence, but the monster rebels and reveals his more human side.

The story of the novel is a story in itself, as WMagazín recalled in 2020 regarding an illustrated edition by Fernando Vicente:

“In 1818, a novel was published featuring one of the most unsettling, critical, and visionary literary creatures, whose reach continues to expand. Mary W. Shelley (1791-1851) published it at the age of 19, her purpose being to write a story that would make the reader ‘fearful to look around, chill their blood, and quicken their heartbeat.’ Although the novel was published in 1818, its origins lay in the wintry summer of 1816 at Lord Byron’s Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva (Switzerland), alongside John William Polidori and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary’s husband. Byron was acting as host and, to liven up that summer of dark and cold days, he suggested his guests write ghost stories like those that abounded in that era. Mary Shelley wrote The Dream, which gave rise two years later to the Frankenstein myth; Polidori created The Vampyre, the birth of another great myth; P. B. Shelley, The Murderers; and Byron, The Burial”.

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Train of Dreams

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Denis Johnson

Screenplay: Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar

Directed by: Clint Bentley. Cast: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, William M. Macy, Kerry Condon, Nathaniel Arcand

4 nominations

The film takes us on a journey to the time when the new world, represented by the American West, began to take shape with the construction of the railroad. Dreams arose everywhere, but so did fears and uncertainties. It is a Western with all its existential and symbolic weight, but more intimate and without a single gunshot. It tells the story of Robert Grainier, a logging worker in Idaho at the beginning of the 20th century. A tragedy shakes his life, and he must fight to move forward.

Denis Johnson’s novel explores the intimate and solitary side of the pioneers who paved the way for the conquest of the West.

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Marty Supreme

Based on the memoir The Money Player by Marty Reisman

Directed by Josh Safdie. Starring Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, Abel Ferrara, Tyler, The Creator, and Fran Drescher.

9 nominations

A portrait of Marty Reisman, the eccentric professional table tennis player, and his hectic life built on personal deception as a fortune seeker. A young man who does everything possible to escape his current existence, his weapon being boundless and unscrupulous ambition. From the very first minute, the film is a relentless race between the protagonist’s schemes and the physical action it establishes.

This is a loose adaptation of the memoirs of Marty Reisman (1930-2012).

Once again, cinema finds in literature an inexhaustible territory of stories and characters that create a new dimension and expand creation.

• With translation assistance from Robert Lienhard.

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All articles from our English edition are available HERE

The origin and causes of wars: why humanity remains in conflict. You cann Watch HERE.

2026, the year of the dystopia of ‘Metropolis’ and its similarities to the present, according to writers, philosophers, and scientists (1). You can Watch HERE. 

2026, the year of the dystopia of ‘Metropolis’ and its similarities to the present, according to writers, philosophers, and scientists (and 2). You can Watch HERE:

‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emerald Fennell: The Reader as Sovereign of Emily Brontë’s Novel. You can Watch HERE.

Heated Rivalry or the success of the cultural phenomenon of clandestine love in ice hockey in a series based on books. You can Watch HERE.

Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’ (and 2): origin and evolution of the story of the Prince of Denmark leading up to Chloé Zhao’s film. You can Watch HERE.

Benjamin Lacombe: “We forget that the origin of humanity’s success is generosity and mutual support”. You can watch HERE.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “If more men read books about women’s lives, literature could improve communication”. You can watch HERE.

Venezuela: Why Chavismo Came to Power, How the Country Collapsed, Maduro’s Fall, and an Uncertain Future. You can watch HERE.

WMagazin’s Top 50 Books of 2025, Listed by Literary Genre. You can watch HERE.

This is how life, beauty, love, sex, and happiness have changed in the 21st century, according to 250 writers, artists, philosophers, sociologists, and scientists. Read the article about the book HERE.

László Krasznahorkai, 2025 Nobel Laureate in Literature: “Human beings remain the same, dangerous to themselves”. You can watch it HERE.

Complete series of Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature:

• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (1): Authorship and the New Role of Humans in Creation. You can watch it HERE.
• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (2): Writing and creativity in the posthumanist era. You can read the article HERE.
• Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature (3): Cultural revolution and paradigm shift. You can read the article HERE.

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