Books to read before they hit theatres this year !

When the Oscars roll around next month, you can expect to see such movies as The Imitation Game, Wild, The Theory of Everything, Gone Girl,Still Alice and Unbroken honoured for various performance and technical achievements.

What these movies have in common — besides great casts and impressive cinematography — is the fact that they are all based on books.

Every year, movies are created out of books, a change from one type of storytelling to another that expands the shelf life of the written account even as it opens a tale to a whole new audience.

As with last year, 2015 will see many bestsellers move from page to screen, and for your edification, gentle reader, here's a list of such transformations:

Silence by Shusaku Endo

 Japanese author Shusaku Endo's spiritual meditation about a Jesuit
missionary in 17th century Japan will become a movie directed by Martin
Scorsese and starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and
Tadanobu Asano. Two young Jesuits (Garfield and Driver) arrive in Japan
where they witness the torture and death of those willing to stand up
for their faith.

The Revenant by Michael Punke

Michael Punke's novel is a thrilling frontier yarn about the American
wilderness, based on the real life of fur trapper Hugh Glass. Glass was
mauled by a bear and left for dead in 1823, abandoned (and robbed) by
two fellow employees of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Imagine their
surprise when he survived. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directs Leonardo
DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson in the
much-anticipated film version. It opens Christmas Day.





Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Based on Seth Grahame-Smith's hilarious novel, this reworking of Jane
Austen's tale of love and social climbing in the 19th century gets a
shot in the narrative arm from the presence of the undead. Just go with
it. Starring Lily James, Lena Headey, Sam Riley (as Mr. Darcy) and
Douglas Booth.









In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

A rogue whale preys upon a ship in this thrilling film version of
Nathaniel Philbrick's In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the
Whaleship Essex. Chris Hemsworth, Brendan Gleeson and Cillian Murphy star in this real life survival tale of 19th century sailors forced to
live by their wits (and a bit of cannibalism) while stranded 90 days at
sea. It opens Dec.11.








Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

 Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl was a huge hit in 2014, and fans can look
forward to the film version of her book Dark Places, a gothic mystery
about poverty, family and the “satanic cult” hysteria of the 1980s. A
child who was the lone survivor of a mass murder is approached 25 years
later to reconsider what she saw — if the real killers are ever going to
be found. With Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Chloe Grace Moretz and Tye Sheridan.