13 TV & Movie Book Adaptations To Get Hype For In 2023

Based on Elena Ferrante's bestselling novel of the same name, The Lying Life of Adults stars Giordana Marengo and Valeria Golino. Set in the 1990s, this Italian period piece centers around sheltered teenager Giovanna, whose coming of age in the twin halves of Naples is personified by her parents on one side and her Aunt Vittoria on the other.

All six episodes are streaming on Netflix.

Netflix’s latest supernatural adaptation is Lockwood & Co, based on the book series by British author Jonathan Stroud. For Bridgerton fans, this series caused Ruby Stokes to exit the role of Francesca since she couldn’t do both. She stars as Lucy Carlyle, a psychically gifted ghost hunter who helps catch spirits in an alternate version of London. Season 1 covers the first two books in the series, The Screaming Staircase, and The Whispering Skull.

Lockwood & Co Season 1 is streaming on Netflix.

Daisy Jones & The Six is not technically a fictionalized biopic of Fleetwood Mac, but the titular fictional band bears more than a passing resemblance to Stevie Nicks and company in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel of the same name. The series stars Riley Keough as Daisy Jones, plus Sam Claflin and Suki Waterhouse, tracing the band from their rise in Los Angeles to one of the biggest bands in the world, their collapse, and finally, a tell-all.

All 10 Daisy Jones & The Six episodes arrive on Prime Video on March 3, 2023.

Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness might not sound like a book to inspire a streaming series adaptation. But the autobiographical comic self-help novel by Brigid Delaney sparked with Australian comedian and actor Celeste Barber. The two have co-created a dramedy series, Wellmania, in which Barber plays Liv, whose discovery that she won’t live forever sends her spiraling into the weirdest corners of the “wellness” craze.

Wellmania debuts with all episodes on March 29, 2023, on Netflix.

Judy Bloom’s seminal Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is one of those books pretty much everyone read around the age of 10 to 14, ever since it was published in the 1970s. And yet, this is the first feature film adaptation anyone has attempted of the award-winning novel. Starring newcomer Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret, with Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie as her parents, this coming-of-age story shouldn’t be missed.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret opens in theaters on April 28, 2023.

Author Naomi Alderman’s The Power was a sensation when it debuted in 2016; a near-future-set novel where one day, teenage girls suddenly develop the ability to electrocute people at will and soon figure out how to release that ability in older women too. As the book’s synopsis puts it: “Soon enough, nearly every woman in the world can do it. And then everything is different.” The series stars Auliʻi Cravalho as the central teenager in the story, with Toni Collette as her mother.

The 10-episode series is expected to debut in the spring of 2023 on Prime Video.

One month after Shang-Chi had become Marvel’s newest smash hit, Disney+ announced it had hired the director, Destin Daniel Cretton, to develop Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel, American Born Chinese, into its first major contemporary action series. The series stars Ben Wang as Jon, the American-born student saddled with Chinese exchange student Wei-Chen, whose ongoing battles with the gods of Chinese mythology spill over into their classrooms. With Oscar nominees Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, Mrs. Maisel’s Stephanie Hsu, Hacks’ Poppy Liu, and China’s legendary Daniel Wu in the cast, this is a must-watch.

American Born Chinese will debut on Disney+ in the spring of 2023.

A remake of the popular 1980s series based on the 1975 James Clavell novel, Shōgun is one of FX’s most ambitious series ever. Starring Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai, and Hiroyuki Sanada, the saga focuses on two rival men, the shipwrecked John Blackthorne and the shrewd daimyo Lord Toranaga, in feudal Japan, and the female Samurai Lady Mariko, whose need to prove her honor makes her invaluable.

Shōgun will debut on FX and stream on Hulu starting sometime in the latter half of 2023.

For Hunger Games fans, the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was a return to Panem they didn’t expect, and Lionsgate (which made the four Hunger Games movies) snapped up the rights to adapt it before it even hit shelves. The novel tells the story of the 10th Annual Hunger Games, a seminal moment in the development of the tradition, and how Corolanius Snow set himself on the road to being the President of Panem.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes premieres in theaters on Nov. 17, 2023.

Netflix’s The Three-Body Problem has been making headlines since the streaming service signed Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss to adapt it. Based on Liu Cixin’s novel of the same name, the story (which is told out of order in the past, present, and future) centers around first contact with alien life from Trisolaris and the slow but ensuing conflict between species. The cast includes GoT alums John Bradley, Liam Cunningham, and Jonathan Pryce, among others.

The Three-Body Problem is slated to premiere with all episodes on Netflix sometime in 2023.

Over on Netflix, the Roald Dahl-verse will roll on with The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. But in theaters, a different take on the popular author’s canon is also scheduled for 2023, the Charlie & the Chocolate Factory prequel, Wonka. Starring Timothée Chalamet as the young and troubled Willy Wonka, this film promises to dive into the childhood and coming of age that made the elusive chocolatier into the man Charlie meets in the novels.

Wonka will premiere in theaters on Dec. 15, 2023.

Red, White & Royal Blue, the best-selling 2019 LGBTQ+ romance novel by Casey McQuiston, is coming to Prime Video. The story of the romance between the First Son of the United States and a Prince of U.K. royalty, the film stars YA heartthrobs Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine.

Red, White & Royal Blue is expected to arrive on Prime Video sometime in 2023.

Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple was a Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction when it debuted, and the 1985 film by Steven Spielberg based on it turned Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey into A-list stars. Twenty years later, in 2005, the story was reconceived as a musical that took home the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 2005, and again in 2015 when it was revived with Cynthia Ervio in the starring role of Celie. Now the movie version of that musical (with Steven Spielberg and Oprah producing) will hit theaters with Fantasia in the Celie role Goldberg once played.

The Color Purple will debut in theaters on Dec. 20, 2023.