Faithfulness is overrated. To be clear – lest I sound like some philandering husband in a John Updike novel – I don’t mean in a romantic sense. No, I’m talking about faithfulness in the world of film and TV: the idea that screen adaptations of books should mirror their source material as closely as possible. In the sickly modern age of “recognisable IP” and reboots of reboots of reboots, “faithfulness”, or fidelity to source material, is a towering dogma. When it was announced, for instance, earlier this year, that an extravagant new Harry Potter TV series had been greenlit, the key selling point was that they would be more “faithful” to the original books. This is fine, of course: for many readers, the allure of a screen adaptation lies in seeing the world of a book brought to life. Why wouldn’t you want it as accurate as possible? But it is also an extremely limiting way of viewing the art of adaptation. And besides, what does it even mean to be “faithful” anyway?
This week, the first photos of actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni on the set of It Ends With Us made their way online. The film is an adaptation of a romance novel by the American writer Colleen Hoover, which traces a love affair between college graduate Lily Bloom (Lively) and abusive neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni). And, boy, is it popular. It Ends With Us was a bestseller after its publication in 2016, and went on to experience a heady surge in popularity two years ago after it began trending on the literature-oriented sphere of TikTok known as “BookTok”, topping the New York Times bestseller list over five years after it shelves. Over a million copies have been sold in the UK alone; last year in the US, Hoover outsold the Bible. Yet the images of Lively and Baldoni in costume didn’t quite prompt the publicity frenzy producers may have hoped. Fans complained about the wardrobes of the characters. They complained about their wigs. They complained about the age discrepancies between the actors and their written counterparts (Lily is 23, Lively 35; Ryle is 30, Baldoni 39). “I think most of us were already not thrilled with this casting, but this is kind of confirming the fears,” one person wrote.
