Has Hollywood Done Right By Your Favorite Author's Work In Film Adaptations?

I love Philip K. Dick.

Due to the sheer quantity of his work, I would have to say that it's half and half for me. Blade Runner, Total Recall - Cool. Paycheck - Not so cool.

Same with Alan Moore: V = awesomeness. LXG = abortion taco.

HP Lovecraft has had very little good Hollywood treatment at all, as far as I'm concerned- the Call of Cthulhu silent film was the only fauthful adapatation of his work, and it's nothing to do with them.

Anyways, as regards my other favourite authors:
Terry Pratchett, out of fear of what Hollywood might do, has been quietly buying film rights to his books back from them. Nothing there.

Neil Gaiman is about to have the first films of his work, Stardust and Coraline, released, so we'll see.

MR James has only been filmed by the BBC, not Hollywood. Yet to see any of the adaptations, but they're apparantly good.

Diana Wynne Jones has only be adapted by Japan (Howl's Moving Castle).

Ursula Le Guin has had an apparantly awful US tv series and the forthcoming-in-thew-West Ghibli film Gedo Senki, which I haven;t of course been able to see yet.

Tolkien has, strangely enough, done reasonably.

So has Patrick O' Brian- Master and Commander captured the spirit and characters of his novels excellently.

Douglas Adams has not been treated especially well- the Hitchhiker's Guide film was decent, but easily the weakest version.

No-one's adapted Susanna Clark yet.

Koji Suzuki (Ring, Dark water) has been treated well by Japan and tolerably by Hollywood.

Clive Barker seems to have coped well most of the time, though I'm unsure how good Midnight (meat) Train will turn out.

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) has been adapted repeatedly and poorly, though the Forthcoming American McGee's Alice and Phantasmagoria may change this.

None of my other favourite writers seem likely to come near the screen anytime soon.

He allowed Vadim Jean to adapt Hogfather into a two-part TV movie, and it was easily the worst piece of tripe on television. Awful, awful movie.

The Neverwhere miniseries is not worth seeking out. It's cheaply made and completely made me lose interest in ever reading the book, sad as that is.

I assume this thread was started with horror novelists in mind, but I don't have any particular favorites in that genre.

One of my favorite authors is Bret Easton Ellis, and surprisingly the films based on his seemingly unfilmable novels have turned out great. American Psycho decided on a different tone for the material and became an even more spot on satire than the book was. And The Rules of Attraction is a creative blast of a movie. I haven't seen Less Than Zero, so I can't comment on that one.

The book was essentially distilled to Reagan-era "just say no" simplicity. Andrew McCarthy delivers one of the most unintentionally hilarious performances ever (watch his monologue near the end). The film seems to have been just an excuse to put out a soundtrack (Tommy Mottolla was the executive producer, and Rick Rubin was the music supervisor).

I think you're confusing it with "Bright Lights, Big City"

I liked the Bourne series by Robert Ludlum and even though they didn't nail the books to a T I think they captured the spirit of what he wrote. Would I have rather seen an adaptation closer to the books? Yeah, but on the scale of "abortion taco" to "greatness" they are much closer to greatness than the taco.

Some people liked it- it was better than the animated versions, at least.
More to the point, it wasn't Hollywood or even American, and therefore little to do with this topic.

The tv series came first (co-written by Lenny Henry, oddly enough), but Gaiman wasn't quite happy with how the BBC did it (particularly certain special effects), and penned the book to correct things.
That said, it's still worth seeing out of curiosity, if only for the Dave McKean title sequences.