3 2026 Films That Were Better Than The Book (And 2 Worse)

If you’re an avid reader, 2026’s film schedule has been pretty great so far.

Between Wuthering Heights, The Odyssey, H Is For Hawk, and Project Hail Mary, we’ve seen some major titles transformed into big-screen projects – with more yet to come.

So how do the movies stack up to the books?

Well, obviously, the answer to that question is subjective. But review aggregation sites like RottenTomatoes and Goodreads do, at least, provide an average score from ordinary viewers and readers.

Here, we compared the book and film site fan ratings to one another. We used the audience-generated Popcornmeter rather than the professional-critic-led Tomatometer results, so that both metrics came from the general public.

And we translated Goodreads’ five-star system into percentages, so it was easier to compare book scores to the film reviews.

Claire Foy stars in the adaptation of Helen McDonald’s 2014 memoir. Both focus on a woman’s moving experience with a goshawk following the death of her father.

Goodreads score: 74.6% (3.73/5 on the site)

RottenTomatoes Popcornmeter score: 76%

Verdict: fans liked the movie better, but only just.

The director knew she wasn’t creating a like-for-like remake from the beginning, though, saying she made “something that was my response and interpretation to that book and to the feeling of it.”

Goodreads score: 77.8% (3.89/5)

RottenTomatoes Popcornmeter score: 74%

Verdict: the readers have it, but not by as broad a margin as you might expect (critics gave the film a 57% score on average).

Andy Weir’s 2021 sci-fi novel, which focuses on teacher Ryland Grace’s unexpected sci-fi mission, was turned into a blockbuster hit starring Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, and, if you listen close enough, Meryl Streep.

Goodreads score: 90.2% (4.51/5)

RottenTomatoes Popcornmeter score: 95%

Verdict: Wow! Readers and viewers loved both – but the movie just won out.

Christopher Nolan’s record-breaking The Odyssey isn’t an exact replica of the 12,000-plus-line Homeric poem, but it captures an impressive amount of the story.

The original text is “an epic, an adventure story… a Greek audience roots for the destruction of evil characters in the same way that we root for the destruction of the villains in film noir, Westerns, or the [Marvel Comic Universe],” Jeffrey Carnes, an Associate Professor of Classics and Classical Civilisations at Syracuse University, told HuffPost UK previously.

Goodreads score: 77% (3.82/5)

RottenTomatoes Popcornmeter score: 97%

Verdict: OK, Goodreads’ database is missing a couple thousand years of readers’ opinions here. Still, with that substantial caveat, the film’s got the lead in 2026.

The Netflix adaptation is based on Emily Henry’s slow-burn, friends-to-lovers novel. It stars Emily Bader and Tom Blyth as its romantic leads.

Goodreads score: 76.8% (3.84/5)

RottenTomatoes Popcornmeter score: 68%

Verdict: The book’s proven a greater hit in this case!