The Books Becoming Movies and TV Shows in 2026 (and What to Read First)

Today, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey arrives in theaters — the director of Oppenheimer pointing an IMAX camera at the oldest adventure story we have, with Matt Damon as Odysseus. It's the loudest moment yet in a year when an unusual number of very good books are hitting screens. That cuts both ways: adaptations mint new readers, and they also spoil endings. So here's the full 2026 page-to-screen map — what's already out, what's coming this fall, and in every case, the reason to read the book first.

Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels

In theaters now: The Odyssey

Nolan reportedly shot his Homer adaptation as a mythic epic, not a toga drama — sea monsters, a decade-long grudge held by a god, and a hero who lies his way home. If the film sends you toward the source and the classical world around it, our mythology shelf is built for exactly that itch, and the modern book we'd press on you first is Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles — the Trojan War rendered so intimately it reads like a confession. Fair warning: it will wreck you before Odysseus even sets sail.

Already out in 2026 (and worth catching up on)

Project Hail Mary hit theaters March 20 with Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, the amnesiac science teacher who wakes up alone in another star system, and it opened huge. The Phil Lord and Christopher Miller film gets the book's central friendship right, but the novel's real engine — watching Grace solve one impossible problem at a time with nothing but duct-tape physics — is even better on the page. Our full review makes the case, and the audiobook edition is one of the best ever produced. If you've already read it, the read-alikes on our books like Project Hail Mary page are the natural next launch.

Silo came back to Apple TV+ for its third season on July 3, digging deeper into the mystery of why what's left of humanity lives in a buried tower and lies to itself about the world outside. The show is patient and paranoid in the best way — and Hugh Howey's Wool, where it all starts, remains one of the great modern dystopias. Season three is pulling from territory the books handle brilliantly, so now is precisely the moment to get ahead of the spoilers.

The Housemaid turned Freida McFadden's mega-seller into one of the biggest thrillers at the box office last winter, taking nearly $400 million worldwide, and it's been streaming on Starz since April. A sequel, The Housemaid's Secret, is already dated for December 2027, with Kirsten Dunst joining Sydney Sweeney. McFadden's trick — a trapped heroine, a house full of wrong notes, twists stacked like trapdoors — has a whole ecosystem of read-alikes, and our new books like The Housemaid page ranks the ones we've actually reviewed.

Coming this fall

The Whisper Man (Netflix, August 28) adapts Alex North's shivery thriller about a widowed father, his young son, and a serial killer's whispered legacy, with Adam Scott, Robert De Niro, and Michelle Monaghan. North's novel is a rare thing: a police procedural that works as a ghost story. Everything on our thriller shelf is held to that keeps-you-up-late standard.

Verity (October 2) may be the year's most combustible adaptation: Colleen Hoover's romance-horror hybrid — a manuscript that shouldn't exist, a wife who may be performing her own coma — with Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett. The book's ending has fueled arguments for five years, and the film will restart every one of them. Read it before someone spoils you; our books like Verity page has the follow-ups for the aftermath.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (November 20) films Suzanne Collins's Haymitch prequel with a cast that includes Ralph Fiennes and Elle Fanning. The new novel stands on its own, but its dread lands hardest if you know where Haymitch ends up — which is to say, it's the perfect excuse to revisit the original, still the sharpest book ever written about violence as entertainment. More in that vein lives on our books like The Hunger Games page.

Hamnet (November 27 limited, December 12 wide) hands Maggie O'Farrell's novel — the death of Shakespeare's son, and the grief that may have become Hamlet — to Chloé Zhao. O'Farrell's book is one of the finest historical novels of the century, and if it's your register, our historical fiction shelf runs deep.

East of Eden (Netflix, this fall) gives Steinbeck's California epic the limited-series length it has always deserved, with Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames, one of the most unsettling characters in American fiction. It's a good year to (re)visit the classics shelf before the discourse arrives — and Netflix's Narnia origin story, The Magician's Nephew, lands in late 2026 to make the same point for the fantasy canon.

December belongs to Arrakis

Dune: Part Three (December 18, in IMAX) closes Denis Villeneuve's trilogy by adapting Dune Messiah — the strange, sad sequel where Frank Herbert deliberately dismantles the hero he built. Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya return, and early IMAX tickets sold out in minutes. Messiah only works if the first book's ending is fresh, so if your memory of Paul's rise is mostly Villeneuve's images, the novel deserves a proper read — our review argues it's still the gold standard for world-building with teeth, and the books like Dune page maps where to go after the spice runs out.

The one to watch in development

After years in limbo, Netflix's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo finally has a director: Anna Kendrick, announced in June. No cast, no date — realistically 2027 — which makes this the rare adaptation you can genuinely beat. Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel about an Old Hollywood legend confessing the truth behind seven marriages is the kind of book people finish at 2 a.m. and immediately hand to a friend; our review explains why, and the casting arguments will be much more fun once you have opinions.

We track every adaptation-adjacent book we've reviewed on the page-to-screen collection — from Lonesome Dove to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — and the upcoming books radar catches the next wave of source material before Hollywood does. And if you'd rather just be handed one great book every day, screen deal or not: that's the whole site.