What author has had the most works/stories/books made into shows/movies?

[Idle Thoughts]

Note: Not plays. Plays don't count.

The question is what author has had the most works that have only turned into movies or regular shows or mini-dramas?

William Shakespeare?

I honestly can't think of anyone who's had more than him, however, I'm not talking about variations of each work. Just as long as one exists, then that accounts for that story/book.

So which author has had the most? After running through my mind Stephen King and Ronald Dahl, I finally remember good old Willy. I'm actually embarassed he didn't come to my mind first off.

Or is there anyone else I'm forgetting about who might have had their works on TV?

And if Shakespeare is the winner, who would be second?

[don't ask]

Charles Dickens has 210 writing credits on IMDB, his first in 1897.

[delphica]

Agatha Christie is the first author who came to mind. She has 104 writing credits on the IMDB, although I'm not sure what that boils down to in terms of single books that became movies or TV dramas, and a very small number of her works were stage plays originally.

[A qui profite le crime?]

Well, the Brothers Grimm have seen (not themselves personally) a lot of their works made into movies. IMDB gives them in excess of 100 writing credits.

They must certainly be in the top 10.

Oh, and the same goes for Hans Christian Andersen.

[Kalhoun]

Stephen Fucking King. Most suck, but there were a couple I liked (The Shining being my favorite of all).

[Lute Skywatcher]

L. Frank Baum has 124 writing credits.

Shakespeare does have over 600 writing credits for works based on his plays.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Poe has 156 credits. Arthur Conan Doyle is probably right behind Dickens with 172.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Alexandre Dumas comes in at 168.

[Sampiro]

Hans Christian Andersen has 140+ credits, slightly more than the Brothers Grimm. Mark Twain has a not too shabby 92 credits, but I'd have thought it was higher.

Philip K. Dick only has 12 (and counting), but when you consider how recently he lived and how much less he wrote than Dickens and Shakespeare, that's impressive. Ditto with Tennessee Williams's 50+ credits.

If characters count, Bob Kane has 50 major projects and hundreds of episodes of TV based on his work.

[Little Nemo]

Edgar Rice Burroughs?

[Cuckoorex]

From the OP:

I'm not talking about variations of each work. Just as long as one exists, then that accounts for that story/book.

To me, that means that you can't just take the easy way out and do a writing credits search on IMDB, because then you'd get, for example, 172 writing credits for Arthur Conan Doyle, but at least 19 of them are adaptations of "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

[JThunder]

Originally Posted by Kalhoun

Stephen Fucking King.

Any relation to Stephen King?

[The Scrivener]

Georges Simenon, the prolific detective-story author, has 176 IMDB citations.

Leo Tolstoy has 116.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky has 114.

Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra has 71.

H.G. Welles has 70.

Ray Bradbury and Graham Greene each have 50.

Ian Fleming has 41... but James Bond will return again!

Ernest Hemingway has 39.

Nathaniel Hawthorne has a very respectable 36.

Herman Melville has 30.

Yukio Mishima, who was an extremely prolific Japanese novelist/playwright/critic/pundit/right-wing nutcase, has 25 -- as do Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Mann.

Dashiell Hammett and Isaac Asimov clock in with 25 cites.

Jane Austen and Raymond Chandler have 24.

Charlotte Bronte has 23 cites, 22 of which are for various adaptations of "Jane Eyre". Not bad!

James Michener has 18, as does James Clavell (although a few of his cites were for screenplays).

Mickey Spillane has 17.

George Sand has 14, not including a movie about her, Impromptu.



OTOH, we have:

John O'Hara: 12 cites.
John LeCarre and Saki (H.H. Munro): 11 cites.
Ayn Rand: 10 cites.
Ken Follett: 6 cites.
Barbara Cartland: 5 cites.

[Smeghead]

Michael Crichton was the one that first popped into my mind when I saw the thread title, but he's probably not in the running.

[NicePete]

Limiting it to modern, popular writers, I think Donald Westlake would have to be in the running with 35 IMDB writing credits.

[Idle Thoughts]

Originally Posted by don't ask

Charles Dickens has 210 writing credits on IMDB, his first in 1897.

Yeah, but I'm wondering how many of those are variations of the same story. I have no doubt that there's probably been about 10 renditions of "A Christmas Carol".

But "A Christmas Carol" only gets counted once as long as at least one movie or show was made about it...and not again.


So really, out of all his novels, I'd think the number is a lot lower than that. I mean, I don't even think he wrote 210 separate novels or short stories that were actually published, did he?


On thread preview though, I see that Cuckoorex also point my point out.

[jacksprat]

So, Shakespeare has 37 credits at most (if one considers the excellent BBC films, which include excellent productions of Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, and a few other major plays otherwise unavailable).

Proust -- despite the half-dozen or so films made from various episodes in his novel -- only has one credit.

However, since plays are excluded by the OP, Shakespeare is out.

[Idle Thoughts]

I dunno..I'd think that Shakespeare would still be a front runner even though plays are discluded and if you just count each work/story/book once.

I know there's a whole lot of movies that have been done on his work...

Whether he's the author, though, who's had the most movies made of his stuff is the question. And if not, then who?


I didn't even think of the Grimm Brothers, either. *smacks forhead* They'd be up there too.

[Idle Thoughts]

Sorry for the double post, but my roomate (who seems to be too lazy to use his own account that I made for him) is talking to me about it right now, and he mentioned Ian Fleming, the author of all the James Bond books. Since most of his seperate books had it's own movie, that would count too, but would they make him the most?

I dunno. How many were made into movies?

[jacksprat]

Originally Posted by Idle Thoughts

I dunno..I'd think that Shakespeare would still be a front runner even though plays are discluded and if you just count each work/story/book once.

Yes -- he does seem to be the front runner at 37 plays made into films, if one includes the BBC straight-to-VHS versions, which I believe extended to all of the plays. I suppose it's possible some indie type produced a flick of one of his lesser poems, but I wouldn't know.

Many of O'Neill's plays have also been produced as films, for example, but not nearly as great in number as Shakespeare's plays.

[DSYoungEsq]

Originally Posted by jacksprat

So, Shakespeare has 37 credits at most (if one considers the excellent BBC films, which include excellent productions of Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, and a few other major plays otherwise unavailable).

Proust -- despite the half-dozen or so films made from various episodes in his novel -- only has one credit.

However, since plays are excluded by the OP, Shakespeare is out.

The OP himself mentions Shakespeare, so I think we have to interpret that by "Plays don't count" the OP meant that performing a work as a play doesn't count. Has to be done as a movie, TV show, etc. In this regard, Shakespeare wins hands down, because people have dramatized oodles of his works in film and television.

[jacksprat]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

The OP himself mentions Shakespeare, so I think we have to interpret that by "Plays don't count" the OP meant that performing a work as a play doesn't count. Has to be done as a movie, TV show, etc. In this regard, Shakespeare wins hands down, because people have dramatized oodles of his works in film and television.

Well, not really oodles. More like 37, if the lesser lyrics are excluded. Still, I think it's more than anyone else.

Since filmed versions of plays are included, runners-up would probably include other playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, etc. Dickens, Poe, Conrad, King, would have to be right up there as well.

At some point a real theory of what constitutes a work/plot/character would have to be invoked, a la Roman Ingarden.

[delphica]

Okay, by my count Agatha Christie has had 52 individual works (books, short stories, and two plays) turned into film or TV, some several times. I was going to go through and count Stephen King, but I didn't have the energy! She beats Shakespeare, though.

[Little Nemo]

Ian Fleming has 41... but James Bond will return again!

Did you remember to count Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

Seriously, Fleming wrote twelve Bond novels, nine Bond short stories, CCBB, and two non-fiction books (neither of which was adapted). How can you possibly get 41 adaptations?

[Walloon]

The prolific author Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) beats Shakespeare and Agatha Christie in the number of his short stories, novels, and plays made into movies.

[Malodorous]

I'll guess Stan Lee, if not the person with the most movies of his work, is probably catching up fast. Just in the last few years there must've been 10ish movies made of his work and half a dozen TV series.

[Walloon]

The OP is not looking for the most movies made of a person's works, the OP is looking for the most works made into movies. The Spider-Man movies and such are based on characters Stan Lee created, not particular, individual works. Do you think "10ish" is close to Shakespeare's 37 works adapted, or Agatha Christie's 52 works adapted, or I've-lost-count-of-how-many Edgar Wallace works were adapted?

[Malodorous]

Originally Posted by Walloon

The OP is not looking for the most movies made of a person's works, the OP is looking for the most works made into movies. The Spider-Man movies and such are based on characters Stan Lee created, not particular, individual works. Do you think "10ish" is close to Shakespeare's 37 works adapted, or Agatha Christie's 52 works adapted, or I've-lost-count-of-how-many Edgar Wallace works were adapted?

Seems like a pretty hazy line to draw. After all, I'm sure that many adaptations for Agatha Christie's work took liberties with the story, or even drew plots from other of her books into a single movie. At what point are you no longer basing a story on an idividual work but instead on a persons work in general? My impression was that at least some of the Stan Lee movies and TV shows were following the story arcs from the comics, but I don't really know much about it. Guess we'd need a comic book fan in here to tell us how faithfull the various comic book movies are to the comic books themselves.

Also it's a little tough to figure what would compose "a work" when it comes to comic books. One story arc, one character's story line, one issue, etc.

Anyhoo, depending on how you defined your terms, I think Stan Lee would beat out Shakespeare (in quantity, though probably not so much quality).

[Boulter's Canary]

Originally Posted by The Scrivener

Georges Simenon, the prolific detective-story author, has 176 IMDB citations.

Leo Tolstoy has 116.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky has 114.

Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra has 71.

H.G. Welles has 70.

Ray Bradbury and Graham Greene each have 50.

Ian Fleming has 41... but James Bond will return again!

Ernest Hemingway has 39.

Nathaniel Hawthorne has a very respectable 36.

Herman Melville has 30.

Yukio Mishima, who was an extremely prolific Japanese novelist/playwright/critic/pundit/right-wing nutcase, has 25 -- as do Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Mann.

Dashiell Hammett and Isaac Asimov clock in with 25 cites.

Jane Austen and Raymond Chandler have 24.

Charlotte Bronte has 23 cites, 22 of which are for various adaptations of "Jane Eyre". Not bad!

James Michener has 18, as does James Clavell (although a few of his cites were for screenplays).

Mickey Spillane has 17.

George Sand has 14, not including a movie about her, Impromptu.



OTOH, we have:

John O'Hara: 12 cites.
John LeCarre and Saki (H.H. Munro): 11 cites.
Ayn Rand: 10 cites.
Ken Follett: 6 cites.
Barbara Cartland: 5 cites.

Rudyard Kipling - 52