Interesting, that was the first example that popped into my head. Though on reflection I reckon that they feel more akin than many of the others in this thread.
Yes, “fail safe” was played perfectly straight but given the overall frightening absurdity of the subject matter, and that both were very well executed, I always have them in my mind as having equal merit.
In 1979 Arthur C. Clarke brought out a novel, The Fountains of Paradise, in which Dr. Vannevar Morgan is chief engineer of a project to build a ‘beanstalk’, a space elevator linking Earth’s surface to synchronous ‘Clarke’ orbit. Also in 1979, Charles Sheffield brought out The Web Between the Worlds, in which Rob Merlin is chief engineer of a project to build a space elevator… Both men’s literary reputations were above reproach – Clarke had been writing SF for 30+ years and had come up with the idea of the synchronous communication satellite in the 1950s. Sheffield was a leading space scientist who was newer to fiction but widely respected by the SF community. From TVTropes:
Another interesting fact: Peter George, the author of the 1958 novel Red Alert (a serious thriller which was the basis of Dr Strangelove) sued Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, the authors of the 1962 novel Fail-Safe for plagiarism and received an out-of-court settlement.
I never knew that. Interesting.
Mind you, as with Polycarp’s example, I suspect both books and films were a product of their time.
Cold War paranoia contributing to the similarities as much as direct plagiarism.
Good films nonetheless.
*The Matrix *came out the same year – actually I saw all three of these movies within a 3 month period.