Famous Bollywood movies inspired from novels

Reading a book can be a good leisure for an ardent book lover. But not everybody enjoy sitting at one place for hours and spending a whole day in reading a big fat novel. For such people, our film industry has got a better option. From very old times, Bollywood has taken an inspiration from many books to make the classic movies. Moreover, many Bollywood movies are an audio visual adaptation of famous novels written by many elite wordsmiths. But not every movie has been able to give the same delightful experience which the classic novel gives to its reader. There are many successful and unsuccessful adaptations of novels in the Bollywood.

The famous movie ' Guide ' which was released in 1965 was an adaptation of the novel 'The Guide' which was penned down by none other than famous writer R.K. Narayan. The film featured Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman . ' Guide ' is still considered as a cult classic of Bollywood. The other film which got an inspiration from a book is ' Tere Mere Sapne ' an esthetic film which is inspired from the book 'The Citadel' written by A. J. Cronin. The movie featured talented actors like Mumtaz and Dev Anand . India's most celebrated film 'Devdas' is also an adaptation of the novel 'Devdas' which was drafted by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The older ' Devdas ' (1955) featured Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala and the contemporary Devdas (2002) starred Shah Rukh Khan , Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit . The ultra modern adaptation of 'Devdas' i.e. ' Dev D ' featured Abhay Deol , Mahi Gill and Kalki Koechlin .

Till date, many Hindi films have been loosely inspired by Shakespeare's play 'Romeo And Juliet' a tragic love story of two lovers whose families hate each other and are devoted rivals of each other.This rivalry leads to the death of these two young lovers. A huge number of films have taken a loose inspiration from this concept. The other Shakespeare's play 'Othello' also gave a huge inspiration to filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj and he made ' Omkara ' with the concept and storyline from 'Othello'. ' Omkara ' was released in 2006 and featured Kareena Kapoor , Ajay Devgn , Saif Ali Khan and Bipasha Basu in key roles.

Another book inspired film in Bollywood is ' Parineeta ' by Pradeep Sarkar starring Vidya Balan and Saif Ali Khan . This film is an adaptation of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's Bengali novel 'Parineeta'. The 2007 film by Vishal Bhardwaj , ' Blue Umbrella ' is also inspired by Ruskin Bond's short story with the same name. Ruskin Bond's another novel 'Susanna's Seven Husbands' has been converted into a film named as ' 7 Khoon Maaf ' starring Priyanka Chopra in a lead role. Even a talented director like Ashutosh Gowariker too could not resist himself from taking an inspiration from a novel to make a movie. He made ' What's Your Raashee? ' in 2009 taking Priyanka Chopra and Harman Baweja in lead roles. The movie was inspired from Madhu Rye's book 'Kimball Ravenwood'. Even Ranbir Kapoor 's debut film ' Saawariya ' was adapted from a Russian Short story 'White Nights' by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Many other films like ' Life of Pi ', 'Mistress of Spices', 'Bride and Prejudice', ' Slumdog Millionaire ', ' Aisha ' and ' The Namesake ' are also made with the theme from famous novels. Recently, Salman Rushdie's ' Midnight's Children ' was also made into a film with the same name by Deepa Mehta .

Today also many blockbuster hits have been adapted from the bestseller books. It will be a record for famous author Chetan Bhagat as almost all of his novels are getting morphed into blockbuster hits. His novel 'One Night @ The Call Center' was made into a film called ' Hello '. His 'Five Point Someone' was carved into the blockbuster mega hit ' 3 Idiots ' and his 'Three Mistakes Of My Life' has been recently morphed into an audio visual form with the name ' Kai Po Che '. Chetan Bhagat 's another bestseller ' 2 States ' will be also seen enlivened on the silver screen very soon. The film ' 2 States ' will be directed by Abhishek Varman and will feature Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt in lead roles.

This trend of adapting literature into a film is evergreen and will be continued by the filmmakers as the audience love to watch their favorite books being enlivened on the silver screen.