This has been a surprisingly major year for adaptations based on landmark feminist literature. The year began with Emerald Fennell‘s controversial Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. The subversive movie divided audiences and grossed more than $240 million worldwide against a reported budget of $80 million. The year will end with a new Netflix series based on Jane Austen‘s “Pride and Prejudice.” Another Austen adaptation debuted theatrically a few weeks ago, and is now available on the PVOD market following a so-so box-office run.
The new movie is the latest in a long line of adaptations of the cornerstone novel, which was originally published in 1811. It was previously adapted into a blockbuster 1995 movie directed by Ang Lee and starring Emma Thompson, and a BBC One series featuring Dan Stevens. The latest adaptation was directed by Georgia Oakley and features Daisy Edgar-Jones in the lead role.
The new movie comes on the heels of fellow adaptations of classics such as Persuasion, starring Dakota Johnson, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, starring Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell. Both those movies were released on Netflix to entirely contrasting reception. While Persuasion was generally panned for its Fleabag-coded interpretation of Austen’s classic, Lady Chatterley’s Lover was well-received.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Agatha Christie Character Are You? Poirot · Marple · Ariadne Oliver · Hastings
Answer eight quick questions and we will tell you which one you are. Christie is the best selling novelist in history and she only ever needed about four kinds of person to do it, all of whom are still turning up on screen a century later.
🥚Poirot(33 novels)
🧶Miss Marple(12 novels)
🍎Ariadne Oliver(8 novels)
🎖Hastings(8 novels)
01
How tidy is your home? Pick the one that sounds most like you.
02
How would your friends describe you? Be honest.
03
How do you work out what somebody is really like? One answer only.
04
Pick a snack. No wrong answers here.
05
How do you handle a long train journey? Pick the closest answer.
06
How do you feel about being underestimated? Pick the closest answer.
07
What is your role in a group project? Think about work.
08
How would you want to be described in a book? Last one. This is the one that decides it.
The Drawing Room, After Dinner You Are…
Toni Collette and Kit Harington are shooting a new Miss Marple and 20th
Century has several more Christies in development, so the drawing room is busier than it has been in
decades. Here is which of them you are, and the case for yours being the best.
Hercule Poirot · First appeared 1920
Hercule Poirot
Order, method, and a quiet confidence that you are the cleverest
person present. Poirot is a retired Belgian police officer who solves murders by sitting
still and thinking, and who is vain enough to make the reveal a performance every single
time.
You need things to be in their right place and you are not remotely sorry about it.
David Suchet played him for twenty four years and filmed every single Poirot story
Christie wrote.
Kenneth Branagh has made three as director and star, from Orient Express in 2017 to A
Haunting in Venice.
Your flaw is that the performance of being right can get in the way of simply being
helpful.
Jane Marple · First appeared 1927
Miss Marple
People tell you things because they cannot imagine you being a
threat. Marple solves murders by comparing everybody to somebody she once knew in St Mary
Mead, which sounds like a joke until you notice it works every time, because human beings
are not as original as they think.
You are the quietest person in the room and you leave knowing the most.
Joan Hickson is still the definitive television Marple, and Christie herself wrote to
her hoping she would one day play the part.
Toni Collette and Kit Harington are making a new Marple film, announced this summer.
Your risk is that people only work out how formidable you are once it is far too late.
Ariadne Oliver · Christie Writing About Herself
Ariadne Oliver
You have far too many ideas and roughly a fifth of them are
excellent. Ariadne Oliver is a successful crime novelist who is sick of her famous foreign
detective and keeps saying so, which is Christie writing about Christie and getting away
with it completely.
You think out loud, change your mind twice, and arrive somewhere nobody else would have
found.
She was Christie’s own stand-in, right down to being tired of the detective who made her
rich.
Tina Fey played her opposite Branagh in A Haunting in Venice and gave her the comic
timing the part always wanted.
Your flaw is that fourteen ideas take as long to sort through as they do to have.
Arthur Hastings · Poirot’s Narrator
Captain Hastings
You are steady, decent and the reason the difficult genius has
anybody at all. Hastings narrates the early Poirot novels, misses most of the clues, and is
the only character in the books that Poirot is unambiguously fond of, which tells you what
he is really for.
You are the one who turns up, which sounds small and is not.
Christie gave him the narrator role so readers would have somebody to be as lost as they
were.
Hugh Fraser played him across the ITV series and made him warm rather than slow, which
earlier versions never managed.
Your weakness is taking people at their word, which is lovely right up until it is not.
Here’s How Much the New Jane Austen Adaptation Has Grossed at the Box Office
The new movie, Sense and Sensibility, takes an old-fashioned approach to the material. Also starring Esmé Creed-Miles, George MacKay, and Caitríona Balfe, now holds a “Certified Fresh” 78% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Elevating the Dashwood sisters’ relationship to the forefront of Jane Austen’s classic tale of courtship, Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility may not best previous adaptations but achieves a wistful identity of its own.”
The new Sense and Sensibility debuted in 2,545 theaters before dropping to 1,888 theaters in its third week. Following the conclusion of a rather short theatrical window, the movie was removed from a further 1,357 theaters in its fourth week. It’s now playing in 531 locations nationwide. It’s also available on the PVOD market, having debuted in the top 10 of the domestic iTunes viewership chart. Sense and Sensibility was a modest hit, considering its short run. It grossed around $40 million worldwide against a reported budget of $25 million. By comparison, Edgar-Jones’ previous book adaptation, Where the Crawdads Sing, generated around $150 million worldwide against a similar budget.
You can watch Sense and Sensibility at home and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
