Hollywood has long mined literature for inspiration, which means that with the announcement of the 2026 Academy Award nominations, it's time for our annual roundup of the bookish bonafides of this year's top Oscar contenders. Four of this year's Best Picture nominees are based (loosely at least) on books.
If you're interested in reading your way through the Oscars, below is your literary companion guide to this year’s nominations. Prepare yourself for Oscar watch-party debates about which was better, the book or the movie (spoiler alert: it’s always the book). Or read and/or watch one of these books or films with your book club before the Oscars ceremony on March 15th.
Related content: Fun Ideas to Shake Up Your Book Club - watching a movie together is one of our favorite activities!
Best Picture Oscar-Nominated Movies Based on Books
Frankenstein
Based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Nominted for: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound.
Frankenstein is surely one of the most adapted books out there, with over 460 feature films plus countless more short films, TV series and TV episodes featuring Mary Shelley's misunderstood monster.
Acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, The Shape of Water) had long dreamed of making an adaptation that was faithful to the book. And judging by the film's 9 Oscar nominations, he's succeeded.
The Hollywood Reporter called it a "sumptuous retelling of Frankenstein [that] honors the essence of the book in that it’s not so much straight-up horror as tragedy, romance and a philosophical reflection on what it means to be human."
Starring Oscar Isaac as Dr. Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi in an Oscar-nominated turn as the Creature.
Hamnet
Based on Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Original Score.
2020 Best Director Chloe Zhao helms this tearjerker of a film based on Maggie O'Farrell's critically acclaimed novel. The book and film follow William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes after the death of their son 11-year-old son Hamnet, with Zhao and O'Farrell collaborating on the movie's screenplay.
The movie is receiving as many accolades as the 2020 Women's Prize-winning book. Per Rolling Stone's David Fear: "It’s near impossible to imagine a screen adaptation capturing the grief and catharsis rendered so vividly on the page, even if O’Farrell was signed on as a co-writer. And yet: Filmmaker Chloé Zhao‘s rigorous, moving, and altogether transcendent take on channeling pain into work and finding the will to go on is every bit the book’s equal. Factor in Jessie Buckley‘s career-defining performance as Agnes, and you could make the argument that it surpasses its source material."
One Battle After Another
Based on Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (2 nominations), Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound.
After adapting Pynchon's Inherent Vice in 2014, auteur director Paul Thomas loosely based his latest action thriller on Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. While Vineland is set in 1984, with flashbacks to the 1960s, One Battle After Another is set in a modern-day version of America that has become a fascist police state.
In its rundown of the differences between the movie and the book that inspired it, Variety states that "In One Battle After Another, Anderson takes select elements of Pynchon’s world — the characters, the premise and the broad themes — and grounds them... The result is still thought-provoking, but a more palatable, contemporary and ultimately entertaining experience than the hefty, yet rewarding, labor of reading Pynchon."
Anderson stated of Vineland, "I loved that book. I loved it, and I loved it so much that I thought about adapting him. But the problem with loving a book so much when you go to adapt it is that you have to be much rougher on the book to adapt it. You have to kind of not be gentle.”
Train Dreams
Based on Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Nominted for: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song.
Train Dreams tells the story of an ordinary man, Robert Grainier, who makes his living building railroads in the early 20th century. A fragmented lament of the American West, the novella won the O. Henry Award when it was originally published inThe Paris Review in 2003, and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 after it was published in book form.
Like the novella, the movie is meditative and poetic, though Rebecca Onion, writing for Slate, comments that "for fans of the source material, the necessary movie-fication of Train Dreams may leave something to be desired... This new Train Dreams delves deep into a father’s sadness, giving us a story that’s more about Grainier’s one big grief than it is about the side tales and odd supernatural moments Johnson stuffs into his re-creation of a bygone world." But, she states, "it’s still beautiful, moving, and thoughtful."
Other Oscar-Nominated Movies Based on Books
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Based on The Character of Rain by Amelie Nothomb
Nominated for: Best Animated Feature
This French/Belgian winner of the Camera d'Or Prize at the Cannes Film Festival has made it onto this year's Animated Film shortlist. It is based on a 2000 short novel by the Belgian author Amélie Nothomb originally written in French.
The semi-autobiographical novel describes the world as discovered and seen by a three-year-old child born in Japan to a Belgian family. While Amélie initially considers herself to be a god, she eventually must come to terms with loss -- and her humanity -- in this surprisingly philosophical film.
Have you read any of these books? Seen any of the films? Do you plan to? Let us know in the comments below!