The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
'Graeme Simsion’s internationally best-selling novel, The Rosie Project (2013a), began life as a romantic comedy script that nobody wanted. One year later, having ‘reverse adapted’ his screenplay into a novel, The Rosie Project (2013a) was on the New York Times best-selling list and swiftly sold to 40 territories around the world. This article, based on my discussions with screenwriter and author Graeme Simsion, and informed by my own practice-led research into ‘reverse adaptation’, will examine this little discussed manifestation of screen adaptation. What are the creative challenges facing the screenwriter in taking on the ‘opposite’ of a traditional adaptation? How do professional and industrial conditions differ for the screenwriter undertaking a reverse adaptation? Why even begin a reverse adaptation? This article also briefly contextualizes reverse adaptation as belonging to the greater contemporary ‘ecology’ of transmedia adaption, and places it in relation to the commercial novelization.' (Publication abstract)
