Usually, from five to seven movies that received Oscar nominations, are related to books.
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This year, we counted as much as nine such book-related nominations. They are either adapted from books or inspired by books.
Among the book-related Oscar nominees you’ll see all five contenders in Adapted Screenplay category: The Big Short, Brooklyn, Carol, Room, and, obviously, The Martian.
There are also movies that received nominations in other categories, although they didn’t make it to Adapted Screenplay.
Steve Jobs is inspired by a biography by Walter Isaacson. The Revenant pictures events from the book by Michael Punke. And there is The Danish Girl based on the novel by David Ebershoff.
Want to read the book before going to the movies? Here are nine Oscar 2016 nominations that are based on books.
Brooklyn
The movie directed by John Crowley was nominated for Best Picture. Saoirse Ronan got a nomination for Best Actress. And, obviously, there is also a nomination in Adapted Screenplay category – Nick Hornby adapted the book to the big screen.
The movie is based on the book under the same title by an Irish novelist Colm Tóibín.
The book is set in the early 1950s, and tells a story of a young woman torn between her family in Ireland and the American who wins her heart.
The Martian
This science-fiction movie starring Matt Damon has received as much as seven nominations. Besides Adapted Screenplay, there are nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Visual Effects.
The Martian is a science-fiction novel by Andy Weir, originally self-published in 2011, and re-released by Crown Publishing in 2014.
The Revenant
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s movie is based in part on the novel by Michael Punke.
Both the book and movie are set in 1823 and follow a frontiersman on a fur trading expedition who fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own team.
The movie is nominated in no less than 12 categories!
Room
The movie has collected four nominations, all in the most important categories: Best Picture, Directing, Actress (Brie Larson), and Adapted Screenplay.
Emma Donoghue’s 2010 book the movie is based on, Room, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
We follow the 5-year-old Jack, who lives with his mother in a secured single-room outbuilding. One day his Ma day admits there is a world outside.
Carol
The movie has earned six nominations, including Best Actress for Cate Blanchett, and Rooney Mara for Supporting Actress.
It’s based on a famous 1952 romance novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt. It is perceived today as a pioneering work of lesbian romance.
Carol tells the story of Therese, a young stage designer in a department-store, and her passionate affair with Carol, a housewife embroiled in a bitter divorce.
The Danish Girl
Tom Hooper’s movie was not nominated in Adapted Screenplay, nevertheless, it took four nominations, including Best Actor (Eddie Redmayne).
The Danish Girl novel, written by David Ebershoff, portrays Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history, and the woman torn between loyalty to her marriage and her own ambitions and desires.
Steve Jobs
Michael Fassbender was nominated for Best Actor. Kate Winslet received a nomination for Supporting Actress.
This movie directed by Danny Boyle portraits Steve Jobs during the time of three iconic product launches. The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin, and the major source of knowledge is a book by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography.
The Big Short
Starring Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale, the movie received five nominations. Best Picture, Directing, and Supporting Actor are among them.
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph adapted to the big screen the book by Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, a brilliant, darkly humorous account of how the US economy was driven over the cliff.
Embrace of the Serpent
This Colombian movie is nominated in a Foreign Language Film category, and was directed by Ciro Guerra.
The story is based on diaries by two scientists, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, who spent 40 years over the river Amazon in search of a secret healing plant.
Richard Evans Schultes wrote numerous books on hallucinogenic plants, including Where the Gods Reign: Plants and Peoples of the Colombian Amazon.
Books Oscar 2016 nominations are based on
The Martian
Andy Weir
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive.
But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next.
Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
Brooklyn
Colm Toibin
From the award-winning author of The Master, a hauntingly compelling novel set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s about a young woman torn between her family in Ireland and the American who wins her heart.
Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, Eilis cannot find a proper job in the miserable Irish economy.
When an Irish priest from Brooklyn visits the household and offers to sponsor Eilis in America — to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood “just like Ireland” — she realizes she must go, leaving her fragile mother and sister behind.
Room
Emma Donoghue
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play.
Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough…not for her or for him.
She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Michael Lewis
The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account ― character-rich and darkly humorous ― of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff.
When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news.
The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower – and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts.
The Price of Salt, or Carol
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith’s story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1952 and touted as “the novel of a love that society forbids,” the book soon became a cult classic.
Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith’s own life, Carol tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job.
Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese’s job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society’s confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation.
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