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The Wachowskis have made their return to the big screen with what might just be their most ambitious project to date: an adaptation of David Mitchell's epic novel Cloud Atlas.

Directed for them by Tom 'Run Lola Run' Tykwer, you may think that the creators of the Matrix would have two safe pairs of hands.

However, their previous adaptations - Speed Racer (2008) and V for Vendetta (2005) - haven't exactly set the world alight.

It’s fair to say that critics are rather split (even The Daily Mirror's David Edwards and The Sunday Mirror's Mark Adams disagree) over whether their latest offering is as comprehensive and definitive as an Atlas or as frothy, and leaky as a cloud...

While a few ‘pulp’ novels have become lauded film classics such as The Godfather, a leather-bound award winning tome is still no guarantee of an Oscar clean sweep.

The last 10 years have seen films such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Life of Pi prove that there's no novel that’s 'unfilmable'.

But it’s also proved that without the right people behind the adaptation, the result can turn out to be a critic-burned waste of film reel.

So in honour of Cloud Atlas’ valiant attempt to marry a high budget to a well regarded book, let’s take a look at a horror list of 10 great novels burned onto cheap plastic.

Warning, this may well be accompanied by the sound of authors spinning in graves...

Gulliver's Travels (2010)

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A classic of the 18th century, Jonathan Swift's ‘Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships’ was a pithily titled satire and parody in its time.

Swift, not only a poet and cleric but also inventor of the name Vanessa, became best known for the book that became known as Gulliver's Travels. Upon release, the story was immediately popular.

Jump forward 284 years and the same can't quite be said of Hollywood' s latest adaptation of it. Filmed a number of times over the years, this version - directed by Rob Letterman – decided to modernise a tale that up until that time had seemed relatively timeless.

Homegrown talent was stacked up, including Emily Blunt, Chris O’Dowd, Catherine Tate and Billy Connolly but it wasn’t enough to save a film where Jack Black took the main role and played... Jack Black.

The consensus was that the film had missed the point of its classic source material, sacrificing subtlety and satire for puerile jokes and heavy special effects.

This Gulliver didn’t travel as far as his literary inspiration.

The Golden Compass (2007)

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Or as you might know it better, Northern Lights – the first part of Philip Pullman' s His Dark Materials trilogy.

The dastardly success of a young British wizard in the early 21st century set in motion a witch-hunt for the next Harry Potter. Hollywood studios snapped up a whole slew of British children’s properties, so it’s no surprise that not all of the magic stuck.

His Dark Materials was particularly problematic - an epic tale of multiverses, talking animals and anthropomorphic consciences... You get the point.

Most difficult was its rather unsubtle commentary on religion. Even if the nuances were successfully transferred to film, how would that go down with America families?

New Line, still basking in The Lord of the Rings seemed relatively unconcerned, ploughing a serious budget and a high profile cast into what they hoped was the next big film franchise. However, generally good CGI and a cast that included Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman could not a franchise make.

It was the adaptation process itself that fell flat. Attempting to cram everything in, the writers clearly hadn’t heard of the The Subtle Knife of the second book.

As Pullman himself said, “nothing can bring out all that's in the book - there are always compromises.”

The Beach (2000)

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Alex Garland' s debut was a fresh and confident novel that wore its modern cultural references on its torn backpacker as sleeves.

Danny Boyle, recent director of Trainspotting, looked like the perfect fit. Add in still fresh-faced Leonardo DiCaprio and a spot of oddball Robert Carlyle, and what could go wrong?

Well a lot of bad publicity during filming didn't help.

Rather against the moral of the book, the studio’s decision to bulldoze the idyllic beaches of Ko Phi Phi Leh to make it more... Like a paradise launched a slew of protests and litigation.

A near-universal panning of a film that failed to capture the freshness of its source novel, jumbled its plot and appeared ever so slightly patronising to Thailand didn’t damage its box office though.

It still had that fresh-faced post-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio in it.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

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The comics and graphic novels of Alan Moore deserve special mention as, if it was down to their author, they'd all be locked in a very cold part of the Phantom Zone.

Burned early on by Hollywood, the outspoken writer and possibly 'greatest ever comic book writer' has stayed well clear of involvement in adaptations of his works, including V for Vendetta, From Hell and Watchmen.

He certainly won’t have seen one adaptation in particular.

Moore’s series of graphic novels, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, featured an ultimate Victorian super team including Dr Jekyll, and Captain Nemo.

Riddled with literary allusions and steam punk design, it had the potential to be an amazing film... had .

Things looked particularly good when Sean Connery took on the role of League leader and Victorian adventurer Allan Quartermain, promising to toughen up the character after Richard Chamberlain’s rather soft performance in 1985’s King Solomon’s Mines.

Even better, Stephen 'Blade' Norrington signed on as director, the man whose 1997 vampire actioner arguably kick-started Marvel Comic's box office dominance of today. But things soon became as tricky as steering the Nautilus through Venician canals.

The catastrophic Prague floods didn’t help. They wiped out some big budget sets and added pressure to Connery and Norrington’s reportedly combustible relationship.

But the main problem was compromise. The filmmakers couldn’t gain the rights to ‘The’ Invisible Man, opting for his indefinite ‘cousin’ ‘A’ Invisible man.

The studio also insisted that young American Tom Sawyer was foisted in, surely fulfilling one of Mark Twain’s wishes... Diluted from its source material, the film became a byword for big-budget comic misfires.

Perhaps worst off all, it remains Connery' s swan song.

The Human Stain (2003)

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When Philip Roth' s novel was released to great success in 2000, it was praised for its infectious story and vivid emotional intensity.

When the film adaptation came out three years later it was generally described as turgid and lifeless.

The story of Coleman Silk, a disgraced college professor with a secret who embarks on an affair with a younger woman, the novel ticked a lot of social, political and emotional boxes. So, what went wrong?

Well, the casting of Sir Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk and Nicole Kidman as his object of affection raised a giant critical eyebrow.

Showing that it’s not simply the crew behind the camera but also inspired casting that’s essential to a good adaptation, most appraisals of the film just couldn’t overcome those actors.

Casting isn’t easy for a character that’s originated in a popular book – but while Kidman and Hopkins' dedication to the story is not in doubt, their chemistry couldn’t even light a sparkler.

Audiences seemed to agree with the critics. The film took $19 million at the box office against a $30 million budget.

The Lovely Bones (2009)

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Peter Jackson's epic success in bringing The Lord of the Rings to the silver screen not only nabbed him a Middle Earth' s worth of Oscars, but enshrined him as one of cinema's great adapters of difficult novels. However, he found the reception wasn't quite so friendly when he took on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones a few years later.

While the film came in shorter than a lot of Jackson’s modern films (just two and a quarter hours!), the supernatural drama didn’t generate the revenue that his name had become synonymous with.

Unlike the fantasy worlds of King Kong and The Lord of the Rings, the more realistic setting didn’t cope well with Jackson’s mix of sentimentality and extreme violence.

While other directors with an early horror film or action background such as Robert Rodriguez and Sam Raimi had mixed up their adult and family films - to effectively get the horror out of their system –Jackson’s hand’s looked less steady.

Audience confusion was evident with no other films generating as many complaints about its rating in 2010. Released as a 12a, more than one viewer thought that the BBFC should have awarded it an 18 certificate.

That was a long way from the reception Sebold’s novel had received; a novel praised for creating a safe world for the readers to experience the book’s tragedy.

If it was an experiment in managing and confronting crowd expectations, it was an expensive one.

Fever Pitch (2005)

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Nick Hornby's had a fairly good run at the cinema.

His screen adaptation of An Education in 2009 drew praise and some of his most popular works have been well received on celluloid. While About a Boy kept Hugh Grant on cinema screens far less offensively thank other films, High Fidelity showed that Hornby’s work could be successfully translated to an American setting.

In contrast, Fever Pitch did not. It’s a small consolation that the film is pun-crushingly known as The Perfect Catch across most of the world.

In translating the tale of Arsenal's last minute League title win in 1989 across the Atlantic, football became baseball and Arsenal became the Boston Red Sox on their journey through the 2004 World Series.

While no strangers to criticism, directing brothers the Farellys seemed conflicted about their direction and the result looks like a classic case of good old fashioned compromise.

It wasn’t particularly a Hornby film, and with none of the gross-out comedy the brothers had become famous for, it didn’t really seem like a Farelly film either.

It may have helped if Hornby had been involved, but while he contributed a screenplay to the ‘90s British adaptation he wasn’t involved in scripting Hollywood’s attempt.

While Fever Pitch was a bestselling book, the same could not be said of The Perfect Catch’s ticket sales.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

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Two genres that are rather well regarded by the bean-counters in Hollywood, if not the critics, are science fiction and romantic comedy.

So, it was no surprise when the rights to Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 time-travelling romance The Time Traveller’s Wife were snapped up before the novel was even published. It made sense. Surely that was a book that could bestride both genres at the Box Office.

Only, it didn’t.

In the six years before the film finally reached the silver screen, Niffenegger’s novel had sold 2.5 million copies in the United States, with its emotional journey propelling readers past any gripes the critics had. On the big screen, the plot of the novel didn’t translate.

Almost too literary in its plot contrivances, Eric Bana didn’t help as he continued to sprint further away from his early stand-up days down a very bland Hollywood avenue.

The Time Machine (2002)

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Adaptations of HG Wells' works have been a hit and miss for years.

For every Orson Welles' radio adaption of War of the Worlds, with the power to almost bring America to a standstill, there’s the Tom Cruise starring 2005 adaptation. That’s one of those rare films where the lead character commits unnecessary murder with no moral repercussions...

So, in the early 21st century when a new version of Wells' classic The Time Machine was announced, a fair few eyebrows were raised – particularly in light of the generally well regarded 60s version.

However, there was a twist: this adaptation came with added pedigree in the form of director Simon Wells, none other than HG’s great grandson.

It was Simon Wells first live action film, following DreamWorks’ animated Prince of Egypt, but expectations were high... And that seemed to have an effect a profound effect on the production.

With 18 days of the shoot remaining, Gore ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Verbinski was drafted in when Wells was signed off with extreme exhaustion.

Although Wells returned for post-production, the film proved to be a disappointment, never coming near the heights of the 1960s version.

Falling into the classic sci fi trap, the film prioritised gadgets and special effects and completely missed the nuances of HG Well’s original vision.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)

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Nic Cage. He’s an Oscar winner (Leaving Las Vegas) and occasionally epic action psycho (Face/Off). He’s also more miss than hit.

I think it was 2009’s Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call New Orleans that cemented the fact that Cage needs a director who’s really on his wavelength for the former Nicolas Coppola put in his best performances. Hopefully he’ll make another film with Werner Herzog one day. With even more iguanas.

John Madden, director of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin didn’t seem to be one of those directors.

The main, utter;y incomprehensible fact that no one could ignore is that Cage, of Italian descent, chose to adopt and shout his own version of non-regional Italian.

It grates. For over two hours.

The fact that the films was an utter gloss of Louis de Bernières’ novel, missing nuances and softening its tragedy, didn’t really matter.

In an industry that’s produced its fair share of terrible screen accents, it will always be known as the film with that accent.

I Robot (2004)

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Isaac Asimov, science fiction giant and father of the three laws of Robotics. Is there a book title more profound than his 1950 short story collection I Robot?

Telling Asimov’s fictional history of robotics, these stories explored morality in a future of robots and humans. The shadow cast over all moralistic literature was immense. And so it was obviously a perfect vehicle for Will Smith action film.

That summary may be a little harsh. Smith is not averse to starring in heavy science fiction, see his take on I am Legend – well the first 45 minutes – and I Robot had Alexander Proyas behind the camera, director of cult classics The Crow and Dark City.

A slick action adventure that made almost $350 million it may be, but it drew only lightly from the original stories and was generally thought to be a cynically wasted opportunity with little of its source’s depth.

The main bug bear for fans was that Warner’s had sat on a well regarded and faithfully adapted script by science-fiction great Harlan Ellison for many years before they decided to just option a speculative script and then attach Asimov’s title.

Part Christie, part-Asimov, I Robot proved to be a disappointing adaptation of a book of ideas.

If only Asimov had written the three laws of film rights.

* Matt Goddard can be found on Twitter at @JokerMatt