Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
A March 2026 report on unsuccessful book adaptations found that the 2010 version of Moby Dick disappointed fans the most. With Jacob Eloridi’s Wuthering Heights causing debates among audiences, a new study by the entertainment platform JB.com shows which movies fall short of their original stories.
The 2010 Moby Dick movie flopped harder than any other book adaptation, getting just a 2.4/10 rating on IMDb.
Eragon (2006) disappointed fantasy readers the most, with viewers rating it at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, while its Goodreads score stands at 80%.
Despite the heated debates around Wuthering Heights, the 2026 film doesn’t actually rank among the most disappointing big-screen adaptations.
The research compared how much people enjoyed books versus their movie versions to find which adaptations let fans down the most. The study looked at Goodreads ratings showing how readers felt about the original novels, then measured audience and critic responses to the films through IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes scores. Movies were then ranked by how much their ratings dropped compared to the books, with bigger drops indicating worse adaptations.
Here’s a look at the top 10 movie adaptations that disappointed fans the most:
1. Moby Dick (2010)
Goodreads rating: 71.4%
Overall movie score: 17%
Book-to-film rating gap: 54.4 points
The 2010 Moby Dick film is the book adaptation that disappointed the fans the most. Herman Melville’s novel remains a reader favorite, with 7 out of 10 Goodreads users giving it top marks. But the movie didn’t work nearly as well, earning less than 2 out of 10 on IMDb and just 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. That gap between book and film popularity makes Moby Dick the biggest letdown in adaptation history.
2. The Dark Tower (2017)
The Dark Tower takes second place among the most disappointing adaptations. Stephen King started writing this fantasy-Western series back in the 1980s, and readers followed each novel closely, giving the books an average 86% rating on Goodreads. The 2017 film didn’t come close to matching that reception, though: trying to condense eight books into just 95 minutes of screen time, it eventually earned only 36% approval from audiences and critics.
3. Eragon (2006)
Eragon is another adaptation that couldn’t live up to its expectations. This fantasy movie came out in 2006, but received just 33% combined rating on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. The original book, on the other hand, had a high 80% approval on Goodreads, so readers expecting an epic dragon-rider adventure eventually ended up watching what would be one of the worst Hollywood makeovers.
4. Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Fifty Shades of Grey is also among the failed adaptations, despite being one of the bestselling books. Written by E.L. James, the novel earned 73% on Goodreads from readers who got hooked enough to read all three parts. Years later, when the film adaptation was announced with Dakota Johnson starring, anticipation built quickly, but the movie flopped badly in 2015, scoring only 33.5% with audiences.
5. Inferno (2016)
Dan Brown’s Inferno rounds out the top five worst book adaptations. As a novel, it was one of the most talked-about thrillers of the last decade, mixing history with conspiracies and earning a 78% rating on Goodreads. But when the film came out in 2016, three years after the novel’s release, it didn’t come close to that success, getting only 42.5% rating from audiences, a 35-point drop from the book’s popularity.
The CEO of JB.com commented on the study:
“It happens a lot that book adaptations fail, especially the books that are widely popular. One of the reasons can be that readers are a bit more pretentious when rating big-screen adaptations. But sometimes it works, though. For example, Frankenstein just got nominated for Oscars, and who knows, maybe Wuthering Heights will have the same success after more people watch it.”
