8 Classic Novels That Became the Movies & Shows Everyone's Talking About

1. Anne with an E (2017–2019)

Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery's 1908 novel, introduced us to Anne Shirley: a red-braided, relentlessly imaginative character, too loud for the world she was handed. For over a century, readers have loved her for exactly that. And the 3-season series Anne with an E brought the character to the screen in a way people will end up loving all over again. 

Amybeth McNulty's performance as Anne carries the show entirely. She brings Anne's volcanic emotions, her aching need to belong, her extraordinary gift for finding beauty in the places nobody else bothers to look. A must-watch if you loved the book.

Available on: Netflix

Buy here: Anne of Green Gables

2. The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–2025)

Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale in 1985, a dystopia about a theocratic America where women are stripped of their names and forced into servitude. She insisted every detail had a real-world precedent. 

When Hulu's adaptation premiered in 2017, the show made its point: women showed up to protests in red cloaks and white bonnets, and the costume became a symbol. Elisabeth Moss riveted as June, and the first season swept eight Emmys, making history as the first streaming show to win Outstanding Drama Series. That’s the cultural reckoning only Margaret Atwood could pull off with such a classic.

Available on: Hulu

3. Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has been adapted so many times that it should feel exhausted. Well, it doesn't. Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation arrived, and the whole generation fell helplessly in love with it. 

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet felt witty, restless, vulnerable, and fiercely modern without losing the character’s classic charm. Wright reimagined the story with visual warmth and aching tension, turning every glance into a confession. The rain scene. The dawn proposal. Twenty years on, it still makes people press pause just to breathe. Pride & Prejudice isn't just a beloved adaptation—it's the film that made Austen feel urgent again.

Available on: Amazon Prime Video

Buy here: Pride and Prejudice

4. Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo del Toro has called Frankenstein one of his favourite novels—and he tried to do justice with his version of it. When Netflix finally dropped the teaser in 2025, it took the internet by storm. 

In the movie, Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi is the Creature beneath hours of prosthetics, and Mia Goth rounds out an electric cast. Del Toro frames it not as horror but as grief: a story about creation, isolation, and the pain of rejection.

Available on: Netflix

Buy here: Frankenstein

5. The Odyssey (Upcoming In 2026)

One of the oldest stories in literature is getting the biggest treatment in modern cinema. Christopher Nolan has turned to Homer's ancient epic for his most ambitious film yet, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and a galaxy-brained cast including Zendaya, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson. 

The trailer racked up over 121 million views in the first 24 hours. The director, who himself couldn’t move on from the classic, is bringing his own version, and all eyes are now on whether The Odyssey can become the defining epic of the decade.

6. The Great Gatsby (2013)

F Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby as a tragedy about the hollowness of wealth and the cruelty of dreams. Baz Luhrmann turned it into a Jay-Z-soundtracked, glitter-soaked spectacle and somehow, that was exactly right. 

Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby is magnetic and mournful in equal measure, Carey Mulligan's Daisy aches, and the parties are every bit as intoxicating and empty as Fitzgerald intended. Critics were divided. Audiences were dazzled. And over time, the film has only grown more fascinating and is still being talked about even today.

Available on: Amazon Prime Video

Buy here: The Great Gatsby (Cappuccino Classics)

7. The Jungle Book (2016)

Rudyard Kipling's tales of Mowgli have been retold many times—but the 2016 film The Jungle Book did something genuinely new. Almost entirely CGI, it produced a jungle so lush and alive that it won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. 

Neel Sethi carries the whole film as Mowgli, with a stellar voice cast—Bill Murray as Baloo, Idris Elba as a terrifying Shere Khan, and Scarlett Johansson as the silken, hypnotic Kaa. It set the bar for Disney's live-action era, and nothing since has quite matched it.

Available on: JioHotstar

8. Little Women (2019)

For more than 150 years, Little Women has remained one of literature’s most cherished coming-of-age stories. Yet when Greta Gerwig took on the material, she shuffles the timeline, weaving past and present together so the joy and the grief land at the same moment. 

Saoirse Ronan is a blazing Jo March, Florence Pugh steals every scene as Amy, and the rest of the cast—Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep, and Laura Dern—is simply perfect. Six Oscar nominations, one win, and a generation of readers who went straight back to Alcott's pages the moment the credits rolled. The best kind of adaptation.

Available on: Amazon Prime Video

Buy here: Little Women & Good Wives

Timeless Tales That Always Find A Way

Eight classics. Eight adaptations. Eight different directors, casts, and visions and yet, every single one of them leads back to the same place: a story worth telling again. And if any of these adaptations sent you reaching for the original—if a trailer made you pick up a paperback, or a film made you fall in love with a story you thought you already knew—then that's the magic working exactly as it should.

That's what we're here for at Cuppa Classics. Pour another cup. There's always another story waiting.

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