Let’s be real: the film and TV industry has always borrowed from literature. Jaws, The Godfather, Fight Club, and Gone Girl are all based on books. But what’s happening now is bigger.
Post-pandemic Hollywood has become risk-averse to the point of paralysis. Studios don’t want to gamble $100 million on an untested idea when they can buy the rights to something that’s already proven that an audience exists. Books come with built-in credibility. They’ve already been focus-tested by thousands (or millions) of readers.
That’s what makes The Accomplice and The Book of Cold Cases such smart plays. Both come with devoted fanbases, emotional hooks, and a tone that’s tailor-made for streaming audiences who want complex characters over high concepts.
A good book is basically a pre-written pitch deck.
The Accomplice: 50 Cent Goes Literary (and Prestige)
If you’ve been keeping track of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s post-rap career, you know he’s been quietly taking over television. Power, BMF, For Life, he’s turned gritty crime storytelling into an empire. But The Accomplice feels like a turning point.
Co-written with Aaron Philip Clark, it follows Texas Ranger Nia Adams (Taraji P. Henson) as she hunts down a master thief and uncovers a sprawling conspiracy. It’s also a fascinating move for 50 Cent himself. He’s not just adapting someone else’s story; he’s creating the kind of IP studios drool over - an “author franchise.” Think of it as the Marvelization of publishing: build a world, seed sequels, sell streaming rights.
And it’s working. Every streaming platform wants its own Reacher, its own Jack Ryan, its own “gritty-but-emotional” procedural. The Accomplice is perfectly positioned to become Peacock’s version of that.
The Book of Cold Cases: Paranormal Meets Prestige
Meanwhile, MGM Television is going in the opposite tonal direction, but the same strategic one. The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James has everything Hollywood loves right now: dual timelines, murder mysteries, paranormal undertones, and strong female leads.
It’s like True Detective meets The Haunting of Hill House, and you don’t need to test-screen that combination to know it works.
What’s interesting here is that Cold Cases represents the evolution of what “book adaptations” mean in 2025. It’s not just about literary prestige anymore. It’s about blending genres that used to be separate into emotionally rich stories that hook both binge-watchers and bookworms.
In other words, feelings sell better than franchises now.
The Smartest Kind of Recycling
So yes - Hollywood is recycling again. But this time, it’s doing it intelligently.
There’s a reason books are outperforming “original” scripts. Most modern screenplays start from a formula. But novels? They start from obsession. Someone spent years thinking about these characters, these details, this story. That passion transfers.
When adapted well, you can feel the difference. There’s more texture, more weirdness, more emotional honesty. Books force writers and directors to engage with interior lives, not just plot mechanics.
That’s what makes these adaptations stand out. They’re not superhero sequels or reboots - they’re human. Even when they’re about murder.
And Yes, Hollywood Is Out of Scripts
Of course, let’s not sugarcoat it: part of this wave is pure desperation.
Studios are struggling to find writers who can deliver both originality and bankability. Many of the best writers have migrated to streaming mini-rooms or indie projects. The middle-class writer, the kind who used to pitch small but smart studio dramas, has all but disappeared.
Books fill that gap. They’re the new development labs.
Why hire a screenwriter to spend a year inventing a world when an author already did it for you?
The Global Play
There’s also a global dimension to all this. After the international explosion of shows like Squid Game and Money Heist, Western studios have realized they can’t just export American content; they have to collaborate.
And guess what kind of content travels easily across languages and markets? Books.
That’s why we’re seeing adaptations not just from American bestsellers, but from global authors. The Accomplice and Cold Cases may be U.S.-centric for now, but they’re part of a much larger trend: studios investing in literary IP that can spawn multilingual remakes and spinoffs.
The Problem With Book-to-Screen Fever
Of course, there’s a catch.
Not every book works on screen. For every Gone Girl or Big Little Lies, there’s a dozen adaptations that flatten what made the book great - too much exposition, too little soul.
That’s the risk of treating literature as content fuel. The emotion and intimacy that draw readers in can vanish when it’s squeezed into a commercial formula. If studios want this boom to last, they’ll have to treat the source material as storytelling, not intellectual property.
It’s easy to roll your eyes at Hollywood’s book obsession. It feels lazy. Unoriginal. Safe. But maybe it’s not laziness, maybe it’s humility.
Maybe after decades of chasing franchises, studios finally realized something readers always knew: great stories aren’t about explosions or Easter eggs. They’re about characters, feelings, and moral messiness.
And if they have to find that in a book instead of a pitch meeting? Fine by me.
If Hollywood’s going to keep borrowing ideas, at least it’s borrowing from the right shelf.