Can Web Series Be Better Novel Adaptations?

For decades now, movies have been the primary form of storytelling to a wide audience. They have maintained to have a great appeal to the people all over the world. Because of their greater appeal and wider reach, many of the movie directors and producers have adapted novels as their source material for stories and made a movie based on that. While this still continues to happen, the movies now face a competition from a medium that has recently become just as prominent: web series.

Although movies have been existing way before the internet did, the latter has been becoming more flexible and easily accessible to the people, in recent times. With multiple streaming platforms, not only the movies and the TV shows from around the world have been more easily available, but those platforms have produced movies and shows of their own.

After the novel series 'A Song of Ice and Fire’ got made into a TV show (Game of Thrones), which has been running so successfully, with multiple episodes and seasons that cover more details than a movie on it ever could, people have been realising that maybe novel series should be made more into a web or TV series than into movies.

When the 'Lord of the Rings’ and the 'Harry Potter’ novels were adapted, movies were the most prominent media. TV shows weren't easily accessible to the people all over the world. While the movies were highly appealing, the fans of the novels complained about many of the details and events being skipped in movies. Since movies have a limited time, the makers aren't to be blamed. Now with the emergence of web series and their easy access around the globe, it seems a better option if the novel series were adapted into those. The success of 'Game of Thrones’ proves that the acclamation can be grand.

We also have the example of 'Sacred Games’, the novel by Vikram Chandra that got adapted into a web series of the same name on Netflix and became so popular and significant.

While we are observing the web series gaining success, more specifically the ones adapted from novels or novel series, there's a trilogy of books whose fans have been awaiting its adaptation since a long time. Previously they were all keen on a movie adaptation, but now a web series would seem better. That trilogy is, The Shiva Trilogy, by Amish Tripathi.

A movie adaptation is still a treat and a joy to the readers; it's just that an adaptation into a series has much lesser chances of skipping any details.