Film and TV keep raiding the bookshelf, and the second half of 2026 delivers a strong batch of adaptations.
Streaming platforms and studios have spent the past few years buying up book rights at a pace that outstrips most readers’ ability to keep track. This year, the payoff finally arrives. The batch landing in the latter half of 2026 pulls from wildly different corners of the shelf, from beloved romance novels and timeless literary classics to bestselling dystopian fiction and one of the most influential food memoirs ever written. Here are six books worth picking up before their film or TV adaptations arrive later this year.
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Kitchen Confidential By Anthony Bourdain
Bourdain wrote Kitchen Confidential in 2000, expanding a The New Yorker essay called “Don’t Eat Before Reading This” into a memoir that exposed the drugs, chaos, and dark humor running through professional kitchens. The book traces his path from a dishwashing job in Provincetown through years of addiction to finally running the kitchen at Brasserie Les Halles in New York, the book making him a household name before he ever picked up a TV camera. The film adaptation, titled Tony, zeroes in on a single summer in 1976, when a 19-year-old Bourdain took a job at a Cape Cod restaurant and fell under the wing of a Brazilian-born chef. Dominic Sessa plays Bourdain, while Antonio Banderas plays the mentor. A24 is set to open the film in theaters on August 7.
Sense and Sensibility By Jane Austen
Austen published this one anonymously in 1811, and it remains her sharpest argument about the tension between practicality and pure feeling. Sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood lose their family estate when their father dies, and the novel follows them as they navigate poverty, courtship, and two very different temperaments. While Elinor keeps her composure, Marianne wears her heart in the open. Director Georgia Oakley’s new film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne. It hits US theaters on October 16.
East of Eden By John Steinbeck
Steinbeck considered this 1952 novel the book his entire career had been building toward, a sprawling reimagining of the Cain and Abel story set across generations in California’s Salinas Valley. The Trask and Hamilton families anchor the plot, but the character who remains in readers’ minds is Cathy Ames, a woman who marries into the Trask family and leaves a trail of destruction with almost no conscience to speak of. Zoe Kazan—granddaughter of Elia Kazan, the director who adapted the novel into a 1955 film—is the writer and showrunner of the upcoming seven-episode Netflix limited series that centers the story on Cathy (played by Florence Pugh) with Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist as the Trask brothers. The series premieres later this year.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping By Suzanne Collins
Collins released this fifth installment of the Hunger Games series in March 2025, sending readers back 24 years before Katniss Everdeen ever volunteered as tribute. The book follows a teenage Haymitch Abernathy through the 50th Hunger Games, the Second Quarter Quell, which forced double the usual number of tributes into the arena. Joseph Zada plays the young Haymitch in the film adaptation, with Ralph Fiennes as a middle-aged President Coriolanus Snow and Glenn Close as District 12’s escort. Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are set to return briefly as Katniss and Peeta. The film will arrive in US theaters on November 20.
The Love Hypothesis By Ali Hazelwood
Hazelwood originally wrote this story as Star Wars fan fiction for the Reylo ship before turning it into an original novel. It was self-published in 2021, then Berkley picked it up and turned it into one of BookTok’s talked-about romances. The plot follows Olive Smith, a PhD student who kisses a random professor (Dr. Adam Carlsen) to convince her best friend she’s over an old crush; she soon finds herself stuck in a fake relationship that inevitably turns real. Lili Reinhart plays Olive in the film version, while Tom Bateman plays Adam, and Claire Scanlon directs. It’s set to premiere on Prime Video on September 23.
Lucky By Marissa Stapley
The novel follows Lucky Armstrong, a con artist raised by her grifter father, who pulls off a major heist with her boyfriend only to have the whole plan collapse and leave her on her own for the first time. She then discovers a lottery ticket she bought on impulse is worth hundreds of millions, and spends the rest of the book figuring out how to claim the money without exposing herself to the people hunting her. The Apple TV adaptation, created by Jonathan Tropper with Reese Witherspoon producing, stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Lucky alongside Timothy Olyphant and Annette Bening. The first two episodes are due to be released July 15, with the rest rolling out weekly until August 19.
Frequently Asked Questions
Several notable books are getting screen adaptations in 2026, including Kitchen Confidential, Sense and Sensibility, East of Eden, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, The Love Hypothesis, and Lucky.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen and East of Eden by John Steinbeck are both classic novels receiving new screen adaptations in 2026.
Modern bestselling books being adapted include The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, Lucky by Marissa Stapley, and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.
No. Tony (based on Kitchen Confidential) and Sense and Sensibility are feature films, while East of Eden and Lucky are television miniseries.
The theatrical releases include Tony, Sense and Sensibility, and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Meanwhile, The Love Hypothesis will debut on Prime Video, East of Eden and Lucky are streaming series that will premiere on Netflix and Apple TV, respectively.
