The original post: /r/television by /u/Apprehensive_Shirt18 on 2026-04-16 19:13:22+00:00.
Dune is probably the clearest example of what that would be like. The 1984 adaptation was such a mess that it basically buried the franchise’s potential for decades, even though the books had so much more to offer. It took Denis Villeneuve to finally give the source material the kind of adaptation it deserved.
For me though, my pick would be The Strain. The books had way more potential than what ended up on screen. The show had some cool ideas and moments, but the writing was all over the place, the execution felt messy, and most of the characters were hard to root for. It never really captured what made the source material so interesting in the first place. (Ideally an adaptation would’ve improved upon the books since they had some flaws too)