Jules Verne has been not only the most-published French author in the English-speaking world for more than 150 years but also a source of inspiration to filmmakers since the birth of the medium. In Hollywood (whose industry interacts constantly with the film industry in England and Australia), some twenty different Verne stories, along with his biography, have been adapted into ninety films and television productions, setting the tone and standard among the best known adaptations around the world. Verne is a writer who, like Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Ch ... More

Jules Verne has been not only the most-published French author in the English-speaking world for more than 150 years but also a source of inspiration to filmmakers since the birth of the medium. In Hollywood (whose industry interacts constantly with the film industry in England and Australia), some twenty different Verne stories, along with his biography, have been adapted into ninety films and television productions, setting the tone and standard among the best known adaptations around the world. Verne is a writer who, like Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Charles Dickens, has had his work brought to the screen in all forms, not only big-screen features, shorts, and serials but also every type of television. Spanning more than a hundred years, the entire twentieth century up to the present, this study suggests the artificiality of traditional adaptation constructs seeking to square a text with “the” film; in the case of Verne and similar writers, there are many versions, in alternate forms, addressing a range of audiences over time. In this examination of all of these versions, box office hits and others produced on a lower budget but no less significant, the evolving relationship between the writer and filmmakers reveals how trends in publishing have impacted filmmaking, such as when the rise of Verne in comic books led to a flood of animated versions. A chronological approach demonstrates the various cycles, resonating with publishing, genres, and evolving filmmaking approaches. It also reveals the intertextuality as various versions of different stories were produced simultaneously and successively, one story often impacting not only a remake but also another film made at the same time.