next year mollywood could see at least five movies releasing which are based on malayalam literary works while in the past malayalam cinema has borrowed extensively from its literature to produce classics such as odayil ninnu chemmeen and vidheyan the past two decades seem to have bucked that trend however with movies based on benyamins aadujeevitham g r indugopans vilayath buddha and uroobs rachiyamma in the works on kerala piravi day we find out whats leading the change and the challenges of adapting literary work to screena book provides a solid ground to stand onone of the mostanticipated adapted screenplays in malayalam is that of aadujeevitham which has prithviraj in the lead its director blessy tells us i first thought about making it into a film 11 years ago a writerfriend and i had a discussion on how in the 70s and 80s movies had screenplays adapted from literary works of thakazhi sivasankara pillai mutthathu varkey and p kesavadev and how by the turn of the millennium this trend began to cease the conclusion we arrived at then was that there were immense visual possibilities in the world of movies but it was becoming increasingly difficult to transpose a literary work to the screen to match that thats when i began reading aadujeevitham and thought the content can provide a cinematic experiencemeanwhile director shyamaprasad whose movies including agnisakshi and oru njayarazhcha were based on literary works says through most of my tv and film life i have adapted from books because i feel it is already solid ground to stand on a book is a different medium from film and i use it as an inspiration but it is not my priority to carry the voice of the author his next film kasiminte kadal is adapted from anees salims the smalltown sea and features harish uthaman tashi shamdat and arya salimchallenges of choosing a literary workthe themes that now serve as templates for developing the screenplay come from short stories such as unni rs vaanku to novels that are epic in scope as m t vasudevan nairs randamoozham clint director harikumar has chosen m mukundans short story autorickshawkkarante bharya for his next film i happened to read it in a weekly in 2017 this story about a woman who marries an indolent autorickshaw driver inspired me however the content was only enough to make a 30minute film so mukundan sir and i worked together to add meat to it by introducing characters and events and shape it into a commercial film says harikumar about his movie with suraj venjaramoodufor adapting novels the process can be even more onerous says blessy aadujeevitham is about najeeb recollecting his experiences in his soliloquy its not a conversation between two people its easier to convey that in a book but depicting a soliloquy onscreen without it being insufferable is tough so how the story is told in the film is entirely different another task was that in the latter half of the book even