The Best Adaptation Movies on Netflix

What it's about: The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Microsoft & Vudu).

What it's about: A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his mission to put him behind bars. But Frank not only eludes capture, he revels in the pursuit.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix, Showtime & Sundance Now) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: A true story of two men who should never have met – a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and a young man from the projects.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 1 service (Vudu).

What it's about: In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Le Chiffre, a banker to the world's terrorists, is scheduled to participate in a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro, where he intends to use his winnings to establish his financial grip on the terrorist market. M sends Bond—on his maiden mission as a 00 Agent—to attend this game and prevent Le Chiffre from winning. With the help of Vesper Lynd and Felix Leiter, Bond enters the most important poker game in his already dangerous career.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix, Peacock Premium & 1 other) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play, Prime Video & 4 others).

What it's about: On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room as a small site among friends soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1991. High school freshman Charlie is a wallflower, always watching life from the sidelines, until two senior students, Sam and her stepbrother Patrick, become his mentors, helping him discover the joys of friendship, music and love.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: After spending eight months in a mental institution, a former teacher moves back in with his parents and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: After graduating from Emory University in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity, and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Pennsylvania, 1956. Frank Sheeran, a war veteran of Irish origin who works as a truck driver, accidentally meets mobster Russell Bufalino. Once Frank becomes his trusted man, Bufalino sends him to Chicago with the task of helping Jimmy Hoffa, a powerful union leader related to organized crime, with whom Frank will maintain a close friendship for nearly twenty years.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: This English-language adaptation of the Swedish novel by Stieg Larsson follows a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, as he investigates the disappearance of a weary patriarch's niece from 40 years ago. He is aided by the pierced, tattooed, punk computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander. As they work together in the investigation, Blomkvist and Salander uncover immense corruption beyond anything they have ever imagined.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $1.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Ricky is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle in the wild New Zealand bush. A national manhunt ensues, and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together to survive.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix, Hulu, Hoopla & 1 other) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other again... until an older, wiser Shouya, tormented by his past behaviour, decides he must see Shouko once more. He wants to atone for his sins, but is it already too late...?

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Eccentric consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson battle to bring down a new nemesis and unravel a deadly plot that could destroy England.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 3 services (iTunes, Microsoft & Vudu).

What it's about: Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo's job is to oil and maintain the station's clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father. Accompanied by the goddaughter of an embittered toy merchant, Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Molly Bloom, a young skier and former Olympic hopeful becomes a successful entrepreneur (and a target of an FBI investigation) when she establishes a high-stakes, international poker game.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Construction worker Douglas Quaid discovers a memory chip in his brain during a virtual-reality trip. He also finds that his past has been invented to conceal a plot of planetary domination. Soon, he's off to Mars to find out who he is and who planted the chip.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: An aspiring actor in Hollywood meets an enigmatic stranger by the name of Tommy Wiseau, the meeting leads the actor down a path nobody could have predicted; creating the worst movie ever made.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $0.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict. Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church. Behind Vatican walls, a struggle commences between both tradition and progress, guilt and forgiveness, as these two very different men confront their pasts in order to find common ground and forge a future for a billion followers around the world.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: In a countryside town bordering on a magical land, a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm. His journey takes him into a world beyond his wildest dreams and reveals his true identity.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Lara Jean's love life goes from imaginary to out of control when her secret letters to every boy she's ever fallen for are mysteriously mailed out.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: Oakland, California. Young Afro-American Oscar Grant crosses paths with family members, friends, enemies and strangers before facing his fate on the platform at Fruitvale Station, in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Google Play & 2 others).

What it's about: The true story of how Ray Kroc, a salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was impressed by the brothers’ speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential. He maneuvered himself into a position to be able to pull the company from the brothers and create a billion-dollar empire.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: Author P.L. Travers travels from London to Hollywood as Walt Disney Pictures adapts her novel Mary Poppins for the big screen.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & Disney+) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: While searching for her missing mother, intrepid teen Enola Holmes uses her sleuthing skills to outsmart big brother Sherlock and help a runaway lord.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: The TRUE STORY of what was intended to be a peaceful protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention turned into a violent clash with police and the National Guard. The organizers of the protest—including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Bobby Seale—were charged with conspiracy to incite a riot and the trial that followed was one of the most notorious in history.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: The story of Rudy Ray Moore, who created the iconic big screen pimp character Dolemite in the 1970s.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: When tyrannical dictator Josef Stalin dies in 1953, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to become the next Soviet leader. Among the contenders are the dweebish Georgy Malenkov, the wily Nikita Khrushchev and Lavrenti Beria, the sadistic secret police chief.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: In 1950s New York, a department-store clerk who dreams of a better life falls for an older, married woman.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Prime Video & 2 others).

What it's about: A drama based on the experiences of Agu, a child fighting in the civil war of an unnamed, fictional West African country. Follows the journey of Agu as he's forced to join a group of soldiers. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination. Depicts the mechanics of war and does not shy away from explicit, visceral detail, painting a complex, difficult picture of Agu as a child soldier.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: Inventor Flint Lockwood creates a machine that makes clouds rain food, enabling the down-and-out citizens of Chewandswallow to feed themselves. But when the falling food reaches gargantuan proportions, Flint must scramble to avert disaster. Can he regain control of the machine and put an end to the wild weather before the town is destroyed?

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & Hulu) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Deliveryman Jongsu is out on a job when he runs into Haemi, a girl who once lived in his neighborhood. She asks if he'd mind looking after her cat while she's away on a trip to Africa. On her return she introduces to Jongsu an enigmatic young man named Ben, who she met during her trip. And one day Ben tells Jongsu about his most unusual hobby...

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix, Hoopla & Kanopy) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: Four undying warriors who've secretly protected humanity for centuries become targeted for their mysterious powers just as they discover a new immortal.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: The life of George Falconer, a British college professor, is reeling with the recent and sudden loss of his longtime partner. This traumatic event makes George challenge his own will to live as he seeks the console of his close girl friend Charley, who is struggling with her own questions about life.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 2 services (Google Play & Vudu).

What it's about: Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, Steve Jobs takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: A waitress, desperate to fulfill her dreams as a restaurant owner, is set on a journey to turn a frog prince back into a human being, but she has to face the same problem after she kisses him.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & Disney+) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 4 services (iTunes, Prime Video & 2 others).

What it's about: When Kermit the Frog and the Muppets learn that their beloved theater is slated for demolition, a sympathetic human, Gary, and his puppet roommate, Walter, swoop in to help the gang put on a show and raise the $10 million they need to save the day.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & Disney+) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: This lavishly produced and critically acclaimed screen adaptation of the international stage sensation tells the life-affirming story of Tevye (Topol), a poor milkman whose love, pride and faith help him face the oppression of turn-of-the-century Czarist Russia. Nominated for eight Academy Awards.

Where to Watch: Available to watch free online (PlutoTV), stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix & Hoopla) & rent or buy from $3.99 on 5 services (iTunes, Google Play & 3 others).

What it's about: In 1890s India, an arrogant British commander challenges the harshly taxed residents of Champaner to a high-stakes cricket match.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: In Knockemstiff, Ohio and its neighboring backwoods, sinister characters converge around young Arvin Russell as he fights the evil forces that threaten him and his family.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: Tyler Rake, a fearless mercenary who offers his services on the black market, embarks on a dangerous mission when he is hired to rescue the kidnapped son of a Mumbai crime lord…

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).

What it's about: A small unit of U.S. soldiers, alone at the remote Combat Outpost Keating, located deep in the valley of three mountains in Afghanistan, battles to defend against an overwhelming force of Taliban fighters in a coordinated attack. The Battle of Kamdesh, as it was known, was the bloodiest American engagement of the Afghan War in 2009 and Bravo Troop 3-61 CAV became one of the most decorated units of the 19-year conflict.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix) & rent or buy from $2.99 on 6 services (iTunes, Google Play & 4 others).

What it's about: In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

Where to Watch: Available to stream on a popular subscription service (Netflix).