For my last couple of posts I discussed the relevance of Historical Fiction (Faking it…the Importance of Historical Fiction) and (5 Steps to NailHistorical Fiction—Faking it Right). But after reading Garret Calcaterra’s recent post (On the Originof Zombies: 7 Must-See Zombie Films), it got me a little jealous. I love the Walking Dead, and I love me some zombie movies, but what could I possibly offer up for all us Historical Fiction aficionados to compete with that? Then Holly West came along in her last post (Book, Movie, Both) and inspired me to dig deeper. Holly writes, "As a story lover, I'm also enamored of movies. They entertain and inspire me differently, but no less so than books."
To my surprise, it’s actually quite easy to research exactly which movies were made from Historical Fiction novels. And it was even easier to find out how much money each had earned at the box-office! I hate to make money the sole means to rank these movies, but in at least some sense, that’s important, too. The more Historical Fiction rakes in at the box office as novels are converted to screen plays, the more readers we may pull into our shared love of books. In addition, it shows the entire publishing industry, and the movie executives, just how important Historical Fiction can be. So using the total World-Wide Box office haul as our sole discriminator, here are the top 20 grossing movies based on Historical Fiction!
