Adaptation studies through screenwriting studies: Transitionality and the adapted screenplay

Abstract This article explores the reasons why screenwriting and the adapted screenplay have been marginalized or ignored in adaptation studies, and, conversely, foregrounds processes of remediation that have been neglected by scholars of screenplay studies. It aims to question why both academia and audiences choose to compartmentalize the act of screenwriting, the screenplay text and the screenwriters themselves as existing on the periphery of film generally, and adaptation specifically. It also demonstrates the many ways that the fields of study of adaptation theory and screenplay theory can mutually benefit from sharing and overlapping ideas in a knowledge exchange concerning the liminality of the adapted screenplay. This is made possible thanks to notable progress made in recent years in both fields of study, particularly concerning authorship, intertextuality and industrial process of remediation. This approach will consider how the relationship between the adapted screenplay and film questions received notions of authorship in adaptation, and refocuses the reader on the many film practitioners involved in adaptation, of which the screenwriter is just one. In doing so, it will highlight the importance of this ‘liminal’ phase in order to transcend compare-contrast discourses. By analysing each of these elements of the adapted screenplay it will also become possible to consider aspects of adaptation that progress beyond preoccupations with source literature and/or the faithfulness of the adapted film text.