All dressed up for the movies

There has been shown to be strong demand among audiences for cinematic adaptations of classic novels by writers such as Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen. Costume dramas of this kind are popular because they good taste and clear cultural values, but adapting classic tales for the screen can bring serious problems. The demands of the cinema often force the writer's original intentions to be obliterated, and in many cases producers are simply looking to exploit a trend.