Post 4: Adapting Your Book

The five most important decisions to make while adapting Shutter Island are

1. Shutter Island should be made into a TV series. It would be about Dr. Cawley throughout the years. Each episode would be about a different mental patient who came to the island/comes to the island and how Cawley deals with each of them.
2. They would need to add a  history of the island. How it was founded, past patients, and previous events. They would also need to add a history of Cawley as well as make him seem like the good guy instead of the mad scientist.
3. Cawley would need to be played by an actor who could play the role of a mysterious doctor. Not much would be known about Cawley's past at first and every episode of the TV series would reveal a little more about him and his motives. As mysterious as Cawley is, the actor would also have to be likable to make people actually want to watch the show.
4. In order to keep the heart of the book, the adventure of Teddy Daniels would have to be played out in the first episode. Since the entire book is about Teddy's trip to the island, if this story was never included in the series then the only similarity between the book and the series would be the names of the characters. The main difference between the series and the book would be the perspective. On the first episode, it will be a retelling of the book but from Cawley's perspective. This would start off the show in the right perspective without ignoring the book the show was adapted from.
5. The soundtrack would have to include many eerie songs. Songs similar to ones from horror films. This is due to the unsettling nature of the book. It is a very creepy story where the characters go to a mental hospital on an isolated island. The music would need to portray the suspense and air of uncertainty felt by everyone on the island.