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Every few years, a new Hollywood release throws English-literature majors into a frenzy. In 2019, it was Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Fourteen years before that, it was Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in Pride and Prejudice. Of course, we’ve got plenty of Colleen Hoover and Emily Henry books being turned into movies these days. I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of the TV adaptation of steamy hockey romance novel Heated Rivalry, and I will always have room in my heart for the puppy love in The Summer I Turned Pretty. But this chilly season, I’ve noticed several of the most anticipated films have a capital-L literary undertone and are far more sexual than I remember from when I read their source material in Lit 101. It’s intentional, I’m sure, because there’s no reason to cast a six-foot-seven Australian as the monster in Frankenstein or Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare unless “sexy” was written in all caps on the mood board.
The internet may always have mixed opinions about a loose film adaptation based on a great book, but I’d argue that if books turned movies aren’t driving us insane with lust, then while they stand to be accurate, they would otherwise be boring and predictable. Let our depravity drive us mad, especially when it’s too cold to do anything else. So below, I’ve put together the horniest literary adaptations you’ll see on screen this season. Some of them are based on classics, some are a little more contemporary, and a few of them may even make it all the way to the Oscars in March! This list is equal parts educational and lustful. Enjoy!
Hamnet: Sad and Horny
If anyone has a crying kink, it must be Paul Mescal, but it works for him, and therefore works for me. While he’s starred in his fair share of devastating movies, Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet is almost unbearably sad. Based on the 2020 novel of the same name, this film tells the fictional story of William Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife, played stunningly by Jessie Buckley. The central conceit of the film focuses on the real fact that Shakespeare had a son named Hamnet who died at 11 years old, and the novel and movie imagine how that grief inspired Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s most notable dramas. However, I will say that the fact that it is about Shakespeare comes second to displaying the shattering pain of two people so deeply in love losing a child. What makes this film so visceral is Zhao’s lingering camerawork, which leaves us both in moments of pain and love longer than we may wish to be. I cried all the way through my train ride home, but it also made me crave love in a way I hadn’t felt in a while.
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Frankenstein: Scary and Horny
The idea of creating a whole new human from the remains of hundreds of dead men is absolutely terrifying, and the first ten minutes of the film feel straight out of a nightmare. But as soon as you see a monsterified-baby Jacob Elordi being led around by daddy (literal and figurative) Oscar Issac’s character Victor Frankenstein, it’s clear that Guillermo del Toro
knew what he was doing. In place of the green freaky monster we’ve come to expect with Frankenstein, Elordi’s monster is chiseled, timid, and even gentle. When the movie switches to his perspective, I found myself even more enamored with the gentle giant. Is he supposed to be this hot? Who cares, it works for me!
Hedda: Sapphic and Horny
I had not read the 1891 drama Hedda Gabler by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen before I watched Hedda, but at the first sign of a sapphic glance onscreen and after a swift perusal of SparkNotes, I learned that the film adaptation changed a major plotline to make this story gay. I was immediately hooked by Tessa Thompson’s chaotic main character, who wreaks havoc among everyone she comes into contact with, clearly unhappy with her recent hetero marriage and lashing out over her love for her husband’s rival scholar. She’s so upset she’s suicidal, until she realizes Professor Eileen Lovborg is calling her name. Highbrow horny, indeed.
The Housemaid: Campy and Horny
This thriller is a modern tale based on a 2022 novel, but it has clear parallels to the classic novel Jane Eyre, particularly around the theme of a crazy woman locked in the attic. However, the movie adaptation leans on the campy nature of the plot, allowing the three beautiful main characters — played by Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, and Brandon Sklenar — to be hot and sexy instead of ignoring it. There’s a moment where Sweeney’s character, Millie, a woman living out of a single bag, goes downstairs for a midnight snack in a bra (not a push-up, as Sweeney clarified to GQ, but one that looks like it) and then watches TV with her employer’s husband late at night. It had my audience roaring with laughter at the absurdity of it all.
Wuthering Heights: Just Plain Old Erotic
This movie alone could send a million literature professors into a coma, but I believe it will revive Gen Z’s love of classic British literature. Emerald Fennell’s films are divisive, explosive, and utterly deranged. I left Saltburn unable to get it out of my head for months, and based on the trailer, the filmmaker’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights promises the same. To be released on Valentine’s Day, the “greatest love story of all time” is begging viewers to “come undone.” Listen, we know what that means when it comes to Fennell: wall-licking, bread-slapping, finger-sucking, Charli XCX–scored, insane goodness.
