Is there ever going to be a movie of "The Catcher in the Rye"?

[bluestateguy]

J.D. Salinger would never allow it while he was alive.

Any possibility that it could materialize now?

Done correctly, it could be an excellent movie.

[chev52]

1. If there is a movie

I doubt if I'd watch it. I never could even finish the book, it was so boring. I even tried to reread it after being out of high school after thirty years. Same results.

[Warpy]

3. The only time in your life to appreciate Holden Caulfield

is when you're an angsty teenager. It's not a book for happy, well adjusted kids in cornflakes families, they just won't get it.

Likewise, it's not a book for adults, who want to wring his neck whether they went through that kind of period themselves or not.

If it's made into a movie, it will suffer for being taken out of its period, for being left in a period that no teenager can relate to, for being what it is. The audience will be small and it won't be a date movie.

I agree with Salinger, I don't see how turning it into film would be a good idea, at all.

[d_r]

6. yes

Yes loved it in my teens. Reread it last year in my 40s. Still loved it but my perspective was so incredibly different.

[KingCharlemagne]

8. Adults want to wring Holden's neck? Care to elaborate? I've never felt that way toward

Holden and am in my mid-50s now, having re-read CitR several times between junior high and now.

The novel was included on Time‍ '​s 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923 and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, it was listed at #15 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye

[treestar]

2. Never thought of it

Yes, if he hadn't opposed, I'm sure someone would have done it by now.

Could he have tied it up in his will somehow - that his inheritor loses everything if they agree to a movie. But at some point he would have to lose control of it - the Rule Against Perpetuities would kick in and it would be in the public domain.

[Agschmid]

4. Good read.

http://www.ew.com/article/2010/01/29/is-a-catcher-in-the-rye-movie-possible

Some people have even gone so far as to make fake trailers:

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Great, just what we need.

Something else for alienated would-be assassins to carry around in their coats.

[UTUSN]

7. Am going to have to read it before I die since it's been a "thing" most of my life. Disappointed?!1