So you're watching The Film of the Book, content in the fact that the movie has been adapting the source material pretty well so far... but then the film ends on a Cliffhanger. Wait a minute, what gives? Was there another book in the series that the writers plan to adapt, so they tossed in a Sequel Hook for that one? Well, no. You double-check the source material and the book continues beyond that point. What happened?
Well, The Film of the Book was split in half.
Divided for Adaptation, as the name suggests, is when the source material is a single work, but its adaptation is split into multiple pieces. This can happen if the original work was something of a Doorstopper, but it can also be the result of a film series wanting to go out on a big note for its Grand Finale: Harry Potter is a good example of this, as the final book was no longer than the others, but was split into two when adapted to film. Executive Meddling can be a major reason this happens, because if the book-to-film series is popular, this is a good excuse to extend the life of the franchise and wring more money out of it. If the source material isn't quite long enough to fill up all that time (whereas 2½ hours wasn't enough, 5 hours is now too much), chances of Adaptation Expansion and/or Filler can also occur.
For the sake of not overloading this page with examples, this trope excludes television series and Mini Series, since those are multi-part by their very nature. However, situations where the show's pacing is drastically changed partway through (e.g., the adaptation of a manga that has always adapted two issues an episode suddenly goes down to one per episode), may be included.
Also see Gecko Ending where an adaptation ends just short of the source material ending and the adaptation has to Wrap It Up.
Sub-Trope of Divided for Publication and Movie Multipack.
Contrast the opposite Compressed Adaptation and Adaptation Amalgamation.
Examples
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Film — Animated
- The DC Universe Animated Original Movies line has done this a few times for its adaptations
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was split into two parts, with Part 1 released in 2012, and Part 2 released in 2013 and the plot reworked to have the Joker coming out of his catatonic state to serve as a cliffhanger instead of it happening the day after Batman's return.
- The Truer to the Text redo of The Death of Superman, featuring the the eponymous film and Reign of the Supermen, the former coming out in 2018 and the latter in 2019.
- Batman: The Long Halloween was also made into two parts, but unlike the other two, both came out the same year, 2021, and only a month apart. Like The Dark Knight Returns, it also changes the placement of events so something can serve as a cliffhanger, in this case, moving up Carmine Falcone siccing Poison Ivy on Bruce to right after New Year's Eve in The Stinger.
Film — Live Action
- Atlas Shrugged, a famous Doorstopper, was split into three movies (released in 2011, 2012, and 2014).
- Divergent: Allegiant was intended to be split into two movies. Due to the underwhelming performance of the first part released in 2016, the second part, Ascendant was scrapped as a theatrical film. There were plans to either release it as a Made-for-TV Movie, or turn it into a television show to conclude the series, but both of these ideas were ultimately scrapped as well.
- Dune (2021)—or rather Dune: Part One—covers only half of the book with Dune: Part Two covering the other half. It aims at solving the problem of the 1984 version condensing too much of the story and abusing narration Time Skip.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was split into two movies, released in 2010 and 2011.
- The 2010s movie adaptation of Stephen King's It was split into two movies, with the first one focusing on the main characters as kids, and the second one focusing on them as adults.
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe adapted the The Infinity Gauntlet storyline into Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 and Avengers: Endgame in 2019. They were originally simply Infinity War Parts I and II before Marvel realized this would spoil that The Bad Guy Wins once it became clear he was the Villain Protagonist.
- The 1934 French adaptation for Les Misérables was divided into three parts which were released in three subsequent weeks, running a total of four-and-a-half hours.
- Mockingjay was split into The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015).
- Often happens with adaptations of The Three Musketeers:
- The 1932 French version with Aimé Simon-Girard, Henri Rollan, Thomy Bourdelle and Edith Méra was split into two parts, The Queen's Diamonds and Milady.
- The 1961 French version with Gérard Barray and Mylène Demongeot was also split into two parts, The Queen's Diamonds and Milady's Revenge.
- As was the 1973 US/UK version with Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, and Christopher Lee. The second part is titled The Four Musketeers and was released the following year.
- Ditto with the 2023 French version with François Civil, Eva Green, Romain Duris, Vincent Cassel and Louis Garrel, with the two parts being titled D'Artagnan and Milady.
- Tolkien's Legendarium:
- In-Universe, the entire story of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was a single volume, the "Red Book of Westmarch", written by Bilbo, Frodo and Sam. Each of the real-life books are presented as Tolkien translating parts of the Red Book into English.
- The Lord of the Rings divides the story into three films, but they are not split at the same points that the three volumes of the novel are:
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring has Book One and Book Two, plus the first chapter of Book Three.note
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers has chapters two through seven and nine of Book Three and the first six chapters of Book Four.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King has chapters eight, ten, and eleven of Book Three, the last four chapters of Book Four, and all of Book Five and Book Six.note
- All three films also adapt some details included in the book's six Appendices.
- The Hobbit was adapted into three movies: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. However, the second movie also includes material from the Appendix of Lord of the Rings (such as Gandalf's chance meeting with Thorin and his offscreen fight with "The Necromancer" aka Sauron).
- The Maze Runner Series: Subverted. Fox wanted to split the trilogy's final entry The Death Cure into two movies, but director Wes Ball said he'd leave if they did, so they kept it as just the one film instead.
- Twilight: Breaking Dawn was split into two movies, which were released in 2011 and 2012.
- As War and Peace is a massive Doorstopper and can be a challenge for adaptations, the Soviet version takes the cake being a more faithful adaptation and was released into four parts in 1966 and 1967 with a total runtime of 7 hours and 11 minutes.
Literature
- When Douglas Adams adapted his radio play The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy into book form, it came out in two volumes, as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. He would tell the story that he took so long over writing it that his publisher rang him up and told him to finish the page he was on and send the whole thing over, and they'd release the rest later.
Live-Action TV
- Game of Thrones:
- While season one adapts A Game of Thrones faithfully, as did season two with A Clash of Kings, it took two seasons for the show to cover the events of A Storm of Swords. Season five inverts this, as it adapts A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons simultaneously, although it took so many liberties with the story that it ended up diverging significantly from the source material. Due to George R. R. Martin having yet to finish the books, the last three seasons of the show have to be made out of whole cloth (although season six incorporated some ideas from Feast and Dance that didn't make it in season five).
- The prequel series House of the Dragon is adapted from Fire & Blood, but only focuses on the Dance of the Dragons and the build up to it, which spans chapter twelve ("Heirs of the Dragon - A Question of Succession") to eighteen ("The Dying of the Dragons - The Short, Sad Reign of Aegon II") in the book. In spite of this limited scope, the entirety of season one only covers chapter twelve (that is, just one chapter), with the meat of the story being saved for later seasons. G.R.R. Martin has commented
that at this pace, it will take four seasons for the show to cover the events of the Dance of the Dragons.
- The Appendices written at the of The Return of the King barely sum up around 100 pages, of which only appendices A and B deals with the history of Numenor, Second and Third Age. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is planned to cover them in 5 seasons.
- Power Rangers has been splitting a number of their adapted Super Sentai series into two parts starting The New '10s thanks to a mandate by the TV network of shows having only twenty episodes max (a Sentai Series usually has around fifty) per season. The only series to avert this so far is Power Rangers Megaforce, which is an Adaptation Amalgamation of Tensou Sentai Goseiger (Season 1, in 2013) and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger (Season 2, in 2014):
- Samurai Sentai Shinkenger to Power Rangers Samurai in 2011 and 2012.
- Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger to Power Rangers Dino Charge in 2015 and 2016.
- Shuriken Sentai Ninninger to Power Rangers Ninja Steel in 2017 and 2018.
- Tokumei Sentai Go Busters to Power Rangers Beast Morphers in 2019 and 2020.
- Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger to Power Rangers Dino Fury in 2021 and 2022.
- Runaways (2017) spreads the plot of the original miniseries over multiple seasons.
- Saturday Night Live parodied The Hobbit with a Parody Commercial for The Hobbit, which it says will be in nineteen 3-hour movies. The first film is already in the can, but others include The Hobbit 2: Journey to the Beginning of the Walk to Smaug's Lair, Hobbit 3: Shoot, I Just Realized I Forgot Something Back at the Shire. Mind if we Double Back? and Hobbit 4: Apple Maps: An Unexpected Detour. The final film will be released in 2028 - bring your grandkids!
- Vienna Blood originally ran on the BBC as three 90-minute episodes per season. When the series was played on Masterpiece in the United States, PBS broke the episodes into 45-minute segments to fit its time slot.
Video Games
- The Video Game Remake of Final Fantasy VII is split into three titles, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and an untitled third game. Remake only covers up to leaving Midgar, which was only about a quarter into the original game's disc one out of three, while Rebirth covers the rest of the game's first disc. The third game will presumably cover discs two and three (the latter of which isn't as lengthy as the others, containing only the Final Boss and dungeon).
- The 2017 video game adaptation of Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth was split into three parts.
- The remake of Tsukihime is a massive Adaptation Expansion of the original, with an immense amount of additional content to the individual routes. As such, the remake is being released in parts, with 2021's Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- only consisting of the original's "Near Side" routes, and the yet to be released Tsukihime -The other side of red garden- containing the "Far Side" routes, including the Satsuki route, which was planned for the original but removed.
Web Animation
- Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged: The first three seasons cover the original game's first disc. Season 4 is enough to cover the entirety of Disc 2. Ditto the Finale Movie for the third and final disc.
Western Animation
- Arthur: When the book Arthur's Teacher Trouble was adapted for the show, the storyline was split into two episodes, "Arthur and the Real Mr. Ratburn" and "Arthur's Spelling Trubble".
- Hilda: The animated adaptation of the graphic novel "Hilda and the Midgnight Giant" is spread over two episodes, with several new scenes added. The events from "Hilda and the Black Hound" are divided over 4 episodes, though the bulk of the story was used for the Season 1 finale.
- Sky1's animated series based on The Moomins, Moominvalley, has two episodes directly based on the novel Moominsummer Madness and one that seems to be inspired by it. Instead of ending on a cliffhanger however, the episode of the same title is an Adaptation Distillation in which Moominvalley is flooded, the Moomins discover the theatre and meet Emma, and then the valley is unflooded again. The part about them actually putting on a play is moved to the next episode, after the flood (although the audience still end up in boats), where it's combined with the comic strip story "The Golden Tale". And Snufkin's subplot is likewise given its own episode later, "Snufkin and the Park-Keeper".
- Nelvana's The Adventures of Tintin (1991) split the Tintin stories into two 23-minute episodes each, excluding Red Rackham's Treasure, The Shooting Star, and Tintin In America, which were each adapted as a single episode, and the unadapted stories Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets, Tintin In The Congo, and Tintin And Alph-Art.
