Hot take: I don’t want a Cloud Atlas TV series. The movie is the best way the book can be adapted.

So, I’ve recently heard a lot of people who didn’t like the Cloud Atlas movie say that Cloud Atlas should instead be a 6-episode TV miniseries with each episode based on a storyline from the book. I completely disagree.

1. Using each plotline from the book as a TV series feels too disjointed. The premise of the book is to show how we are all connected from the past to the present to the future. By separating each of the stories as an episode will feel like six individual stories. The film weaves all the storylines together in an interesting way to make them connected (for example: Luisa Rey’s shower running down ont Sonmi-451, how the ending cuts between Adam and Tilda’s hug at the end, and how Somni’s escape attempt is before the same scene where Autua flies onto the ship)

2. Letting all the stories resolve all at once creates a much more emotional conclusion. I totally understand why the book features a “Russian doll” structure, to not make the stories resolve until the very end. The book is not in the structure (interweaving) like the film because it will be confusing to the reader as written text. Having everything resolve at once gives a much more stronger ending. If we have a TV series we will lose the impactful resolution.

What do you think?