Books Turned Into Movies

It appears that movie creators are running out of ideas for movies and therefore are turning to the authors to bail them out.  Is it me or does there seem to be a huge number of movie adaptations coming out these days?  And even though I am going to concentrate this blog mainly on the children book market from picture back to YA, adult books are also turning into movies in high numbers as well. 

Not having been published (yet!), I wonder if this is something that comes standard in contracts these days.  After all, there's now a huge possibility of your book becoming a movie so why wouldn't publishing companies want there hands into the market?  I also wonder if there are some authors out there who actually write now a days for the movies.  Knowing the possibility is out there, do authors alter their story knowing that something they write for the book may not translate well to the big screen or do they actually remain true to the story?  I like to think that when my day comes, I stay true to the story.  It is what comes first, right?

This year so far saw 5 adaptations with March being the biggest release of movies.  Last year had 9 all together.  We haven't even hit half the year, but we've already got half the movies from that of last year.  What else is in store for us?  Today, I picked up the Entertainment Weekly magazine that featured Jennifer Lawrence on the cover as Katniss from Suzanne Collins' futuristic trilogy The Hunger Games. Another adaptation coming out in 2012.  In it, they listed 10 more YA books picked up for the big screen.  Here's the list:

1) Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
2) City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
3) Delirium by Lauren Oliver
4) Divergent by Veronica Roth
5) Earthseed by Pamela Sargent
6) Incarceron bu Catherine Fisher
7) Matched by Ally Condie
8) Pure by Julianna Baggott (not even coming out until 2012)
9) Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
10) Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

What I also find interesting is that, except for Warm Bodies, all of these books are part of or becoming a trilogy/series.  Does this mean that only children book authors that have more than one book to sell as movie rights will get noticed by the movie industry? Definitely, a lot of questions to ponder.  I just hope that the movie creators do these books right and not screw up the stories we authors worked so hard to create.  It's not easy writing a book.