Palm Springs Sets Starry 2026 Lineup for Book‑to‑Screen Talks

The Palm Springs International Film Festival is doubling down on its love of adaptations. For 2026, the festival is reviving its Book to Screen program in partnership with Deadline and has locked in a trio of high‑profile conversations built around some of next year’s buzziest literary‑inspired releases.

Running January 5–9, 2026, the series will spotlight Universal’s Wicked: For Good, Sony Pictures Classics’ Nuremberg, and Netflix’s Train Dreams, with Deadline’s Matt Grobar moderating the talks. The program is designed to celebrate the intersection of literature and film and to give readers and moviegoers a peek behind the curtain of how beloved stories make the jump to the screen.

Wicked, Nuremberg and Train Dreams Take Center Stage

The week opens on Monday, January 5, at 9:30 a.m. with a panel on Wicked: For Good, the epic conclusion to the reimagined tale of the witches of Oz. Screenwriter Winnie Holzman, the Tony‑nominated writer behind Broadway’s Wicked and the pair of Universal films, will dig into how she brought Elphaba and Glinda’s fractured friendship to a cinematic close. The final chapter finds the two witches estranged and facing the consequences of their choices, forced to see each other clearly if they’re going to change Oz “for good,” according to the logline shared with Deadline.

On Tuesday, January 6, at 9:30 a.m., writer‑director James Vanderbilt will take the stage for a conversation about Nuremberg. The Sony Pictures Classics drama follows chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson as the Allies attempt to hold the Nazi regime legally accountable after the Holocaust, while a U.S. Army psychiatrist enters a chilling psychological duel with Hermann Göring. The project continues the festival’s tradition of tackling politically and historically charged material after past Book to Screen spotlights on works like Conclave and Nickel Boys.

The series closes Friday, January 9, at 7:30 p.m. with Train Dreams, Netflix’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s acclaimed novella. Director and co‑writer Clint Bentley will appear alongside screenwriter Greg Kwedar to unpack their portrait of Robert Grainier, a railroad worker in the early 20th‑century American West whose life is reshaped by love, loss and a rapidly changing landscape. The streaming giant’s take on Johnson’s text follows a wave of adaptations that increasingly foreground literary voices, from prestige dramas to genre fare. Fans already tracking the movie’s development from page to screen can dive deeper into the project’s evolution in our look at Netflix’s Denis Johnson adaptation.

Palm Springs Rides a Broader Book‑to‑Screen Boom

The Palm Springs program arrives amid a historic surge in adaptations. 2025 and 2026 are stacked with page‑to‑screen releases, from new takes on classics like Animal Farm and Frankenstein to contemporary bestsellers headed to theaters and streaming platforms. Romance powerhouse Harlequin is simultaneously developing 28 book‑to‑film projects across TV and streaming, signaling just how aggressively publishers and studios are mining their catalogs.

Fan‑driven trends are reshaping the pipeline too. Once‑marginalized fan‑fiction‑born stories are now feeding directly into Hollywood deals, as readers prove they’ll follow favorite tropes from AO3 to the multiplex. Few authors embody that shift more than Colleen Hoover, whose novels are spawning multiple projects at once—including adaptations of Verity, Regretting You and Reminders of Him. For a full rundown of how Hoover’s universe is expanding on screen, see our guide to every Colleen Hoover adaptation currently in the works.

For book lovers, Palm Springs’ Book to Screen spotlight is more than a festival sidebar—it’s a front‑row seat to how stories are changing as they move between page and screen. As adaptations continue to dominate release slates and streaming queues, programs like this one give readers a rare chance to hear exactly what gets lost, found and reinvented in the journey from novel or novella to finished film.