Ian McEwan adapted On Chesil Beach because he didn't want anybody ruining his story

Ian McEwan adapted his novella On Chesil Beach for the screen because he didn't want anyone else to do it.

The Atonement author tried his hand at writing screenplays in the '80s and '90s but he stopped doing them for more than 20 years, until he decided to adapt his own novella, about two honeymooners having an uncomfortable evening at their hotel the night of their wedding.

Now he’s admitted the initial reason for accepting the job was because he didn't want it falling into the wrong hands.
"In the beginning, something rather negative - I didn't want anyone else to do it," he said during a London Q&A. "It's a very intimate and tender story and I could see a trillion ways you could make the world's worst movie - you could make it semi-pornographic, you could make it satirical or rather derisory or very sentimental.

"The fact that it was a short novel appealed to me too because I think screenplays and novellas have a lot in common."

He also enjoyed having to imagine his characters all over again to create the dialogue and add in scenes that he never thought of at the time he wrote the 2007 novella.

The Enduring Love writer admitted he decided against writing screenplays in the mid-'90s after his script for a potential follow-up to The Fly never saw the light of day.

"I had been in a protracted sulk about screenplays. I wrote a couple in the mid-90s, one for Geena Davis, a follow-up to The Fly, which I really liked doing and that fell in a contractual hole between various parties who owned The Fly concept," he explained. "I thought, 'I've wasted two years on this, I could have written a novel, I'm not going to write screenplays again.' But this I really wanted to do."

He has since written the screenplay to The Children Act, based on his 2004 novel.

On Chesil Beach, which stars Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle, is in cinemas now.