Your September 2025 Book-to-Screen Watchlist (What to Read Before You Press Play)

I love a good page-to-screen moment, and September is serving a tight little buffet of thrillers, prestige romance, dystopian chills, and my favorite shambolic spies. Below, you’ll find the book adaptations that are coming to screen so you know what to read first, where to watch, and—since I haven’t seen these yet—what we’re told to expect.

The Watch List (September 2025 Book Adaptations)

Highest 2 Lowest

Watch on Apple TV+, Sept 5
Based on King’s Ransom by Ed McBain
Kurosawa’s High and Low first reimagined McBain’s 1959 procedural; now Spike Lee gives it a contemporary jolt with Denzel Washington as David King, a New York music mogul forced into an excruciating choice when the driver’s son is abducted by mistake. Pay the multimillion-dollar ransom and lose the label he built—or protect his empire and live with the cost. Expect high-tension moral chess, power, class, and media optics, with an intriguing ensemble (A$AP Rocky, Ice Spice, Jeffrey Wright, Dean Winters, Wendell Pierce). I’m anticipating Lee’s signature propulsion and big-idea thrills grounded in a classic dilemma.

The Girlfriend

Watch on Prime Video, Sept 10
Based on The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances
A glossy domestic noir where successful mom Laura (played—and directed—by Robin Wright) meets her son’s new partner and instantly senses something…off. Frances’ novel leans into escalating mind games, maternal intuition, and the thin line between protection and obsession. Expect a sleek, upscale vibe with shifting loyalties, polished interiors, and creeping dread—the kind of series you inhale in a weekend and then text your group chat about that ending.

The Long Walk

Watch in cinemas, Sept 12
Based on The Long Walk by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman)
Fifty boys. Three miles per hour. No stops. Fall behind, you’re out—permanently. Francis Lawrence (of Catching Fireand The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) brings King’s brutal endurance nightmare to the big screen with Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, Garrett Wareing, and Mark Hamill. We’re told to expect relentless, road-bound dread, the psychology of competition, and the crowd as a character. If you like your dystopia spare, sweaty, and merciless, this one’s the read-then-rush-to-theater pick.

The History of Sound

Watch in cinemas, Sept 12
Based on Ben Shattuck’s title story
A tender, time-swept remembrance: choir singer Lionel Worthing, now in his 70s, looks back on a brief, life-changing 1919 romance with David Ashton as the two crisscross rural Maine collecting folk songs on wax cylinders. With Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, a script by author Ben Shattuck, and direction by Oliver Hermanus (Living), the film earned a Palme d’Or nomination. Expect period intimacy, music as memory, and a quiet meditation on how a short chapter can echo forever.

Slow Horses

Watch on Apple TV+, Sept 24
Based on London Rules by Mick Herron
Our favorite “slow” horses are quick with new chaos. This season tackles the novel’s web of odd, possibly connected incidents across the city, with Slough House’s misfit MI5 agents doing their brilliant, catastrophically unglamorous best. Expect deadpan humor, bureaucratic backstabbing, and scruffy tradecraft; if the pattern holds, we’ll get propulsive plotting offset by the show’s deliciously bleak office comedy. (New to the series? You’ll still laugh, wince, and fall for this crew.)

Read It Now, Watch It Soon

My tip: place your library holds now (ebooks and audiobooks count!) and pick one “read-before-watch” and one “watch-then-read” for fun comparisons. Then come back and tell me—did the adaptation nail the vibes, or did the book still hold the crown? What September 2025 book adaptations are you queuing up first?