History Main / BasedOnAnAdviceBook

* For a video game example, the ''VideoGame/BrainAge'' games are {{Minigame Game}}s based on ''Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain'', by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima.

* Creator/SophiaCoppola decided to make ''Film/TheBlingRing'' after reading a Vanity Fair article on the crimes on a flight.

Hollywood knows how to make commercially successful movies out of unpromising source material: PragmaticAdaptation. Sometimes their source material is not only non-fiction but isn't even a narrative. That doesn't seem to deter Hollywood from making romantic comedies out of advice books. Normally the plot will center on a character following, overtly or otherwise, the advice in the book, but there are InNameOnly exceptions, such as ''Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex [[note]][[FootnoteFever But Were Afraid To Ask]][[/note]]''.

* ''Film/MeanGirls'' is based on ''Queen Bees & Wannabees'' by Rosalind Wiseman, a guide for parents of adolescent girls.

[[folder:Theatre]]
* ''Theatre/HowToSucceedInBusinessWithoutReallyTrying'' is a parody of such books.

* ''Film/{{A Guide for the Married Man}}'' was developed simultaneously as an advice book and a movie, both written by Frank Tarloff. The movie is basically a FramingDevice linking a series of vignettes.

* On the day he died, Creator/JohnBelushi signed on to be in the film adaptation of ''The Joy Of Sex''. He was high on cocaine at the time.
* ''[[Series/EightSimpleRules 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter]]''. Although that's not ''really'' an advice book; it's a comedy book, parts of which parody advice books.
* ''Theatre/HowToSucceedInBusinessWithoutReallyTrying'' is a parody of such books.

* ''Film/{{It|1927}}'', a 1927 romantic comedy starring Creator/ClaraBow which spawned the term "It Girl", was based on Elinor Glyn's advice guide about how to have great sex appeal.
* Both ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious2001'' and ''Film/LiveFreeOrDieHard'' were based on magazine articles, as was ''Film/SaturdayNightFever.'' That last was based on Nik Cohn's article "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", which he later admitted was a complete fabrication.
* ''Film/HesJustNotThatIntoYou'' was based on an advice book based on a stand-up comedy bit
* For a video game example, the ''VideoGame/BrainAge'' games are {{Minigame Game}}s based on ''Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain'', by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima.
* Parodied in Telltale's ''VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice'' games, where almost every episode is claimed to be based on some sort of pamphlet that has nothing to do with the actual plot. This is a running gag from the original comics as well.

* Anime example: ''Anime/HealthAndPhysicalEducationFor30YearOlds'', a sex-and-dating guide targeted at lonely {{Otaku}} in their '30s.
* The film ''Film/ThinkLikeAMan'' is based on Steve Harvey's relationship advice book ''Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man''.
* ''Film/WhatToExpectWhenYoureExpecting'' is based on the perennial favourite pregnancy advice book and features an AllStarCast.
* Inverted by the movie ''The Darwin Awards'', a comedy about a profiler-turned-insurance-investigator obsessed with the cockamamie deaths chronicled on the Website/DarwinAwards website. The inversion is that the Darwin Awards are sort of an ''un''advice litany of things no one with a brain ought to do. Also inverted in that all the deaths featured in the movie are urban legends that the site features for comedic value only, not legitimate stories submitted to the site - probably to avoid problems from the victim's estates.
* Brazilian movie ''Até que a Sorte nos Separe'' ("Til Luck Do Us Part") is based upon financial advice book ''Casais Inteligentes Enriquecem Juntos'' ("smart couples get rich together" - the plot of the movie [[AFoolAndHisNewMoneyAreSoonParted goes the other way]], with a couple who won the lottery [[RichesToRags losing the prize after 15 years of]] ConspicuousConsumption).
* Creator/SJPerelman and Creator/OgdenNash worked on an unproduced screenplay based on Dale Carnegie's ''Literature/HowToWinFriendsAndInfluencePeople''.
* ''A Guide for the Married Man'' was developed simultaneously as an advice book and a movie, both written by Frank Tarloff. The movie is basically a FramingDevice linking a series of vignettes.
* For a music example, Pat Boone published an advice book called '''Twixt Twelve and Twenty'' in 1958, whose title was recycled for a song of his a year later.

* The title and namesake ''Film/FantasticBeasts'' (at least in the first film, ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'') are based on Creator/JKRowling's book ''Literature/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'', which is a fictional guide with nothing resembling a plot.

* The 1960 comedy ''School For Scoundrels'' (and by extension the 2006 remake) was based on Creator/StephenPotter's satirical advice book ''The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating'' and its sequels ''Lifemanship'' and ''One-Upmanship''.

* Inverted by the movie ''The Darwin Awards'', a comedy about a profiler-turned-insurance-investigator obsessed with the cockamamie deaths chronicled on the Website/DarwinAwards website. The inversion is that the Darwin Awards are sort of an ''un''advice litany of things no one with a brain ought to do.
** Also inverted in that all the deaths featured in the movie are urban legends that the site features for comedic value only, not legitimate stories submitted to the site - probably to avoid problems from the victim's estates.

* Both ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious2001'' and ''Film/LiveFreeOrDieHard'' were based on magazine articles, as was ''Film/SaturdayNightFever.''

* Both ''Film/TheFastAndTheFurious'' and ''[[Film/DieHard Live Free or Die Hard]]'' were based on magazine articles, as was ''Film/SaturdayNightFever.''

* Creator/SJPerelman and Creator/OgdenNash worked on an unproduced screenplay based on Dale Carnegie's ''How To Win Friends and Influence People''.

* The video game series ''VideoGame/SoldierOfFOrtune'' is based on the magazine of the same name.