Follow TV Tropes

This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

Following

Disowned Adaptation

Go To

"I want to put on record that the flic [sic] out there using the word Hellraiser IS NO FUCKIN' CHILD OF MINE! I have NOTHING to do with the fuckin' thing. If they claim it's from the mind of Clive Barker, it's a lie. It's not even from my butt-hole."

When a work becomes popular, it is likely to get adapted to another medium,note  often by people of a completely different mind than the original creator. Sometimes the adaptation stays true to the source, at least enough to please the creator. Sometimes, however, the adaptation makes the creator cry, and cry very vocally against it.

A few creators will have enough pull to limit the distribution of the adaptation, or disallow further derivative works based on it. But in most cases, the creator signed away the rights long ago, which they may not know about at the time, and can do little more about it other than write Strongly Worded Letters and perhaps strive for more creative control in the future. Regardless, they will distance themselves from the adaptation in question.

A variant of Creator Backlash. If a creator can do something about it, and does, the result is often Canon Discontinuity.

Compare Only the Creator Does It Right. Contrast Creator-Preferred Adaptation, Approval of God, and Spiritual Adaptation. Can also lead to No Adaptations Allowed when the creator gave out dissatisfaction to the adaptation of their work and will not give out rights to any other adaptations to their work.

This is usually limited to works that were adapted while the creator of the original was still alive. While we would like to think that some posthumous adaptations have the creator rolling in their graves, we'll never know for sure. However, there have been some cases where family members/estates of the deceased creator have taken this stance against an adaptation if they own the rights of the work. It's also worth noting that several examples here, while disliked by the creator, were very well received by critics and fans and in some cases were Vindicated by History, so this does not automatically mean the result of the adaptation was terrible.


Examples sorted by the format the work was adapted to:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • CLAMP:
    • They refuse to acknowledge the infamous Cardcaptors dub of Cardcaptor Sakura, given the extreme changes made to the series.
    • They were disgruntled with how the anime adaptation of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- turned out to be due to its Troubled Production and the tight deadline NHK gave Bee Train. It reached the highest point in the first season finale, where a spell caused dead people to revive — which nullifies all the plot of Tsubasa! The first season finale also created a Plot Hole as the characters were fighting with the main villains mooks, as by that point in the story the main characters were unaware there was a villain who had connections to the heroes. The studio undid it the next season, but the damage was already done, and both CLAMP and Bee Train pulled the plug on a potential third season. The anime production staff was switched to Bee Train's parent company Production I.G to produce the Tokyo Revelations OVAs.
  • Katsura Hoshino was dissatisfied with the changes made to the first anime adaptation of D.Gray-Man due to TMS Entertainment's inclusion of filler material. Eight years later, TMS offered to make Hallow, but given her thoughts on how they handled the series, Hoshino unsurprisingly declined at first. Although she got involved as a supervisor, Hoshino later admitted on Instagram that she was disappointed with the changes made to her characters as well as a promotional poster depicting Allen and Kanda in suggestive poses resembling two people post-coitus.
  • Riyoko Ikeda disowned the ending of the animated adaptation of The Rose of Versailles for having Alain leave the army to become a farmer. To drive home the point, the sequel Eroica starts with Alain having been discharged for political reasons but still in Paris, and he rejoins the army early in the story after impressing Napoléon Bonaparte himself.
  • Ichiei Ishibumi was dissatisfied with the third season of the High School D×D anime, BorN, due to disagreements between him and Tetsuya Yanagisawa over adapting volumes 5 through 7 for that season. Ishibumi would go on to write the EX spinoff for the Blu-ray release to make the season's last four episodes into an Alternate Continuity before he and Yanagisawa went their separate ways. Then, Passione took over as the main animation studio for the fourth season, Hero.
  • Tove Jansson disapproved of the changes made to the first anime adaptation of The Moomins, Moomin (1969), feeling that it strongly misinterpreted her work and intentions for the characters. She voiced particular dislike for its depiction of Moomintroll, who was made into a more scrappy and ambitious character. The series was soon discontinued, and Jansson refused for it to be licensed overseas. This adaptation has also never made it to DVD, because two different studios worked on it, as well as not being able to obtain permission from Jansson's estate. However, Jansson allegedly had a higher opinion of the later anime series, Moomin (1990).
  • Shoji Kawamori, creator of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, has let it be known that he's not particularly fond of Robotech and how the adaptation changed plot details in order to shoehorn a continuity with two unrelated anime shows (Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA) that in his own words, felt forced.
    "I don't understand, nor do I accept the fact that they took and modified my work without even asking. I cannot comprehend how a pirated version like this exists. However, I feel I was very fortunate that many other people from other countries around the world were able to see Macross."
  • Yukito Kishiro reportedly hated the OVA adaptation of the early parts of his seminal Battle Angel Alita manga so much that he disowned it. However, he eagerly accepted the live action adaptation of the same volumes, despite the film including a lot of elements from the rejected OVA.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin disowned Tales from Earthsea, a Studio Ghibli adaptation of some of the Earthsea books. Her initial response can be read here. However, she did stress she liked many things about it:
  • Johji Manabe despised the animated adaptation of Ginga Sengoku Gunyuuden Rai, to the point of stating that he was "forced to prostitute his work” from having to rely on cheaper animation studios and condemning everybody involved in the project to a death sentence. He also downright stated that the series "looked like shit" for its low budget visuals. This is partially becaused it released following a drug smuggling scandal within Kadokawa Shoten that resulted in the arrest of the company's president, Haruki Kadokawa, and left Manabe destitute. To this day, the series still hasn’t had an official DVD or Blu-ray release nor has it seen the light of day overseas because of such backlash, though it did get Latin American Spanish and Arabic dubs, thanks to miraculous timing from Enoki Films.
  • Hayao Miyazaki disowned New World Pictures' Macekre version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, titled Warriors of the Wind, and refused to allow any of his other works to be dubbed for many years. By 1997, however, Disney negotiated with Tokuma Shoten, the then-owner of Miyazaki's own Studio Ghibli, and to start the studio's famous "no cuts" policy. Studio Ghibli was so serious about this that for Princess Mononoke, one of the producers mailed a katana to Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, along with a note reading "NO CUTS" upon the agreement.
  • Go Nagai allegedly wasn't happy with how the OVA adaptations of Violence Jack turned out.
  • Yoshiyuki "Buronson" Okamura, writer of Fist of the North Star, was pretty receptive of the 1986 movie version at first, but ultimately criticized it after it came out, encouraging readers to treat it as a separate story, specifically mentioning that the movie focused way too much on the excessive violence.
  • Hisashi Suzuki disliked the anime adaptation of his Light Novel series Magical Warfare, due to the studio being very lazy in constructing the plot and ending the series in a bizarre Gainax Ending despite the amount of material that was available.
  • Natsuki Takaya was dissatisfied with Studio DEEN's 2001 anime adaptation of Fruits Basket, thanks to Creative Differences between her and director Akitaro Daichi. However, she did like the opening theme, "For Fruits Basket". Takaya was much more involved as an executive supervisor for the 2019 anime adaptation produced by TMS Entertainment, which is Truer to the Text than the 2001 anime.
  • Back when the compilation film of the Future Boy Conan was being made, some staff sent a VHS tape with some early animation to Alexander Key, the writer for the book the series is based on, and his family, as a courtesy. However, Key hated the show and the changes Miyazaki and the other staff made so much that he told his estate to never allow the anime to come over in America, threatening to sue anyone who ever attempted to do so.
  • Naoko Takeuchi admitted her disappointment with how the first anime adaptation of Sailor Moon deviated from her original manga's storyline.
  • While Akira Toriyama was generally quite positive regarding most adaptations of Dragon Ball, there were certain aspects he disliked:
  • Masami Tsuda absolutely despised the animated adaptation of His and Her Circumstances, due to Hideaki Anno and Studio Gainax changing several elements of her story and emphasizing more of the comedic aspects to make it much Denser and Wackier. As a result, a disgruntled Anno left the series and animation producer Hiroki Sato took his place to try to get the story back on track. Unfortunately for Sato and Gainax, the series was abruptly Cut Short and was not renewed for a second season.
  • Yoshihiro Yamada for unstated reasons demanded his credit for Hyouge Mono be changed from "original work" (原作; gensaku) to "original concept" (原案; gen-an).
  • Masume Yoshimoto, the author of Kuma Miko: Girl Meets Bear, left a (now-deleted) post on his Tumblr account featuring a number of backhanded compliments toward the anime adaptation's infamous Audience-Alienating Ending, heavily implying that he wasn't any happier about it than the fans. He specifically called out Yoshio's behavior in the finale as "cruel."

    Comic Books 
  • Warlord of Mars, the adaptation of John Carter of Mars was notoriously disowned by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, who filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against its publisher Dynamite Entertainment citing the nude cover variants featuring female protagonist Dejah Thoris as they feared it would harm their brand. Surprisingly, the lawsuit did little to affect the comic and its spin-off's publication until 2014 when the dispute was amicably resolved, and both parties have worked together to relaunch the comic.
  • The Malibu Comics adaptation of Street Fighter was cancelled after three issues because, according to a statement at the end of the third issue, Capcom themselves didn't like it. The comics made several controversial changes, the most notorious of which was killing off one of the series' main characters in the second issue. It isn't even mentioned in the Timeline section of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, despite the 1994 movie and The Legend of Chun-Li, themselves not held in high regard, being acknowledged in there.
  • In an interview, Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons outright said that he refused to read Doomsday Clock (a twelve issue mini-series by DC Comics chronicling a crossover between the main DC Comics universe and the Watchmen universe), going on to say that it was the politest thing he could say about the story (and later clarified that while he understood why people would want Doomsday Clock, he just didn't see the point). Alan Moore was a whole lot less kind, however, saying that all people involved in the creation of story, up to and including the people who read it, "should be dragged off to Hell by their nipples".
  • Frédéric Molas has said in an interview that he doesn't like the Joueur du Grenier comic, and recommends to not buy it. He specifically associated with Piratesourcil because he knew the artist could produce the kind of comic he wanted, and they came up with various jokes on par with the kind of humor found in JdG, but the editor scrapped all of their ideas to make something more consensual, resulting in a rather bland comic. He even included a Take That! to it in one his video, where his younger self read the comic and his father (played by Frederic Molas aka the real Joueur du Grenier) tells him to stop reading that crap.
  • Bruce Timm implied in an interview for Justice League: Gods and Monsters that he isn't a fan of Harley Quinn's New 52 redesign and those derived from it, hence Harley's death in the tie-in miniseries Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles being a Take That! to New 52 Harley.
  • Amanda Waller's creator, John Ostander, expressed disappointment toward her Adaptational Attractiveness in Arrow and the New 52, since he specifically made her middle-aged and full-figured to give her a distinctive appearance.
    John Ostrander: I don’t control what happens with Waller or where she goes or how she looks; she is owned by DC Entertainment and Warners. I knew that going in. She is their property. That said, I think the changes made in her appearance are misguided. There were and are reasons why she looked the way she did. I wanted her to seem formidable and visually unlike anyone else out there. Making her young and svelte and sexy loses that. She becomes more like everyone else. She lost part of what made her unique.

    Fan Projects 
  • Toei Animation evidently has something against Dragon Ball Z Abridged, given how often they send out copyright strikes against the series. They also forced Funimation to remove Team Four Star from a dubbed episode of Dragon Ball Z Kai: The Final Chapters. Constantly having to fend off said copyright strikes was one of the factors that led to Team Four Star ending the series proper at the Cell Saga (though they would later cover parts of the Buu Saga as 'Buu Bits') and move on to spinoffs that were animated in house.
  • Neither Jason David Frank, nor Saban themselves, were fond of the Power Rangers Fan Film satire, Power/Rangers, which featured a Darker and Edgier and Bloodier and Gorier take of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers as a parody of the general concept of "darker" remakes and revivals. Frank cited the content as the reason (though Frank isn't opposed to a PG-13 version of the franchise) and Saban had it temporarily removed from YouTube with a bogus copyright claim. Frank's reaction could be him not realizing that it was a satire though it seems a lot of other people online didn't get it either, as comments on the film on YouTube and online media outlets praised it for making Power Rangers "cooler" and "badass". Original Zordon actor David Felding was more neutral, criticizing the darker tone, but praising the production values. Conversely, though, Austin St. John, Amy Jo Johnson, Walter Emanuel Jones, and Steve Cardenas liked it, despite the latter's character getting hit hard with the Adaptational Villainy stick, and Carla Perez, who was the suit actor for Rita in American footage, reprised her role in it.
  • popcornpr1nce, creator of the popular Undertale alternate universe "Underswap", disliked the way that fans of the AU treated the characters so much, that he ended up abandoning Underswap all together.
  • The Japanese producers of Yu-Gi-Oh! dislike Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series and often sends copyright strikes. Though most of the English dub actors enjoy it, Eric Stuart does not, as he becomes very angry if people talk about it during conventions or ask him to quote Abridged Seto Kaiba.

    Films — Animation 
  • Yellow Submarine was initially this. At first, The Beatles wanted to disassociate themselves from the project based on the poor reviews of their TV special Magical Mystery Tour and their dislike of the television cartoon based on them. But after seeing the finished project, the group got excited and chose to do the live ending. To this day, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr still embrace the film.
  • At a convention appearance, animator Don Bluth made it very clear that he absolutely hates all of the direct to video sequels to his films.note  His thoughts on them were blunt:
    "Hate them! Hate them! Those were mechanically produced, they're not making me feel anything, the music is messy, the drawings don't work, the story isn't going anywhere and at the end of it, I just lost time."
  • One of the most extreme examples of this is Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat, based on Robert Crumb's work. Crumb hated the film so much he killed the character off and refused to reuse him ever again. He also wasn't too fond of the documentary Crumb either.
  • Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was an obvious Ashcan Copy made by Warner Bros. so they wouldn't lose the license to the 1971 film. It was so disliked by the Dahl estate that they actually revoked the license rights and gave it to Netflix.
  • Although Greg Farshtey, author of the BIONICLE comics and books, has said negative things about the original Direct to Video trilogy, his usual stance was that they're okay but the books and comics are better. However, his creative differences with the creators of the third movie (who made Vakama a traitor, throwing away his previous Character Development) reportedly made him very upset, and though he argued against the story's direction, he was only distantly involved with the movies, so the writers' word overrode his. According to him, if he had the opportunity to get rid of one part of the storyline, Vakama's betrayal would've been it.
  • The 1970s animated adaptation of The Mouse and His Child was despised by Russell Hoban, the author of the book, who said that it butchered the source material. He did find the voices of Peter Ustinov (Manny) and Cloris Leachman (Euterpe) good, however.
  • The descendants of Victor Hugo bashed Disney in an open letter to the Libération newspaper for their ancestor getting no mention on the advertisement posters for the Disney adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and they harshly criticized the film itself as a vulgar commercialization of Hugo's story.
  • Per word of Chuck Jones in his book Chuck Jones Conversations, who did his own animated adaptations of Rudyard Kipling's stories, Kipling's daughter hated the Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book for being an In Name Only adaptation of her father's work:
    "Before we started our film, I discovered that Kipling's daughter was still alive and called her. In an elegant, British Dowager-like voice, she confirmed my pronunciation (of Mowgli's name) and added "and, I hate Walter Disney." It was the only time I ever heard anybody call him Walter. In her lifetime, she said nobody ever pronounced anything but Mauwgli."
  • Paolo Lorenzini, the nephew of Carlo Collodi, the author of the original The Adventures of Pinocchio book, hated the Disney adaptation for playing fast and loose with his uncle's story, and unsuccessfully tried to sue the studio for misrepresenting his uncle's work.
  • The Animated Adaptation of The King and I by Rankin/Bass was so despised by critics and the Rodgers-Hammerstein estate alike that the latter stated that no further animated adaptations of their works would be produced.
  • E. B. White despised Hanna-Barbera's Animated Adaptation of Charlotte's Web, because he said that "the story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song. I don't care much for jolly songs. The Blue Hill Fair, which I tried to report faithfully in the book, has become a Disney World, with 76 trombones. But that's what you get for getting embroiled in Hollywood." White's wife Katharine wrote a letter to Gene Deitch (who, ironically, was friends with White during the last years of the latter's life) shortly before her death in 1977 saying: "We have never ceased to regret that your version of Charlotte's Web never got made. The Hanna-Barbera version has never pleased either of us... a travesty..."
  • Norton Juster, the author of The Phantom Tollbooth, apparently hated the 1970 film adaptation. In a 2001 interview, he described the movie as "drivel" and said he was angered by its positive reviews.
  • When the trailer for The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (which was not produced by Blue Sky Studios, but outsourced to Bardel Entertainment in Vancouver, British Columbia by Disney) was released (not even a year after Blue Sky was shut down by Disney), many former Blue Sky animators expressed displeasure towards the extremely noticeable drop in quality of the animation.
  • Despite being made by Pixar, Lightyear would receive this response from several people who have worked on the Toy Story films.
    • While Tim Allen gave his blessing to Chris Evans voicing Buzz Lightyear in Lightyear, he would later speak out against the film itself; Allen was under the impression that they would create a live-action film instead, and was surprised to find out that none of the staff behind the four Toy Story films would work on Lightyear. Allen stated that while he enjoyed the story, he felt the film didn't have a big adventure, and that he wished there was a better connection to the toy.
    • Tom Hanks, the voice of Woody in the original films, stated that he didn't understand why Buzz was recast.
    • Toy Story creator John Lasseter reportedly hated the film, finding the movie to be substandard and its portrayal of Buzz to lack the essence and originality of the character that he "created and nurtured" for years before his departure.
  • Jerry Rees, who directed The Brave Little Toaster, has admitted to not having seen either of the two Direct to Video sequels. He doesn't have an opinion of the films themselves, but he was disappointed at all the hard work that he and his crew poured into his movie becoming just another cash grab.
  • Sir Elton John, who composed the songs for The Lion King (1994) but was uninvolved with the 2019 remake outside of "Never Too Late", expressed disappointment over Pharrell Williams' arrangements of his music, as he felt they "didn't have the same impact" and that "the magic and joy were lost."
  • TJ Fixman, writer for the Ratchet & Clank series between 2007's Tools of Destruction and 2013's Into the Nexus, takes no credit for the final script of Mainframe Studios' (then Rainmaker Entertainment) theatrical Ratchet & Clank movie. While he was brought up to write the first draft of the script, he has stated on several occasions that director Kevin Munroe and writer Gerry Swallow ended up rewriting it so heavily that all that was left of his influence were "his fingerprints," and he would end up leaving the project due to creative differences and due to the stress that working with a movie studio put on him.
  • Julia Sawalha, who voiced Ginger in Chicken Run, was not happy when her role was recast for Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. She was told that she was "too old" for the role and later said the decision was ageist. (at the time Sawalha was 55; her replacement Thandiwe Newton was.. 51.)
  • E. H. Shepard, the illustrator of the Winnie the Pooh books, called Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree a "complete travesty" because of its Americanisation.
    • Christopher Robin Milne, the son of author A. A. Milne, also refused to accept royalties from Disney until the last years of his life, for the sake of his daughter.
    • However, the author's widow, Daphne Milne, reportedly liked the film, as did Christopher Robin's daughter.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Any and all film adaptations of Alan Moore's work, whether they've been made, are about to be made, or are topics of discussion for being made, will automatically fall under this trope.
    • V for Vendetta: Moore specifically requested that his name be removed from the production after Joel Silver (the film's producer) lied about Moore's enthusiasm for the shooting script. This, and the rather poor quality of previous adaptations of From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, prompted his decision to have his name removed from any further adaptations of works he has no ownership of, and his pseudo-royalties distributed amongst the relevant artists. Hence, he has received no money from the filmmakers behind V for Vendetta, Constantine (2005), or the Watchmen movie, and adaptations of Moore's works after Watchmen are credited to the co-creators (e.g., the adaptations of Watchmen and Batman: The Killing Joke were credited to Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland, respectively).
    • Moore's views on adaptations of his works are more nuanced than generally reported. While he doesn't necessarily hate the movies per se, Moore just believes his works are tailor-made to be comic books that do not hold up in transition.
    • Zack Snyder, director of the Watchmen film, once said that the best-case scenario of ever getting Moore to watch his adaptation was that there might come one odd day where Moore accidentally puts the DVD into his player and turns it off after a second. Moore replied to this by saying Snyder was giving the movie too much credit; "I'm never going to watch this fucking thing."
    • To date, there has only been one exception to this rule: an episode of the animated show Justice League ("For the Man Who Has Everything", based on the comic of the same name). Moore approved of them adapting his story beforehand and allowed his name to appear in the credits, and Dwayne McDuffie did confirm that Moore enjoyed it. He was also reportedly amused by Harry Partridge's parody short Saturday Morning Watchmen; contrary to popular belief, he is not actually on record as having enjoyed it or approved of it in any way (though Dave Gibbons did).
  • Marvel Comics did everything to distance themselves from Fantastic Four (2015) including not mentioning it on their official website. They listed all other movie adaptations made by other companies including the infamous Howard the Duck. It's really telling that Stan Lee, co-creator of the Fantastic Four, declined to make his obligatory cameo in the film, not out of health or scheduling issues, and instead appeared in Deadpool despite the latter being a relatively-recent character he didn't create. The Punisher #12 also had representations of the film's cast be violently killed in an explosion.
  • Stan Lee shared his thoughts on the Marvel films he disliked (though unlike Fantastic Four (2015), he did still cameo in them):note 
    "I would have liked the Hulk to be smaller in the first two movies, and I didn't like the way Doctor Doom was portrayed in Fantastic Four. Now with Daredevil, they just wrote the whole thing wrong. They made him too tragic. That's not the way I wrote him."
  • Chuck Jones came to loathe a lot of the later Looney Tunes cartoons made without the supervision of him or other members of Termite Terrace. He allegedly was so vocal about his qualms with the movie Space Jamnote  during its opening party that an executive had him forcibly led out of the premises.
  • Transformers series:
  • Daphne DuMaurier disliked Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of her short story The Birds (particularly for changing the setting to America). In fairness, Hitchcock had told the screenwriter to mostly ignore the short story, as all he wanted to use was the title and the core premise of birds attacking people. She similarly didn't like Hitchcock's first adaptation of one of her works, Jamaica Inn, because the film took huge liberties with the story. But since it was a Contractual Obligation Project for Hitchcock before he left England for Hollywood, Hitchcock disowned it as well.
  • Michael Ende requested that the movie adaptation of The Neverending Story be killed before release or, failing that, not be associated with his name in any way. They did neither.
  • Given that adaptations of Stephen King's novels tend to be hit-or-miss, it's no surprise that there are a few that he isn't proud of. Some of the ones he did dislike, however, may be surprising:
    • While he didn't hate the movie The Lawnmower Man, he did sue to get his name off of it because it was largely an In Name Only adaptation. Amazingly enough, King's suit actually succeeded since the judge agreed with him over how the film was such an incredibly loose adaptation of his short story.
    • He quite famously has a lot of problems with Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, to the point where he's said it's the only adaptation of his work that he remembers outright hating. He felt that, while the film has a lot of memorable imagery, it was far too emotionally cold and distant for his liking, and diverged too greatly from the novel (for example, ignoring the themes of the family's disintegration and the dangers of alcoholism). He was also opposed to the casting of Jack Nicholson, feeling that his performance made it too obvious from the start that Jack Torrance was unhinged, and felt that the film's version of Wendy Torrance was "one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film", as Shelley Duvall was the complete opposite of how he wrote Wendy, both physically and mentally. Lastly, he disagreed with the decision not to film at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the inspiration for the book's setting.note  The changes irritated him enough that, in 1997, he produced and wrote a made for TV miniseries adaptation of the book. All of the above being said, King has warmed up to it over the years, even regarding it as an excellent horror film, just not a good adaptation.
    • He has dissociated himself from both remakes of Carrie, as well as The Rage: Carrie 2. Unlike The Shining, though, this isn't so much because he thinks they're a disgrace to his original novel, but rather, because he thinks they're a disgrace to Brian De Palma's film adaptation, which he finds to actually be a better work than his book.
    • Probably the adaptation King would most like to distance himself from is the 1984 version of Children of the Corn. He had written a script, but the producers instead chose one that turned the story into a more conventional horror film. He was very upset that they misled him long enough to keep him from being able to sue to make them not put "Stephen King's ..." over the title in the ads.
    • The only film King likes less than Children of the Corn is the film adaptation of Maximum Overdrive, which he directed himself. He admitted to making the film while in the middle of a nasty cocaine habit, and has gone on record as calling it a "moron movie."
    • While he liked the creative team behind the film adaptation of The Dark Tower, as well as some of the casting decisions, he strongly disagreed with the studio's decision to gun for a PG-13 rating, blaming it for the film's failure both with critics and at the box office.
    • While King actually liked The Running Man he wanted his name taken off the credits. This is because the movie is barely anything like the book he wrote.
  • Roald Dahl:
    • Dahl was so angry with Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory — he wrote the original script for it and received sole onscreen credit, but it was heavily rewritten by Bob Kaufman and David Seltzer; also, he wanted Spike Milligan to play Willy Wonka and was disregarded — that he left it in his will that the source novel's sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator could never be made into a movie. Subsequent adaptations, such as the 2005 Tim Burton film, notably have no sequel hook and end on notes of complete closure. Moreover, Dahl's disowning of this film was behind him not granting film rights to any of his other children's books until the late 1980s; films of Danny the Champion of the World and The BFG arrived in 1989 — and then the Rule of Three set in the next year with...
    • The Witches (1990), the last Dahl adaptation released in his lifetime. The only thing he was pleased with was the casting and performance of Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch. He was particularly upset over the Bittersweet Ending of the book being replaced with a Happily Ever After. The story goes that he stood outside cinemas with a megaphone telling people not to watch the film!note 
  • Elizabeth Knox cried for days after watching the film adaptation of The Vintner's Luck. In a bad way.
  • P.L. Travers hated the Disney film adaptation of her Mary Poppins books, which served as the subject of the 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks. In a rare 1977 interview, Travers would later state that she thought the film was well made and had a lot of positive aspects to it. However, she felt it was so different from her books that she wasn't happy with the final product. When she was first approached by Cameron Mackintosh to produce the stage musical, Travers stated that no one from the film production were to be involved with the making of the musical. This included any new songs by the Sherman Brothers, though she allowed some songs from the movie, cut or not, into the show.
  • J. D. Salinger's short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut was adapted to a film called My Foolish Heart in 1949. The film had little resemblance to the original, and Salinger hated it so much, that he never again allowed his work to be filmed even after his death.
  • As aforementioned on the page quote, Clive Barker disowned Hellraiser: Revelations.
  • Graham Dury underwent a full-fledged Creator Breakdown after the release of the widely loathed Fat Slags movie, which he called "crap from start to end."
  • The people at The Topps Company (who own the Garbage Pail Kids franchise) were so embarrassed by The Garbage Pail Kids Movie that immediately after it was released, they refused to talk about it.
  • Stanisław Lem disliked both film versions of his science fiction novel Solaris, stating that they focus on the human characters too much, and miss the actual theme of his novel, which is the impossibility of comprehending a truly alien intelligence.
  • Ayn Rand hated the 1949 movie version of The Fountainhead, even though the screenplay was written by her and barely altered. She refused to let any of her other novels be filmed unless they let her pick the director and edit the film herself.
  • Jerry Lewis was supportive of Eddie Murphy's 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor until he saw how much Toilet Humor there was. However, he would change his mind about it by 2009.
  • Peter Chung, the creator of Æon Flux, has spoken at length about his extreme unhappiness with the live-action film version.
  • Alan Martin, the original writer of the Tank Girl comics, was so unhappy with the film version that he wrote "Tank Girl is dead" in the introduction to the Tank Girl 3 trade paperback, and didn't write the character again for around ten years. He was quoted as saying, "Most adaptations are like breaking into a bank vault from a sewer. This was like doing it the other way around."
  • Gerry Anderson, the creator of Thunderbirds, went on record as saying that Team America: World Police was closer to the spirit of the show than the 2004 film adaptation. Given that he wasn't particularly fond of Team America (mainly due to its raunchy humor, which meant that he couldn't watch it with his grandkids), that's saying something.
  • Joss Whedon wasn't thrilled about the possible reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, likening it to a Franchise Zombie.
  • The cast members of the original Mission: Impossible television series despised the movie starring Tom Cruise for how it turned Jim Phelps into a treacherous villain. Peter Graves was even offered the chance to reprise the role, but he turned it down in disgust. In addition, Martin Landau (Rollin Hand) and Greg Morris (Barney Collier) were also quite critical about the movie, with Morris actually storming out of the movie premiere in anger before the film actually ended.
  • Robert Conrad, who played Jim West on the television series The Wild Wild West, was very vocal in his disdain of its 1999 film adaptation Wild Wild West, personally accepting the Razzies it "won".
  • Despite being credited for coming up with the original story, Quentin Tarantino claims that the finalized script used for Natural Born Killers is such a huge departure from his original version, that the only thing in common between them are the names of the main characters (Mickey and Mallory).
  • Anne Rice could never decide whether she liked the film adaptations of her The Vampire Chronicles books or not. At first, she was very much against the choice of Tom Cruise for the role of Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, but later changed her mind and endorsed the film. She admitted that she loved Cruise's performance from the first moment he was on screen, but noted "that Tom did make Lestat work was something I could not see in a crystal ball". The much looser adaptation of Queen of the Damned resulted in Rice, at first, being against it. Then, after meeting the star Stuart Townsend, she mellowed down and gave her support. Two years later, she would change her mind again. On her Facebook page, Rice would claim that the film is a "mutilation" of her work.
  • When Paddy Chayefsky adapted his novel Altered States for the screen, he got into disputes with directors Arthur Penn (who eventually quit) and Ken Russell, and threatened to sue if one word of his script was changed. Even that clause didn't stop him from being disappointed in the final product (which is why the screenplay is credited to Sidney Aaron).
  • Akira Toriyama was not pleased with Dragonball Evolution, as it was bordering on an In Name Only adaptation. His comments at the time of the film's release can be read as polite disappointment, asking fans to view it as a "separate dimension" of the franchise, but by the time of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (which he was spurred to work on in part because of his dissatisfaction with Evolution), he was much more openly negative. The movie was further disowned when Ben Ramsey, the movie's own screenwriter, expressed his disdain for the finished script in this video. Ramsey, intending to stay fairly faithful to the series while also having Dragonball Evolution do its own thing, had much of his original ideas nixed and executive meddled away by the producers.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender co-creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko seem to share their fanbase's distaste for M. Night Shyamalan's live-action adaptation The Last Airbender, having said in interviews that it distorted their vision of Avatar and have even advised people, including members of the original cast, not to watch it.
  • Gene Roddenberry was not a fan of many of the Star Trek films which followed The Motion Picture, after which the franchise was taken away from him and put in the hands of Harve Bennett (even going as far as publicly disowning The Final Frontier). His original idea for the second Star Trek film, in which Kirk and Spock would go back in time to stop the Klingons from meddling with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was widely disliked by everyone else involved with the franchise. Many people believe that the films saw a marked improvement beginning with the first non-Roddenberry film, The Wrath of Khan.
  • Nigel Kneale was very unhappy with the Hammer Horror film adaptations of his first two Quatermass serials, in particular due to the casting of the American Brian Donleavy as Quatermass and to the replacement of the "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight climax of the first serial with the military just blowing the monster up. He was much happier with the film version of Quatermass and the Pit, which recast Quatermass, was a very intelligent Compressed Adaptation of the series, and came up with the brilliant idea of having the "Pit" be a London Underground station instead of an ordinary building site.
  • Michael Oher, the subject of the Michael Lewis book The Blind Side, is not a fan of the film adaptation due to a large number of inaccuracies and the attention he received when the film was released. He even asked reporters not to ask questions about the film during Super Bowl XLVII's media day.
  • The real Dr. Hunter Adams was dissatisfied with Patch Adams, saying that it is more commercial and focuses more on him being funny than his actual methods.note . He was also annoyed that Robin Williams did not bother to donate any of his $21 million salary to his institute, although he did not dislike Williams as a whole and applauded his support for St. Jude Children's Hospital. In fact, the two were otherwise pretty good friends, so much so Adams would later write for Time Magazine a heartwarming farewell to Williams after his death in 2014.
  • Ira Gershwin and his wife Leonore disliked the 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess, to the point that it has been out of circulation because of this.
    Michael Strunsky: trustee of Ira Gershwin's estate: "[Leonore] didn't want it distributed. She and [Ira] felt it was a Hollywoodization of the piece. We [the estate] now acquire any prints we find and destroy them. We are often approached for permission to show the film, which we consistently deny."
  • Max Brooks disowned the film adaptation of World War Z as it was about to be released, not happy with the changes made to his book. However, he did say that he enjoyed it as an original work, and noted that, since it diverged so heavily from the book beyond the basic premise, he didn't think that the filmmakers butchered the story he wrote. He even stated that Jurgen Warmbrunn, the only character who made the transition from the book to the movie, was "pretty spot on" from how he imagined him.
  • Lois Duncan, in an interview included with reprints of her novel I Know What You Did Last Summer, stated that she felt the film adaptation to be a mockery of the book, to the point where, when she started watching it, she thought she'd wandered into the wrong theater at first. That's before getting into the Reality Subtext — her daughter Kaitlyn Arquette had been murdered as a teenager, so seeing the fairly bloodless suspense story she wrote turned into a teen Slasher Movie hit especially close to home, causing her to remark that the film was "trivializing violence and making murder seem like a game." She did, however, admittedly appreciate how the film produced more interest in her work and, in particular, her daughter's murder (which was, and still is, an unsolved case that she spent much of her later years trying to get reopened), and said that, while she strongly disagreed with how the film handled her story, the studio had every right to do it.
  • Dr. Seuss' widow, Audrey Geisel, was so disgusted by the 2003 film adaptation of Cat in the Hat starring Mike Myers that she forbade any live-action adaptations of her husband's works to be made again for the rest of her life.
  • While Stephenie Meyer generally gave approval of the film adaptation of her series, she expressed disapproval at quite a few changes in Eclipse, most notably the scene where Edward yells at Jacob for forcibly kissing Bella (she initially said it made Edward not be the bigger man, then later said it was because Edward angrily grabbing Jacob's arm should have ripped it off, if it were canon). This possibly explains why she was given much more creative control over the final two movies.
  • Perhaps the most extreme example is Boris Vian's reaction to the film adaptation of his novel, I Will Spit on Your Graves (not to be confused with I Spit on Your Grave). Vian denounced the adaptation while it was in production. He attended the premiere, but started complaining about the film a few minutes into the screening. Then he collapsed with a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital.
  • Alien co-creator Ronald Shusett has criticized Prometheus for being the complete antithesis of the first movie. He's not too happy with the third and fourth films either.
  • Paul Verhoeven, who directed the original Total Recall has expressed pleasure at the disappointing returns of its remake. It doesn't help that the cast and crew of the remake referred to the original as kitsch.
  • Clive Cussler hated the film adaptation of Raise the Titanic! so much that 25 years passed before he allowed another of his novels, Sahara, to be adapted. He hated that one even more and advised fans to boycott it.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • John Byrne said that if he had been invited to cameo in X-Men: Days of Future Past, inspired by an arc of the comics he pencilled, he would feel "a lot like the prom scene in Carrie", stating that he really hates what the movies have done with the X-Men.
    • While he doesn't hate X2: X-Men United, the years since its original release has seen Chris Claremont view it as a poor adaptation of God Loves, Man Kills because of the changes it made.
    • Unsurprisingly, Rob Liefeld hated what X-Men Origins: Wolverine did to Deadpool, going as far as to write a letter asking the film to be reshot with Deadpool sporting a mask. According to Liefeld, Jim Lee was also unhappy with how the film did Gambit, one of Lee's creations.
    • Bob McLeod, who co-created the New Mutants comic, gave the film a savage review, despising the casting of a white Brazilian as Sunspot (an Afro-Brazilian character), hating how the other characters were adapted as well, and the final insult being how the credits spelled his name as "Bob Macleod".
  • Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the authors of the Left Behind series, hated the adaptations by Cloud Ten Pictures, calling them "church basement movies" and going so far as to sue the studio (and win) over it. This is a big part of the reason why the films were later remade.
  • Roger Waters isn't a terribly big fan of the film adaptation of The Wall, likely because he didn't get to play the lead role like he had wanted (the Troubled Production probably also helps). That didn't stop him from doing a hilarious DVD Commentary track with Gerald Scarfe, though.
  • Jean M. Auel hated the film version of Clan of the Cave Bear so much that she sued the filmmakers and bought back the movie rights.
  • Frank Miller said that he hates all of the Batman movies. Though very little from The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One have found their way into the theatrical versions.
  • Ken Kesey claimed to have never seen the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but was involved in the early scripting stages, eventually pulling out due to creative differences, reportedly unhappy with the casting, as well as changing the viewpoint from Chief Bromden to Randle P. McMurphy. Chuck Palahniuk, in a foreword to a 2007 edition of the book stated, "The first time I heard this story, it was through the movie starring Jack Nicholson. A movie that Kesey once told me he disliked".
  • Dorothy L. Sayers is said to have so disliked the film of Busman's Honeymoon she destroyed every copy she could.
  • Tom Clancy took issue with several adaptations of his novels:
    • He was very unhappy with the numerous changes the film version of Patriot Games made from the original novel. He also felt that the 49-year-old Harrison Ford was too old to play the 31-year-old Jack Ryan.
    • He was very critical of the film adaptation of Clear and Present Danger. Most notably, he disliked the ending. In the movie, Ryan blows the lid off the covert operation in Colombia by publicly testifying before Congress. In the book, the men responsible for the operation are quietly dealt with behind the scenes. Tom Clancy feels that Jack Ryan would never take a course of action that would result in the United States being damaged by a major scandal.
    • On the commentary track for The Sum of All Fears, his very first words after introducing himself are "I wrote the book they ignored." Things get even more contentious between him and the film's director as the movie progresses.
  • In the documentary Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp to Pop!, it is mentioned that several staff members at Marvel were very disappointed with the 1990 Captain America movie, and felt that the 2011 film was a massive improvement.
  • When creating Ashley Kafka for The Amazing Spider-Man (1963), J.M. DeMatteis based and named her after a friend of his, Frayda Kafka. The real life Kafka wasn't happy with the character being Gender Flipped and made into a villain for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, nor for that matter, is she happy with Dan Slott killing her off.
  • Gore Vidal disowned The Film of the Book Myra Breckinridge and blamed it for a drop in sales of the book that lasted a decade.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • J. R. R. Tolkien did not hesitate to reject the very first proposal to make The Lord of the Rings into a live-action movie in 1958. His comments on the alterations made in the proposed scripts are one long "The Reason You Suck" Speech, ending with this gem:
      The Lord of the Rings cannot be garbled like that!
    • Tolkien expressed displeasure at the only adaptation of The Lord of the Rings to be produced in his lifetime — the 1955-56 BBC Radio Drama. His critiques generally boiled down to his belief that the books were unadaptable and that the cast and crew of the production were not taking their source material sufficiently seriously. Unfortunately, modern-day audiences aren't able to form an opinion on the matter either way, as the tapes were wiped and all episodes are considered lost.
    • Tolkien's third son Christopher disliked the way New Line Cinema handled the film adaptations of LOTR, describing them in a 2012 interview as "action movies for 15 to 25 year olds". On the other hand, Christopher's son Simon (Tolkien's grandson) had nothing but positive things to say about the films, which unfortunately caused a rift between him and his father until their reconciliation in 2012.
  • Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald walked out of a screening of the now-lost 1926 silent film adaptation of The Great Gatsby (the only one released during their lifetimes), which emphasized the party scenes and their scandalous elements. Zelda wrote in a letter to her daughter Scottie that it was "ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left" (all-caps hers).
  • Robin Hardy, director of the original version of The Wicker Man, disliked the 2006 remake. More subtley, Christopher Lee was also quite surprised about it and thought of it as a different film altogether rather than a remake. Hardy went so far as to make The Wicker Tree, a thematic sequel to the original film, nearly forty years after the fact simply out of spite for the remake, and cast Lee in a minor part for good measure. While The Wicker Tree was a critical and commercial bomb, all that mattered to Hardy was that it got a better reception than the remake.
  • Both Superman: Birthright writer Mark Waid and All-Star Superman writer Grant Morrison didn't like Superman killing General Zod at the end of Man of Steel. Waid was also unhappy with the amount of collateral damage in the film though he didn't mind Jonathan Kent telling Clark that maybe he shouldn't save people at the expense of his alien identity.
  • Eric Red, the screenwriter of the original The Hitcher, both requested a writing credit on the 2007 remake (because it was so similar to his original) and disowned it (because he thought its few changes were for the worse).
  • While Rick Riordan hasn't seen the final versions of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians films, he did read the early scripts for the Lightning Thief movie and emailed the producers critiquing the scripts and warning them the movie could fail with its constant deviations from the source material. Later, when he was informed on Twitter that a teacher was planning to show the movies to her class, he posted a form letter on his blog that students could give their teachers, telling them the movies were awful and a waste of good classroom time, concluding by stating: "The kids don’t need classroom time to learn that movies can be really, really bad. They'll find that out on their own!" It says something that he's getting more directly involved with the Disney+ adaptation and making it Truer to the Text.
  • Jacqueline Susann was disgusted with the film adaptation of Valley of the Dolls, saying, "The first time I saw it was on a press junket. There was supposed to be a party after the film. I went back to my cabin, took two Seconals and a slug of Scotch....It was a very embarrassing thing." Likewise, one of its stars, Patty Duke, commented, "I need an air-sick bag to sit through that movie."
  • Scott Spencer hated both film adaptations of Endless Love. For clarity's sake, the novel is about a Stalker with a Crush, and the extremes he goes to in order to be with the object of his obsession. Both films went for a straightforward romance:
    • He called the 1981 version a "botched" job and wrote that Franco Zeffirelli "egregiously and ridiculously misunderstood" the novel.
    "I was frankly surprised that something so tepid and conventional could have been fashioned from my slightly unhinged novel about the glorious destructive violence of erotic obsession."
    • He thought that the 2014 version was even worse. He said about the script:
    "It's about one hundred pages, and the only ones that were not dreary were sciatica inducing."
  • None of The Beatles approved of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr attended the premier and subsequently shunned the film, while John Lennon and George Harrison refused to view it altogether for the rest of their lives.
  • Donn Pearce disliked Cool Hand Luke. In a 1989 interview with The Miami Herald, he said, "I seem to be the only guy in the United States who doesn't like the movie. Everyone had a whack at it. They screwed it up 99 different ways." For one thing, Pearce thought Paul Newman was "too scrawny" and completely wrong for the part.
  • Martin Charnin, lyricist and director of Annie, stated in an article in 1996 that he refuses to acknowledge the film. However, unlike other instances of this, Charnin goes on to state that it's his own fault that the movie turned out the way it did, as, in his own words, he, composer Charles Strouse, and librettist Thomas Meehan, failed to secure any degree of creative control over the film when they signed away the film rights.
  • Author Peter George, who wrote Red Alert, detested the conversion of his book to a satire in Dr. Strangelove, but wrote a tie-in novelization of the film anyway.
  • Rocky Horror creator Richard O'Brien said that The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again was "misconceived and badly cast".
  • Tennessee Williams:
    • Williams was was quite dissatisfied with the film adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, largely for omitting the themes about homosexuality and revising the play's third act with a long scene centered on Brick and Big Daddy.
    • Williams hated the adaptation of Suddenly, Last Summer, denying he had any part in writing the script despite having screen credit. He thought Elizabeth Taylor was miscast as Catherine, that the film went too far afield from his original play and "made [him] throw up".
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Although Shigeru Miyamoto is fond of it, the live-action Super Mario Bros. (1993) film was this to Nintendo as a whole, due to being a box office failure. As a result, Nintendo refused to sign off on any theatrical adaptations of their video games for 23 years (other than Pokémon, the film rights to which are held by The Pokémon Company). It also soured their relationship with Disney, the film's distributor, enough that they took their theme park rights to Universal instead; they followed that up by partnering with Universal subsidiary Illumination Entertainment to create The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
  • Michael Moorcock hated The Last Days of Man on Earth, the one and only adaptation of his Jerry Cornelius stories, but he did admit to having a good time interacting with Jon Finch and the rest of the cast.
  • In a rare case of a Disowned Spiritual Adaptation, the French horror film High Tension has been noted as having many similarities to the Dean Koontz novel Intensity, to the point where some have accused writer/director Alexandre Aja (who admitted to having read the book) of plagiarism. Koontz stated that he believes that there was plagiarism involved and that he could have successfully sued for it, but ultimately, he decided not to because he hated High Tension so much that he didn't want it associated with his book, even if it meant getting royalties. To quote his newsletter:
    "In the past, Dean has been aggressive about plagiarism and has succeeded in every action he has taken against every plagiarist. In this case, a win appeared inevitable, but he decided to ignore the offense because he found the film so puerile, so disgusting, and so intellectually bankrupt that he didn’t want the association with it that would inevitably come if he pursued an action against the filmmaker. Maybe the lesson is that if you’re going to steal from Dean’s work, you better make your version as disgusting and misanthropic, as full of loathing for humanity, as you can; then you might get away with it!"
  • Death Wish:
  • Star Wars:
    • George Lucas allegedly said of the much reviled The Star Wars Holiday Special, "If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that special and smash it." So he's probably still not too happy about that one.
    • To a much lesser degree is the sequel trilogy, which Lucas enjoyed but found very flawed. According to Bob Iger, his main criticism of the movies produced after he sold his company to Disney was that they looked good but weren't really doing anything new.
    • It's not outright disowned, but Lucas is known for having a fairly neutral opinion of Star Wars Legends, choosing to treat it as an Alternate Continuity to his own films (which it ended up becoming). That said, a few elements did make their way over, such as Aayla Secura appearing in Attack of the Clones, and his own pitch for the sequel trilogy featured Darth Talon as The Dragon to Darth Maul's Big Bad. He has also been very consistent in his approval for it doing stories he himself wouldn't be able to do and has on many occasions made clear that while it isn't his, it is still valid Star Wars.
    • Marcia Lucas, the editor of A New Hope, criticized the sequel trilogy and called out both J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy for not understanding the series (she especially took issue with killing Han Solo). She also previously expressed dislike for The Phantom Menace; reportedly breaking down in tears during her first viewing of the film.
    • Alan Dean Foster, who wrote the novelizations for A New Hope and The Force Awakens, as well as many books in the Star Wars Legends continuity, denounced The Last Jedi as a betrayal of the franchise's principles, even offering to do a page one rewrite of the film.
  • Exorcist II: The Heretic holds a reputation as one of the worst horror sequels ever made, an opinion that is shared by, among (many, many) others, William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin, the respective writer and director of The Exorcist (Blatty having written both the original novel and the screenplay for the movie). Blatty said that he was the first person in his theater to start laughing at the film, while Friedkin compared it to witnessing a traffic accident and recounted a story of Warner Bros. executives being chased from the theater by angry moviegoers within ten minutes. Blatty, in fact, went so far as to write Legion, an official sequel to The Exorcist, specifically because of what a disservice to his work he felt had been done by The Heretic, despite having never originally intended to write a sequel. Legion would later be adapted as The Exorcist III, which took only the first film as canon and which Blatty personally wrote and directed.
  • Astrid Lindgren was dissatisfied with how the 1949 film adaptation of the Pippi Longstocking novels turned out due to the casting of Viveca Serlachius, then 26 years old, to play the titular character and the liberties taken with the source material. So much so, that Lindgren would personally write the scripts for later adaptations of her works starting with the 1957 film adaptation of Bill Bergson Lives Dangerously, the final novel in the Bill Bergson series, with few exceptions.
  • Christian Nyby, the director of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, hated John Carpenter's 1982 remake, titled simply The Thing. He said that audiences who wanted blood (the film being much Bloodier and Gorier than the original) were better served going to a slaughterhouse, and that all it was good for was serving as an ad for J&B Scotch. Kenneth Tobey, the lead actor from The Thing from Another World, also criticized the 1982 film, saying that the gory special effects overshadowed everything else and "were so explicit that they actually destroyed how you were supposed to feel about the characters".
  • John Carpenter wasn't too pleased with Rob Zombie's 2007 remake of Halloween (1978). While he did give Zombie his blessing to do his own take on the story, he later admitted that he felt it took away from the mystique of the original by explaining Michael's origins, and that Michael was too big.
  • Susan Cooper hates the In Name Only adaptation of The Dark is Rising, and is not shy about saying so. At least she can take solace in the fact that it was a critical and commercial flop, and for over a decade held the distinction of having the second-weakest debut of any movie ever.
  • Horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes found The Monster Club, an adaptation of several of his short stories, to be a disappointment. In particular, he felt that John Carradine was too old to play the film's fictional incarnation of Chetwynd-Hayes.
  • Harold Robbins, after sleeping through a rough cut of The Lonely Lady, declared to his assistant/future wife Jann Stapp "The movie will be a bummer, everyone will lose money. Except me. I got six hundred thousand dollars before it opened."
  • Don Mancini, the creator of the Child's Play franchise, was not pleased with the announcement of its 2019 reboot, not least because he was still making Child's Play films himself and was working on a TV adaptation at the time. While noting that the studio had the legal right to do as they pleased with the remake, he turned down an executive producer credit, feeling that he was being patronized and that the studio was reaching out to him simply to get his stamp of approval. Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly, who voiced the killer doll Villain Protagonists Chucky and Tiffany in the older films, also expressed their disapproval with the remake.
  • David Morrell, the author of First Blood, was always fairly pleased with its film adaptation and the resulting Rambo film franchise, even with the many changes it made (particularly John Rambo's Adaptational Heroism; Morrell originally wrote him as a murderous villain). He was not nearly so cordial about the fifth film, Rambo: Last Blood, saying that he was "embarrassed to have [his] name associated with it" and that he felt "degraded and dehumanized" as he left the theater. He had originally been working with Sylvester Stallone on the script, but Stallone wound up using only the most basic outline of his ideas in the finished product, and he found the resulting film to be soulless and poorly made on top of it. The only part he liked was the first two minutes.
  • The only acknowledgement Bethesda has ever given the Direct to Video Doom film Doom: Annihilation was a tweet on the official Doom Twitter account simply stating "We're not involved with the movie".
  • The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski was quite disappointed by the Polish film and TV adaptations of his most famous work, calling the film "an obscenity, albeit a short one".
  • James Cameron has described the Terminator sequels that he had no involvement with as "bad dreams" in light of him working on Terminator: Dark Fate:
  • Ed Boon and John Tobias both regard the second Mortal Kombat film, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, to be the low point of the franchise. A contrast to the first movie, which is generally regarded to be one of the few decent film adaptations of a video game, if not the best.
  • Peter Laird, when asked for his opinion on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, didn't rank the 2014 reboot due to not matching his vision for the characters. The list of films he liked from best to least also respectively lists the third and second movies below Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) (his first place film) and the Imagi film (his second place film).
    "I don't think I can include the two recent Michael Bay-produced films in this comparison because I don't see the characters in them as representing what the TMNT should be. They're more like mini-Hulks with bandanas. — PL"
  • Ridley Scott, the brother of the late Tony Scott who directed Top Gun, was reportedly not pleased with Top Gun: Maverick, citing that the first movie was more "original" compared to the sequel.
  • A tweet from Fangoria asked fans which movie in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series was their least favorite. Wes Craven, the creator of the series, simply replied with "the remake".
  • George MacDonald Fraser's daughter said in 1981 that she was with him when he saw the film version of Royal Flash and he was so embarrassed by it that he had his head in his hands.
  • Godzilla (1998) was disowned heavily by Toho; to the degree that not only did they choose to get directly involved with the next US remake, but Godzilla: Final Wars includes a scene where the 1998 version (credited as "Zilla") is unceremoniously killed off by the original in a Curb-Stomp Battle in Sydney. Both Haruo Nakajima and Kenpachiro Satsuma (former suit actors for Godzilla) also expressed dislike for the 1998 film in interviews.
  • Dario Argento hated the 2018 remake of Suspiria.
    "It was all wrong. The music was disgusting. There was no pathos. I didn't like it."
  • G-Saviour was subject to this by Sunrise, with the official line from the studio being that they "don't like to talk about G-Saviour" and Nozomi Entertainment confirming Sunrise has no plans to re-release the film. When Sunrise formally announced Legendary Pictures was going to be working on a live-action Gundam film, assurances were immediately made it would not resemble G-Saviour or else it wouldn't be released.
  • Bret Easton Ellis disowned American Psycho 2: All American Girl, a Dolled-Up Installment that followed up on a film that was never written with a sequel in mind, comparing it to the later Pink Panther films.
  • Richard Matheson:
  • Annette Curtis Klause wasn't much happier with the 2007 film adaptation of Blood and Chocolate (1997) than the fans. She wasn't hugely scathing and expressed hope it could work on its own merits, but made it clear in a 2006 interview that she wasn't keen on the many changes made to the story and sympathized with disappointed fans. She particularly disliked that the film changed the story's setting and character ages, feeling that it "kind of negates the whole point of the plot—werewolves could be sitting right next to you in your high school homeroom". Klause had little involvement in the film's production and wasn't kept in the loop by filmmakers, relying on the internet for updates.
  • Jean M. Auel regards the film adaptation of The Clan of the Cave Bear as "terrible", especially because she wasn’t able to have any input into the making of it despite being promised she could. It was bad enough that she refused to sell the movie rights to the Earth's Children series again in her lifetime (she did relent with a TV adaptation, though that didn't go forward).
  • House of Gucci: Patricia Gucci (Maurizio's second cousin) told the Associated Press, in the name of the family, that they were "truly disappointed" by the project. "They are stealing the identity of a family to make a profit, to increase the income of the Hollywood system." She added: "Our family has an identity, privacy. We can talk about everything, but there is a borderline that cannot be crossed". According to Gucci, the three central concerns of the family are the lack of contact with Ridley Scott, the alleged inaccuracies in the book on which the film is based, and the casting of high-profile actors to play people who weren't connected with the murder. She also said that the Gucci family will decide what their next course of action will be after watching the completed film.
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber was not happy with the film adaptation of Cats, feeling that it completely missed the elements that made the original play a classic (with the studio also ignoring his pleas):
    "Cats was off-the-scale all wrong. There wasn't really any understanding of why the music ticked at all. I saw it and I just thought, 'Oh, God, no.'"
  • While Barbra Streisand—who starred in the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born (1937)—initially paid lipservice to the 2018 version, she has since revealed that she doesn't like it. When it was first proposed, Beyoncé and Will Smith were supposed to star in it and Streisand loved the idea of giving the classic film an R&B/hip-hop update. But the film languished in Development Hell for years and by the time it finally saw production, it starred Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga as country singers, which Streisand criticized for not being that much different from her version.
  • George Mihalka, director of My Bloody Valentine, was asked about the remake in an interview on the Scream Factory Blu-ray release. He politely said that he felt honored that his film was deemed worthy of a remake, and politely made it just as clear that he thought little of the remake otherwise.
    How may movies have been made since The '80s? Hundreds of thousands. How many movies have been remade? Hundreds. I look at it as an honor. That's about as far as I'd like to go on that.
  • For Eiffel, Gustave Eiffel's great-great-grandson Philippe ­Coupérie-Eiffel (who's sort of a keeper of the memory of his ancestor with books and conferences) was furious about the film. He didn't like the amount of of liberties taken with history and sent a letter to the producers about this, asking them to add a "Romanticized Fiction" mention in the opening credits.
  • Jim Cummings, who has been the voice actor of Disney's Winnie the Pooh and Tigger since 1988 and 1989, respectively, has stated in an interview that he finds the horror parody, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, to be "disgusting", and makes it abundantly clear that anyone who decides to put his voice in the film will be in big trouble.
  • Kurt Weill was able to secure creative control over the musical score of the movie version of One Touch of Venus, after having been uninvolved and disappointed with movie adaptations of Knickerbocker Holiday and Lady in the Dark. Unfortunately it promptly entered Development Hell, and it finally went into production as a mostly non-musical romance. The scoring for this version would mainly consist of background music, and Weill decided to leave the composition of this to his assistant Ann Ronell.
  • Archie Comics was less than thrilled with the amount of raunchy humor in Josie and the Pussycats (2001), and even posted a letter on their website that both politely complained about it and tried to reassure families who might want to take their kids to see it. On home video, Universal released the film in two versions: the PG-13-rated theatrical cut and a more family-friendly PG-rated cut that removed most of the profanity and innuendos, including the "pussy" Double Entendres.
  • Arthur Miller was vocal about his dislike of the 1951 film adaptation of Death of a Salesman, stating that director László Benedek "[chopped] off almost every climax of the play as though with a lawnmower" and mischaracterized Willy Loman as unhinged and unsympathetic.
  • H. G. Wells disliked Island of Lost Souls, which was an adaptation of his novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, feeling that the film's emphasis on horror overshadowed the novel's philosophical themes.
  • E. L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey and producer on the film adaptations, hinted in a 2023 interview with Bustle that she wasn't too happy with how the first Fifty Shades movie turned out and had only watched it once since it came out. She didn't go into too much detail on what she disliked, stating that she didn't want to "muddy that water" for fans of her books who enjoyed the movie, but that she herself wasn't keen. When asked what she would do differently if a film adaptation of The Mister was made, she said she would "make sure the director was sympathetic to the material", implying that her Creative Differences with Sam Taylor-Johnson were part of the issue.
  • Lifeforce (1985): After its release, Colin Wilson recalled that author John Fowles regarded the film adaptation of Fowles' own novel The Magus as the worst film adaptation of a novel ever. Wilson told Fowles there was now a worse one, the film adaptation of The Space Vampires.
  • John Brosnan didn't care for the film adaptation of Carnosaur and especially disliked the portrayal of the dinosaurs (which were heavily subject to Special Effect Failure), including comparing it unfavorably with the other dinosaur movie that came out in 1993, but he did credit the movie with bringing more attention to his novel and he enjoyed parts of it in a So Bad, It's Good way.
    Brosnan: I've since seen it on video and yes, it is crap and, compared to the film of Jurassic Park the dinosaurs are laughable, but it's interesting crap. And thanks to the movie the novel has been reprinted both in the States and here in the U.K. And in fact we are having a re-launch party for the book at my drinking club this very night. The video will also be screened and I will no doubt take the lead in shouting abuse at the screen.
  • Home Alone:
    • Daniel Stern played Marv in the first two movies. He was approached to reprise his role in Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House. He refused, and French Stewart was cast in his stead. Stern was later quoted as saying Taking Back the House was "An insult, total garbage."
    • Director Chris Columbus also worked on the first two moviesnote . When asked for his thoughts on Home Sweet Home Alone, Columbus expressed displeasure with Disney trying to recapture the success of the original films. In general, Columbus has been highly critical of the numerous reboots and remakes Hollywood has made.
  • Priscilla is a 2023 biopic based on Priscilla Presley's memoir Elvis and Me, about her tumultuos relationship with Elvis Presley. Elvis and Priscilla's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, expressed disapproval of the script and Sofia Coppola's vision for the film, feeling that the depiction of her father was overly-negative, "vengeful" and "contemptuous" despite her mother's approval. As Lisa Marie died in January 2023, nine months before Priscilla was released, it's unknown what she would've thought of the finished film itself.
  • Alex Proyas, director of The Crow, was always opposed to the idea of remaking it, feeling that it would've been disrespectful to the memory of Brandon Lee, who suffered an infamous case of Fatal Method Acting on set. Sure enough, when the first images from the remake were release, he joked that it looked like "Eric Draven [was] having a bad hair day."
  • Cormac McCarthy thought the adaptation of All the Pretty Horses by Billy Bob Thornton could have been better, but contrary to the people who worked on the film claiming that the original 4 hour-long cut was a masterpiece before Executive Meddling forced it to be cut down to two hours, he was doubtful that it would have made it any better, believing that Thornton trying to totally replicate the book was a pointless endeavor because books and films are different mediums, and so he should have picked out the story he wanted to tell from the text and put it up on the screen instead.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Kahoru Fukaya was very displeased by the live-action adaptation of Hagane no Onna. Specifically the depiction of teachers, handicapped children, and the children's guardians in the second episode of the second season of the live-action series (which diverged greatly from the original manga, to the point of becoming its own thing). Fukaya reportedly grew disilusioned with the series, and asked for her name to be taken off the credits as a result.
  • Madeleine L'Engle, who wrote A Wrinkle in Time was asked in an interview for a book called The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy whether the 2003 TV movie lived up to her expectations. She said "Oh yes. I expected it to be bad, and it was."
  • Challenger is a 1990 ABC made-for-television film depicting the events leading up to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The families of the astronauts all objected to the film's broadcast, as they had not been properly informed of its production or consulted beforehand. In particular, Jane Smith, wife of pilot Mike Smith, was deeply offended by the finale seemingly implying that he and the other astronauts died happily, claiming it trivialized and exploited the circumstances of her husband's death, while Lorna Onizuka said that the film made a mockery of her husband Ellison's life and the sacrifices he made for his country.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin loathed the Sci Fi Channel's Earthsea miniseries, purportedly based on her Earthsea novels. She particularly hated that they Race Lifted the brown Ged into a fairly generic white Action Hero. The producers essentially baited her into signing over the filming rights with false promises that she would have a great amount of control over the adaptation, only to gradually cut her completely out of the creative process and straight up ignore her repeated attempts to point her concerns over the script. She was especially angered by the TV creators' false claims that she approved of the adaptation. Calling one of the genre's staunchest feminists "Miss Le Guin" didn't help, either.
  • Rhianna Pratchett has discreetly but obviously disowned The Watch (2021) by BBC America, which is supposed to be based on a mixture of The Watch sequence of the Discworld series, before it's even come out, first, by linking Ursula K. Le Guin's letter against the Syfy adaptation of Earthsea on Twitter when the adaptation was trending, and then by pointedly correcting a promotion tweet from "adaptation of" to "inspired by". This is on the grounds of the considerable liberties it's taken with her father's work, liberties possible because while Pratchett senior was alive, he kept a firm grip on creative control of any of his adaptations through his production company, Narrativia, control that expired on his death.
  • James Gurney disavowed any connection to the Dinotopia miniseries and TV series because they were so far from the vision of his books.
  • Len Deighton disliked the ITV adaptation of his Game, Set and Match trilogy of spy novels so much that he continues to contractually veto any home video release of it, forcing anyone who actually liked it to Keep Circulating the Tapes.
  • Stargate writers Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (the former also being the director) have had less than kind things to say about Stargate SG-1, which is why they refused to get a "created by" credit for it, and at one point planned to make a direct sequel to the film that would have completely ignored the TV series just to spite it.
    • Ultimately subverted by Devlin in a 2020 interview with Gateworld as while he was uncomfortable with the nudity in the Pilot Episode (which understandably was a result of Executive Meddling, thus syndicated airings and the Re-Cut version remove said content), he came to believe that the passion of SG-1's fanbase reflected the fact that Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner had created a really good show, having reached out to Glassner for the first time.
  • British crime novelist Liza Cody absolutely hated the ITV adaptation of her private eye novels featuring Anna Lee. To the point that she gave up writing books with Anna as protagonist in favour of a new central character, Eva Wylie, who seemed consciously designed to appal TV executives.
  • When NBC took the first steps towards a TV version of Say Anything..., the movie's writer-director Cameron Crowe (who wasn't involved with the project) and star John Cusack took such umbrage that the Peacock pulled the plug before it went any further.
  • Colleen McCullough described the miniseries adaptation of The Thorn Birds as "instant vomit," flat-out refused to have anything to do with the prequel The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years, and generally hated it so much that interviewers were warned not to bring the miniseries up.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird has declared that Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation does not exist as far as he's concerned, and that goes double for the polarizing Venus de Milo. Kevin Eastman on the other hand likes Venus and hopes that she makes a comeback one day.
  • Fresh Off the Boat faced this from Eddie Huang, the writer of the memoir that it is based on. Shortly after the series premiere, Huang criticized the show for scrubbing out the darker aspects of his life and veering away from the actual events to be more of a traditional family sitcom. He even left his part as the narrator of the show early on. His feelings have since softened up — although he never returned to narrate it over the course of its run, he did come to praise it for being a positive portrayal of Asian-Americans.
  • Ian Rankin hated the TV adaptation of his Rebus novels so much, he actually refused to write any more until the production company's option on them expired.
  • Though he visited the set a few times, Charles Addams considered The Addams Family series a travesty. One must wonder how he would've felt about the film adaptations (which were closer to his original comics than the series) had he lived long enough to see them.
  • If this tweet is any indication, Stephen King was not satisfied with how the TV adaptation of Under the Dome turned out.
    "How about Netflix bringing back UNDER THE DOME, only starting from scratch and actually doing the book?"
  • Louis Tomlinson of One Direction was not amused by a scene in Euphoria in which Kat's "Larry Stylinson" Slash Fic of him and Harry Styles is visualized in an animated sequence, stating emphatically that he was not contacted about the scene nor did he give his approval for it beforehand.
  • Dr. Richard Hornberger, the author of the novel that became the basis for M*A*S*H, despised this series so much that when asked about its end in 1983, he said the only thing he would miss were the royalty checks.
  • When Charmed (1998) was rebooted in 2018, the decision was criticized by three of the original actresses. Holly Marie Combs said rebooting the show was disrespectful to the original cast and creative team, Rose McGowan said reboots in general are uncreative and has outright refused to watch it, and Alyssa Milano felt that the original cast should have been included or consulted in some manner. Ironically, the only OG actress to be unequivocally supportive of the reboot and its lead actresses is Shannen Doherty, who left the original show due to tensions with her co-stars. Charmed (1998) writer Curtis Kheel had THIS response to the Charmed (2018) Series Finale.
  • RuPaul's Drag Race: Once a Season the show holds "The Snatch Game," a Match Game parody challenge where the queens impersonate a celebrity and have to give their best improv performance. Most living celebrities love seeing themselves impersonated on the show even if the performance goes poorly. Not Patricia Quinn, best known for playing Magenta The Maid in Rocky Horror Picture Show. When Season 12 contestant and Rocky Horror aficionado Aiden Zhane impersonated her in the challenge and utterly bombed it, Quinn minced no words saying that she hated the performance, was insulted by Aiden calling her a senile drug addict, and she made it clear that she doesn't know Aiden despite the latter's claim that they had lunch together (most likely it was one fan event out of countless others).
  • Alan Moore disowned HBO's Watchmen Sequel Series from the get-go, as per usual with adaptations of his creations, being quoted as saying that he was "not thrilled" about the miniseries' existence. Damon Lindelof (the miniseries' creator) even said shortly before the premiere of Watchmen (2019) that he was absolutely certain Moore had placed a magical curse on him which could activate at any time. He wouldn't be the first, as Moore has claimed to have done the very same to DC Comics previously. Ironically, Dave Gibbons (the co-creator of Watchmen alongside Moore) was considerably more positive towards it, likely because of him being brought in as a consultant for the miniseries' production.
  • Ed Brubaker, who turned Bucky Barnes into the Winter Soldier, said he has "serious mixed feelings" about the character getting a starring role in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He has nothing but praise for Marvel Studios and Sebastian Stan, but the fact that he only gets minor recognition for his work and no financial compensation has gotten "harder and harder to live with". Likewise, Rick Remender, who first wrote Sam Wilson as Captain America, has posted on Instagram how his pride in that creation is difficult to summon due to resentment over lack of credit and financial compensation.
  • Artist David Aja has vocalized concerns about the lack of financial compensation for Hawkeye (2021) when the series takes many cues from his visual style that defined the comic book run it takes its inspiration from, specially given writer Matt Fraction was brought in as a consulting producer.
  • George R. R. Martin has expressed some dissatisfaction regarding the later seasons of Game of Thrones, the adaptation of his book series A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin was initially involved quite heavily with the show — he even wrote an episode of each of the first four seasons — but claimed that the showrunners began distancing themselves by season five (when it overtook the books), and pretty much ran the show themselves from seasons six to eight. The decoupling got to the point that Martin has confirmed that the plot of upcoming books will diverge significantly from the show, even though it was previously claimed that he gave some hints to the showrunners regarding how the series ends (although it's unknown what kind of hints he gave in the first place, and whether they were faithfully followed). However, Martin did serve as a co-creator for the prequel series House of the Dragon, suggesting that while he was disappointed by how GoT turned out, he did not completely disown it.
  • When Netflix released Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, it was soundly condemned by the family members of his victims and other Milwaukeeans connected to the murders, calling it needlessly sensationalist and forcing them to relive the horrific killing spree. Rita Isbell, sister of victim Errol Lindsey who became known for her emotional outburst during Dahmer's televised trial, said Netflix never even asked to use her likeness and that it was triggering to see her onscreen actress dressed exactly like her and repeating her words verbatim.
  • Bernard Hill, who played King Theoden in the original trilogy, is not a big fan of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and has labeled the show a “money-making venture” and does not intend to watch it. He holds a similar opinion about the The Hobbit too.
  • When asked about his thoughts regarding the live-action adaptation, the Cowboy Bebop anime's director Shinichiro Watanabe was reportedly unimpressed with the show, saying the scene he was shown for review was "very tough to watch" and stating of the show that "It was clearly not Cowboy Bebop and I realized at that point that if I wasn’t involved, it would not be Cowboy Bebop."
  • Pamela Anderson disapproved of Pam & Tommy, saying the story of her leaked Home Porn Movie "was painful enough the first time" and she was in disbelief that "people are still capitalizing off that thing”, while refusing to read a letter sent to her by Lily James, who played Pam in said show and wanted her blessing.
  • Sherwood Schwartz hated The Brady Bunch Hour, which was co-produced by Sid and Marty Krofft Productions instead. Ironically, Robert Reed (actor), who didn't get along with Schwartz, would say that this was the only The Brady Bunch project that he liked working on because it was the only one which didn't involve him.
  • Olivia de Havilland, one of the few people portrayed in the first season of Feud still alive when it premiered, refused to watch it as she objected to making a show about people who were no longer alive to offer their perspective. Once it aired, and she learned she'd been portrayed as selling out her co-stars, she attempted to sue FX (although the case was eventually dismissed).
  • Sebastián Marroquín, Pablo Escobar's son, is very critical of Narcos for glorifying drug lords as he explains that his father did a lot of worse things in real life than what's shown in the series. After the show's location scout was gunned down in a town in Mexico, he warned Netflix to be careful of their portrayal of real-life drug personalities.
  • In a deleted scene of Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith, Kevin Smith told a story about being briefly involved with a failed TV adaptation of his first movie Clerks. Despite having heard about the adaptation completely by accident, being unsettled by the concept of someone else being the "creator" of Clerks and irked by some changes to the setting and characters, as well as some casting choices, Smith still expressed interest in contributing to the show. He however ended up bolting when a story he pitched ended up relegated to a potential B-plot. His only impact on the final product, of which only a pilot was shot, was forcing showrunner Richard Day to rename Jay to Ray, since he owned the characters of Jay and Silent Bob (and Silent Bob was Adapted Out).

    Music 
  • Dennis Lyxzen of Refused wasn't happy when he heard rap-rock band Crazytown cover "New Noise". He said of it "History [will not] be kind on Crazytown and that feels good."
  • Igor Stravinsky did not care for the version of The Rite of Spring used in Fantasia; he had offered to compose a piece expressly for it, but the idea was rejected.
  • British folk singer Ewan MacColl hated each and every one of the many covers of his song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", even the version that had become a worldwide hit for Roberta Flack. His daughter-in-law recalled that he held a special disdain for Elvis Presley's cover: "He said that the Elvis version was like Romeo at the bottom of the Post Office Tower singing up to Juliet. And the other versions, he thought, were travesties: bludgeoning, histrionic, and lacking in grace."
  • According to Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, George Michael hated their cover of his 1987 hit "Faith" and "[hated] us for doing it."
  • Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails disliked a cover of "Terrible Lie" from early '90s Hair Metal band Trixter so much he almost called them to offer to pay them to not release it.
    • Trent also disliked Devo's cover of "Head Like A Hole", despite being a big fan of Devo themseves. In a 2005 issue of Rolling Stone he said:
    Imagine my thrill when they were covering "Head Like a Hole". That thrill lasted right up to hearing the second bar! But they're still awesome.
  • Don Henley hated a cover of "The End of the Innocence" by indie rock group Okkervil River so much that he filed a cease-and-desist injunction against the band, forcing them to remove it from their website, where they had been uploading covers of songs that had been important to their lead singer Will Sheff. Henley's issue was that Sheff had written an additional coda to the song and included it at the end of their cover. In a later interview, Henley made a rather blunt statement about covers of his songs, in light of both the Okkervil River controversy and Frank Ocean's sampling of "Hotel California" on one of his songs, which Henley had also blocked from release.
  • Richard Rodgers hated The Marcels' doo-wop version of "Blue Moon" so much, he took out press ads asking people not to buy it. You can imagine how well that worked. Or at least that's how the story goes: R&B historian Marv Goldberg did some research on that claim and found no such ads, but did find a 1982 Billboard interview where Rodgers' widow Dorothy claimed he loved their version (though this could very well be her attempt at saving her husband's face.)
  • Gloria Gaynor said that of all the covers of her classic disco hit "I Will Survive", the 1996 version by alt-rockers Cake is her least favorite, because the band altered a lyric to include a Precision F-Strike.
  • Similar to the "Blue Moon" story mentioned above, one biography of Irving Berlin claimed that he loathed Elvis Presley's cover of "White Christmas" to the point of trying to get radio stations to boycott it. However, later research debunked the claim, which traces to a single acquaintance of Berlin interviewed decades after the fact.
  • Richard Carpenter has expressed dislike for Sonic Youth's version of "Superstar" made for a Carpenters tribute album.
    I don't like it. Why would I like it? At least when it comes to something like this, I will say I don't care for it but I don't understand it. So, I'm not going to say it's good or it's bad. I'm just going to say I don't care for it.
  • John Lennon and Ringo Starr both disliked the cover for EMI's 1976 Beatles compilation Rock 'n' Roll Music. Starr thought the cover looked cheap in a way the band never was, while Lennon offered to design the cover himselfnote , but was turned down.
  • Joni Mitchell has on her website a library of her appearances in media. While there is a transcription of the Counting Crows' Adam Duritz saying that in spite of the negative reception of their cover of "Big Yellow Taxi" "Joni loved the song. She was so happy she invited me to hear her new album.", the site also features The Village Voice calling it the worst song of the 2000s, which is a potential sign of disapproval.
  • Mattel started a lawsuit over Aqua's "Barbie Girl" for having some very suggestive lyrics. While they eventually featured a rewritten version in an actual Barbie commercial, the song is vetted from the Live-Action Adaptation, showing Mattel still has some disapproval.
  • Coolio famously hated "Amish Paradise", "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of his greatest hit "Gangsta's Paradise." Coolio had told Yankovic's people no when they asked, but Yankovic maintains that he was given a yes from the rapper's record label (who probably cared more about the potential royalties than their artist's personal wishes). Yankovic has since made it a point to directly ask the artist themselves if he can spoof their song rather than going through middlemen. However, Coolio later admitted he regretted his initial reaction,note  also stating that he found the song to be funny, and the two artists had made amends before Coolio's death in 2022.
  • Tom Waits said he was "not that particularly crazy about" Eagles covering "Ol' '55", saying he "thought their version was a little antiseptic." He'd later add he downrights dislikes said band.

    Pinball 
  • Python Anghelo co-designed Pin*Bot and The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot. To say that he was displeased with the sequel, Jack*Bot, would be a massive understatement.
    Python Anghelo: "...it’s like saying, listen to this analogy, 'your biggest successes on our menu were pea soup, the shrimp pizza, and apple strudel with vanilla ice cream. Now you take those motherfuckers and put them all in a bowl and they’ll taste great.'"
  • Michael J. Fox hated the Back to the Future pinball game to such an extent that he refused to grant Data East permission to use his voice and likeness.

    Theatre 
  • L. Frank Baum disliked The Wizard of Oz (1902)'s finalized script. The director made a bunch of changes to the script (including scrapping Toto and the Wicked Witch of the West completely) and added jokes that Baum didn't like.
  • Don Ángel Perez de Saavedra, whose play Don Álvaro provided the basis for La forza del destino by Giuseppe Verdi, attended the opera's Madrid premiere (which Verdi conducted) and was not pleased with what he saw.
  • Tim Rice was not fond of the Broadway version of his musical Chess (which, despite being in the same medium as its first adaptation, was very different from its London counterpart). The production brought in a new book writer to overhaul the story, which presumably contributes to Rice's opinion of it seeing as the original book was written by him; Rice seems to have objected in particular to the Revised Ending where the American player wins the final game. In the souvenir program for an Australian production that opened a couple years later, he refers to the show's time on Broadway as "traumatic."
  • George Bernard Shaw hated The Chocolate Soldier, adapted from his play Arms and the Man, so much that no other musical adaptations of his plays appeared in his lifetime (Shaw reportedly exercised his Executive Veto over an attempted operatic adaptation of The Devil's Disciple). The film version of The Chocolate Soldier, an adaptation In Name Only, was barred from using anything from Shaw's play.
  • ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? was a series about three generations of a Cuban-American family that ran from 1977 to 1981. In 2018, the show inspired a live stage production titled ¿Qué pasa, U.S.A.? Today!. However, Manolo Villaverde (Pepe, the father) and Ana-Margarita Martínez-Casado (Juana, the mother) were quite upset at not being asked to participate in the project, yet having their images used for promotional purposes. All other surviving actors participated.
  • Sega isn't fond of the Australian stage show Sonic: Live in Sydney that was performed at the defunct indoor amusement park Sega Word Sydney. Mainly the original version which featured walk around versions of the Sonic the Hedgehog characters, due to the show being very slow paced and extremely cheesy. They ordered Sega World Sydney to retool the show which caused them to make it a live puppet show. To this day, Sega completely ignores the existence of both shows on various Sonic-related media.
  • Batman Beyond: An In-Universe example occurs when Terry takes Bruce Wayne to a musical based on Batman's original adventures for Bruce's birthday. While everyone else, Terry included, gives the performance a standing ovation, and the show has had sold-out seats for weeks, Bruce absolutely hates it and asks if Terry is punishing him by making him watch it.

    Video Games 
  • KO_OP, the developers of Goodbye Volcano High, are not fond of Snoot Game, citing its anti-LGBT themes, and have banned discussion of it from Volcano High's official Discord channel.
  • Mitsuo Fukuda, in a series of tweets, wasn't happy over how Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny was adapted in the Super Robot Wars games (specifically, Super Robot Wars Z), presumably due to the Fix Fic nature of the games. Ironically, this is in sharp contrast to the consensus of the fandom at large, in large part due to SEED Destiny's controversial reception.
    To be honest, I'm not very happy. The original story is complete as it is, so it's outrageous to add or modify the images and script. However, games are a different media so I think it's fine. The thing I hate most about the games are that even though they use the name (Gundam SEED Destiny), the contents are totally no good... There are many people who think that way, and there are many staff members who work really hard on making (these games), so I don't object. However, spare me from the people who come and go "Director, you're happy too aren't you?"Mitsuo Fukuda
  • Metal Gear:
    • Hideo Kojima, who was not involved in the Nintendo Entertainment System version of the original Metal Gear, doesn't like it due to the many changes that were made from the redesigned stages (such as the addition of a jungle area at the beginning) to the omission of the actual Metal Gear mecha.
      I really don't like saying this, but (the NES version of Metal Gear) really wasn't up to my standards. The care that I put in the original (MSX2 version) wasn't there. The NES version was a more difficult game. In the very beginning, when you go from the entrance into the fortress, for example, there are dogs there. In the NES version, the dogs just come after you and you get killed. It was too difficult to get into the fortress. The fun stealth element was not there, and the actual Metal Gear, the robot, doesn't appear in the game.Hideo Kojima
    • Kojima seems to be a bit more positive (or less negative, depending on your point of view) regarding Snake's Revenge, as seen in this interview. While he did refer to it as "a bit of a crap game" during his GDC 2009 presentation, this seems to be more of an acknowledgement of the game's lackluster reputation, rather than his own stance.
    I wasn't involved with Snake's Revenge for the NES either. However, this was created by the Kobe development team [as opposed to the NES port of the first Metal Gear developed in Tokyo] and wasn't what I would consider a "bad game".
  • Henk Rogers, co-founder of The Tetris Company, regrets lending the Tetris name to Tetris Attack, which was actually a modified North American version of the Super Famicom puzzle game Panel de Pon. Rogers actually liked Panel de Pon, and part of the reason why he came to dislike using the Tetris brand was because it didn't allow the game to stand under its own merits. Localizations of later versions dropped the Tetris name completely and were released under the title of Puzzle League instead.
    Tetris Attack was a good game! But the game should have had its own life, its own name.Henk Rogers
  • Tomonobu Itagaki, the outspoken director of the 2004 Xbox reboot of Ninja Gaiden, disowns the PlayStation 3 version (Ninja Gaiden Sigma) that Team Ninja later produced without his involvement. He has vocally disapproved of the port, even while he was still employed by Tecmo, and has reportedly refused to autograph any copy of the game. Specifically, he criticized Sigma for being more or less a straight port of his original Xbox version and not taking advantage of the superior hardware specs of the PS3.
    (Ninja Gaiden Sigma) was no good.Tomonobu Itagaki
  • Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi wasn't very fond of the Sega Saturn port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which was developed by a different team (Konami Computer Entertainment Nagoya), as noted in the June 2007 issue of Play Magazine:
    "I understand why fans who've never played the Saturn version would be interested in those features, but I really, really don't feel good about them. I couldn't put my name on that stuff and present it to Castlevania fans." — Koji Igarashi
  • South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone disliked the Acclaim-published games released during the show's early years: South Park, South Park: Chef's Luv Shack, and South Park Rally. They have admitted this was that part of the reason why they oversaw the RPGs based on the series, South Park: The Stick of Truth as well as South Park: The Fractured but Whole.
  • Masahiro Ito, who worked as a graphic designer in Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, disapproved many of the changes made to his work in the Silent Hill: HD Collection, adding more fuel to the backlash it received (and for good reasons). They have, however, patched a lot of the problems on the PS3 version since.
  • Running With Scissors, makers of the Postal games, farmed out Postal III to Russian studio Akella. After seeing the "finished" product, they regretted the decision. They pulled the game from their store and refuse to acknowledge it as part of the series, referring to it as "Russian Postal" and "Akella's Postal spinoff". Postal III was eventually brought back into the Postal games with Postal 2: Paradise Lost through circumstances made after Apocalypse Weekend.
  • Eric Chahi publicly disowned Heart of the Alien, Interplay's Sega CD sequel to Another World, years after it was released. Chahi acted as a creative consultant during the sequel's early planning stages, but was not involved in the actual development and most of his ideas were ignored as a result.
  • Keiji Inafune:
    • Inafune, one of the creators of the Mega Man series, utterly hated Super Adventure Rockman, a Japan-only FMV title that was mostly handled by others, only dropped into his lap for touch-ups where he wasn't allowed any big changes. His main beef was that it included death in the Classic series, which he felt he owed to the fans to keep lighthearted and friendly. He went as far as to apologize for it in the Official Complete Works.
    • He apologized for the Game Boy Mega Man II, which was not done by Minakuchi Engineering, who worked on Dr. Wily's Revenge, feeling that the new company that made it (Japan System House) didn't "get" Mega Man. Minakuchi Engineering would return to work on the remaining Game Boy Mega Man games (III, IV, and V), as well as The Wily Wars for the Sega Genesis.
  • Yoshihisa Kishimoto, creator of the Double Dragon series, disliked the Master System port of the first game published by Sega in his French biography Enter the Double Dragon, claiming that the developers (later revealed to be Arc System Works working under a contractual basis) focused too much on trying to faithfully reproduce the arcade version's level designs, moves and enemy characters on a less capable hardware at the expense of the game's playability and visuals. He prefers the approach his team took with the NES version, where they remade the game to fit with the hardware's specifications and argues that's the approach they should've taken with the SMS version. Ironically, Arc System Works would end up becoming the copyrights owners to all of Technos Japan's former IPs from previous copyright holder (Million Corp.), which ended up with Minoru Kidooka (ASW's founder and CEO) apologizing on his company's behalf to the former Technos staff members in an interview.
  • Nintendo:
    • They have done everything in their power to forget the three Legend of Zelda CD-i games, Faces of Evil, Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure, ever existed. The games weren't even made by the creators of the series, and have been excommunicated from the official timelines. The same goes for the other Nintendo-licensed CD-i game, Hotel Mario.
    • Nintendo hasn't officially said anything about Project M, but considering that saying the name on Miiverse would get you an instant ban for "discussing criminal activity", their thoughts can't be anything positive.
  • Bob Gale hated many adaptations of the Back to the Future franchise, especially the one by LJN Toys. According to him, they didn't want any input from the filmmakers, and when he finally saw the game, he wanted a lot changed, but was told it was too late for any changes to be made. He advised fans not to buy the game, and felt that Telltale Games handled it much better with their own game.
  • Following their departure from the Crash Bandicoot series, original developers Naughty Dog have given mixed feelings towards other developers' attempts at recreating the franchise. Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells states that "It's a little bit like watching your daughter do porn". On the other hand, character designer Charles Zembillas actually liked Crash's redesign at the hands of Radical Entertainment, actually desiring further involvement in the series while co-creator Andy Gavin at the very least praises Crash Bash for staying true to the original games. Luckily, Naughty Dog was quite impressed by Vicarious Visions' work on the N. Sane Trilogy remasters of the original 3 games.
  • Charlie Daniels was not happy with Guitar Hero III using a cover of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Not so much the cover itself, but for the fact that it was possible for the Devil to win, which he felt undermined the song's message (the Devil always loses).
  • Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Harvest Moon, disliked Harvest Moon: Back to Nature upon seeing it. It was meant to be a simple port of Harvest Moon 64, but the team behind the port tweaked it so much that it ended up a completely different title. Wada hated the character changes and hated the emphasis on farming. He had always wanted Harvest Moon to be a fluffy life sim about the relationships people have, with the rural setting and farming elements only acting as a backdrop. Years later, he ended up outright leaving the series due to not liking the way it was going.
  • Insomniac Games stated in their forums in 2014 that they don't recognize Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, both made by High Impact Games (which employed several former Insomniac developers), as canon, mainly because of reused plots, game-breaking bugs, Narmy villains, and ignoring Ratchet's Character Development but not bringing Mikey Kelly back. However, they went back on this in 2017.
  • Koji Ogata, character designer for the Kunio-kun series, has been critical of Kunio and Riki's redesigns in River City Girls, claiming that they stray too far from the yankii/school delinquent image from the original Japanese games.

    Web Original 
  • After Hideki Kamiya watched the DEATH BATTLE! episode where his creations Dante and Bayonetta fought each other, he expressed his dissatisfaction on Twitter, eventually calling the episode garbage.
  • Kris Straub has said that he doesn't really like any of the Candle Cove fan sequels, due to trying to explain it, when not knowing is why it works in the first place.
  • Mike Pollock, Dr. Eggman's current official voice actor, has always refused requests to perform Eggman's infamous "pissing on the moon" rant from Real-Time Fandub's Sonic Adventure 2 fandub. Not only would he get his contract with SEGA revoked for the speech's profanity, he later stated that he thinks the rant reeks of immaturity regardless. He has clarified that it's only the skit he hates, and shared support for the dub's Eggman voice actor, Alfred Coleman, during a medical emergency.
  • Colgate was not fond of any YouTube Poop of Dr. Rabbit and started taking the videos down. In response, the Youtube Poop community (most famously Walrusguy) started to show Dr. Rabbit in those poops in a much more negative light, often portraying him as racist, a pedophile or both.
  • One of the lead animators for gen:LOCK Season 1, Torrian Crawford, made sure to voice his dissatisfaction at the general direction of Season 2 (which was taken out of the original production company), in particular its third episode's sex scene, which he found gratuitous and distasteful.
  • To say that Christine Weston Chandler of Sonichu fame was displeased about Sonichu parody Asperchu would be a massive understatement. It led to her engaging on a months-long battle against his creator, Alec Benson Leary with many events developing both in real life AND the comic itself. At the end, she ended up letting go of the whole deal
  • SCP Foundation:
    • Animation channel TheRubber has been called out by numerous authors on the wiki for deliberately changing the narratives of SCPs covered by them and removing female, non-binary, and LGBT representation from them.
    • Over 1000 articles had any current or future translation on the Spanish branch disavowed in August 2022, due to concerns over homophobic dogwhistling being involved in an updated policy for translated works on the branch.Specifically...

    Western Animation 
  • Pogo creator Walt Kelly despised Chuck Jones' The Special Pogo Birthday Special, mainly for mucking about with what Kelly wanted, and how "he took all the sharpness out of it and put in that sweet, saccharine stuff that Chuck Jones always THINKS is Disney, but isn't"—something Kelly didn't say lightly, considering he was a former Disney animator and a good friend of Walt Disney. He and his wife, Selby, worked on their own animated Pogo short (We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us) that would've been more political and closer to the strip, but Kelly's failing health prevented it from being completed.
  • Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed is disappointed by the 1991 animated special based on one of his books, A Wish for Wings that Work (which itself is based on Bloom County), because of the overall results, despite being credited as writer and executive producer. When asked about a copy of the special on VHS or DVD in a 2003 interview, Breathed replied that "Hopefully in the rubbish pail. We can do better than that and we will with an eventual Opus film.. but I'm glad you enjoyed it. I presume your family was on speed when they watched it. I would imagine it helps." In a 2007 interview, Breathed claimed that the reason he dislikes the special was simply "unspectacular ratings" and his humor "wasn't meant for television, even if it was done right." Another reason was his "lack of writing experience" and the director was way over his head. He also would have preferred Sterling Holloway to provide the voice for Opus.
  • Little Lulu creator Marjorie Henderson Buell hated the cartoons made by Famous Studios in the 1940s, which she didn't feel were true to the original comics, and got involved with the making of those two Lulu shorts in the '60s to make sure that they were faithful to her work.
  • It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown: Charles M. Schulz regretted giving permission to show the Little Red-Haired Girl and giving her a name (Heather) as he had wanted her to remain The Ghost in order to show Charlie Brown's hopelessness in longing for her. He subsequently declared that the TV specials weren't canon and only the comic strip counted (he would still continue to help write the TV specials until his death in 2000).
  • Around the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation, series creator Gene Roddenberry admitted that he no longer considered Star Trek: The Animated Series to be canon, believing aspects of it to be "apocryphal". Fan response has since caused Paramount to declare the series is canon, not the first time they've ignored Roddenberry's edicts (see the Live-Action Film folder).
  • Doug TenNapel apparently disliked the animated adaptation of Earthworm Jim (though not as much as the sequels to the first two games that were made without his involvement). In a fan interview, he specified at least one point of dislike: Most episodes feel like Peter Puppy is the actual hero and Jim just a sidekick.
  • The Fantastic Four animated series was hated by then-current Fantastic Four writer, Tom DeFalco. He got into trouble when he wrote a scene where Ant-Man called the show repulsive.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (2016) is this for Craig McCracken. He stated on Twitter that he was opposed to Cartoon Network reviving the series in the first place, but understood from a business perspective why they did it.
  • Rev. Wilbert and Christopher Awdry were at first supportive of The Railway Series adaptation Thomas & Friends, Wilbert even stating he thought the first two seasons were mostly decent renditions of his stories. However they came to dislike the increased creative liberties taken from the third season onwards, inventing new stories or retooling their own tremendously, as well as violating accuracies to railway code. Christopher also became annoyed with how the show affected his own writing of the novels, being mandated to rush in more Thomas focused stories. The Reverend's daughter (Veronica Chambers) and the TV adaptation's creator Britt Allcroft would later criticize the Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go Continuity Reboot.
  • Don Rosa has a complicated relationship with DuckTales (1987). He has said he thinks it's a good show on its own merits, but it's a poor adaptation of Carl Barks' characters. He politely refuses to draw DuckTales material at cons. According to members of the show's production, Barks approved many aspects of the show initially, but wasn't fond of some of the retools from Season 2 onward, though he continued following the comics and wrote a letter to Marv Wolfman for including him as Scrooge's banker. Rosa, however, outright dislikes DuckTales (2017), partially due to looking at it as having nothing in common with the comics and partially due to being annoyed by people continually asking him questions about the show.
  • Louis Sachar, the writer of the Wayside School book series, was reportedly not fond of Wayside, the Animated Adaptation that was produced by Nelvana, although he did apparently like its animation style.
  • For unexplained reasons, John Lasseter, one of the people behind the Toy Story films, is not a fan of the Spin-Off series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
  • In a perhaps more literal example, Aurora World disliked David Feiss' adaptation of YooHoo & Friends (which turned the original show into a Westernized wacky Gag Dub that stars Flavor Flav) so much that his version never got a Season 2, and faded into obscurity. Aurora then took their rights back from Toonzone and broke the deal, the latter actually suing them shortly before that because they didn't get to produce another season.
  • Mark Newgarden, one of the people behind the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, has stated that he doesn't like the Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon, considering it to be even worse than The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.
  • Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, the original co-creators of Scooby-Doo, have voiced dislike of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated for being too dark and cynical.
  • Terry Deary, author of the Horrible Histories books, does not care for the Horrible Histories animated series, stating that he had a "negative experience" with it.
  • Batman and the Outsiders creator Mike W. Barr criticized the changes that Season 3 of Young Justice (2010) made to his characters, including Geo-Force's new costume and his real first name (Brion) being pronounced "Bree-on", Halo being Race Lifted from being Caucasian-American to being Arab, and Dr. Helga Jace being younger and more attractive, as well as expressing disappointment that he wasn't at least involved in the writing process.
  • Steve Moncuse, writer and artist of the comic book Fish Police, had no kind words for the CBS cartoon of the same name. In a 2010 interview, he said of the latter, "The less said about the animated series the better. I think I finally got the last knife out of my back about three months ago." It probably didn't help that the cartoon was an In Name Only adaptation that kept almost nothing but character names and an underwater crime setting.
  • Peter Laird, one of the co-creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, admitted he wasn't a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), dropping out watching the series early on due to its sillier tone, and that any input he and Kevin Eastman gave the crew of the series tended to be ignored. Kevin Eastman, however, admits to being fond of the series, with Bebop and Rocksteady being among his favorite characters in the franchise.
  • Possibly this with Gregg Mayles, who worked on the original Donkey Kong Country games, regarding the animated series based on the trilogy. When asked on Twitter about the show's portrayal of King K. Rool, Gregg simply replied "Let's just say I'm not a fan.".
  • Valérian creators Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières have admitted that they are not fans of Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline.
  • Downplayed with The Oblongs; Angus Oblong, writer of Creepy Susie and 13 Other Tragic Tales for Troubled Children — which The Oblongs was very loosely based on — enjoyed the show on its own merits, but was disappointed that it wasn't what he wanted to come out of the project.
    "It was a good show, but it wasn't my show."
  • In stark contrast to the feature film by the same studio, Insomniac Games has never acknowledged Mainframe Studios' animated short Ratchet & Clank: Life of Pie in any capacity. Meanwhile PlayStation (who own the Ratchet & Clank IP) only acknowledged the short once in a brief article by IGN, where they simply state that Mainframe made it and that it's not related to the then-upcoming entry Rift Apart (which was most likely the reason for why Mainframe released the short in the first place) or canon to the video games at all.
  • When Richard Cadell bought The Sooty Show franchise in 2008, he destroyed the master tapes of the late 90s Animated Adaptation Sooty's Amazing Adventures, which now exist only through TV recordings and limited official VHS releases, explaining in an interview:
    "...they made a cartoon, and it was shocking. It was awful and when I bought the rights to Sooty...I actually got the master tapes of this cartoon series and put it all in a big blue skip and had it burnt. I never wanted it to ever be seen."
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Various Sonic Team members have decried the multiple western Sonic cartoons for having been developed with little or no input from them. Most notably, Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka has gone on record to criticize them for getting Sonic wrong in his eyes. A particular source of contempt of his was Sonic Underground giving him siblings. It's likely that this was one of the reasons why the Sonic franchise was forced to follow the Japanese game canon worldwide come Sonic Adventure. Similarly, current head Takashi Iizuka publicly apologized for the Sonic Boom franchise and went on to say that he deeply regretted not having a greater say in its development and design. The only exception was Sonic's original designer, Naoto Ohshima, who was a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) despite that show never reaching Japan airwaves, even receiving an art cel from the crew.
    • Whilst Sega has a complicated relationship with Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic The Hedgehog Sat AM, they will occasionally allow some material from them into adaptations. This is not the case for Sonic Underground with Sega outright vetoing Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) from using characters or concepts from Underground, even though they were allowed to use things from the prior two Sonic cartoons.
  • When Chris Phillips, the original voice of Face, was asked about Face's Music Party in an interview (skip to 4:11), he (half-jokingly) replied by saying the show sucks because he didn't get to reprise his role. Nevertheless, he wished the crew well, saying that he was proud that he was a part of something so iconic that Nickelodeon wanted to bring it back.
  • According to this article, original Animaniacs co-creator Tom Ruegger is dissatisfied with the 2020 revival (its greater use of topical humor especially), along with how neither he nor many of the show's original staff were given the chance to work on it, and the absence of most of the recurring cast other than the cameos in "Good Warner Hunting". Both him and Sherri Stoner also particularly disliked the fact that the original show's characters are shown as dead hunting trophies in the aforementioned episode. To be fair, according to another article, he was later offered a chance to write a script for the reboot, but declined because "basically it would be like an audition and I just didn’t feel comfortable auditioning for a show that I created."

Top