About The Ninth Draft
The Ninth Draft has no connection to the production, the distributor, the publisher or anyone who made the films discussed here. This domain once hosted a studio promotional page; it does not any more, and nothing on it should be read as official. No poster, still or cover image is reproduced anywhere on the site, and every diagram is drawn.
The Ninth Draft is an independent reference on what happens when a novel becomes a film, written outward from one case: Liz Jensen's The Ninth Life of Louis Drax and the 2016 film made from it.
Why this domain
This address used to hold the studio's promotional page for that film. The marketing ended a long time ago, but people still arrive here from film databases and book pages, looking for what the thing actually is. Rather than leave the address dead or rebuild an advertisement nobody needs, it now carries a reference on the subject the page always sat on top of. The name is a nod to the film's title and to the drafts a screenplay goes through on its way from a book. It is not a claim to be connected to either.
How the comparisons are made
Every case page asks the same four questions and answers them separately: what happens to the plot, to the characters, to the voice, and to the theme. A film can travel a long way on one axis and stay close on another, which is why a single verdict on faithfulness is worth so little. The distance bar in the case files is a summary of those four, not a score out of ten.
What a comparison here looks like
Every case page runs the same four sections, in the same order, so the pages can be read against each other rather than one at a time. What the book does. What the film does instead. The single change that mattered most, which is almost never the one the arguments are about. And where it lands on the four axes.
The distance bar is a summary of those four, not a score out of ten and not a recommendation. A film can travel a long way and be the better object; a film can stay close and be worthless. The bar answers one question only: how far did this go from the thing it came from.
Where the judgements come from, and where they stop
Facts here are the public record: publication and release dates, credits, running times, published reviews and reported figures. The readings belong to this reference and are written as arguments rather than as findings, so you can disagree with them without having to check whether they are true.
Where the record is contested, the page says so and stops. Several pages here decline to settle something: an ending that circulating summaries disagree about, a screen version this reference has not assessed scene by scene, an aggregate that is still moving. A reference that guesses in those places is worth less than one that is shorter.
What is not here
No posters, stills, frames or cover art, and no quoted passages from any novel or screenplay: those belong to the people who made them. Every illustration on the site is drawn. There is nothing about where to download a film, and nothing about the private lives of the writers, directors and actors named here, who appear only as the public record of their work.