12 Movies You'd Never Guess Are Based on Short Stories

British writer Daphne du Maurier's 1952 novelette The Birds inspired Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror film The Birds. Both stories are about a town's birds suddenly attacking the people of the community.

First published in 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story about a man who ages backward, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was adapted into a 2008 film of the same name starring Brad Pitt.

Stephen King's 1982 novella about a man falsely imprisoned for killing his wife and her lover, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, was adapted into the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins. It was nominated for seven Oscars.

Tom Cruise stars in the 2002 futuristic thriller Minority Report, which is based on Philip K. Dick's 1956 sci-fi short story about a future where we know about crimes before they are committed, The Minority Report.

Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood star as an underdog amateur boxer and her trainer in the 2004 film Million Dollar Baby, which is based on a collection of short stories by F.X. Toole (pen name of boxing trainer Jerry Boyd) originally titled Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner before being republished as Million Dollar Baby: Stories from the Corner.

Truman Capote's 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany's is darker and more sad than the beloved 1961 rom-com starring Audrey Hepburn as the eccentric society girl Holly Golightly.

Several of Ian Fleming's James Bond short stories have been adapted into films, including Octopussy and The Living Daylights, a collection of short stories published in 1966 after Fleming's death. They were adapted into both Octopussy, the 1983 Bond film starring Roger Moore as the charming MI6 agent, and The Living Daylights, the 1987 Bond film that starred Timothy Dalton.

Philip K. Dick — whose sci-fi stories inspired such popular movies as Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, and The Adjustment Bureau, among others — wrote the 1966 short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale that inspired the 1990 film Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and its 2012 remake starring Colin Farrell.

Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella about a married couple sharing their sexual fantasies, Dream Story (Traumnovelle), was the inspiration behind Stanley Kubrick's 1999 erotic film starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

Humorist James Thurber's 1939 short story about a mild-mannered husband who imagines a much more adventure-filled life for himself, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, loosely inspired the 1947 comedy of the same name as well as the 2013 film that stars Ben Stiller as a negative assets manager at Life magazine.

Who knew such a larger-than-life story could stem from so few words? Washington Irving's short story about the Headless Horseman, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, was first published in 1820 and has spawned many films and TV shows including Tim Burton's 1999 horror film starring Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane.

Originally published in The New Yorker in 1997, the short story Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx inspired the 2005 film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Wyoming ranchers in the '60s who fall in love despite being involved with women at home.