I totally get you with the book to movie thing.
I was watching CNN and they were talking about a Miley Cyrus movie that was coming out and, the reporter said that both the movie script and book were written with her in mind, and I was like wtf, that has to be a mistake, but sure enough the book was written for the purpose of being turned into a movie. I would like to call this the Harry Potter curse.
J.K Rowling was the first author to be worth $1 Billion, and now movie studios and book publishers are both looking to cash in on her success. I would go as far as to say that the movies even reigned in the books, because I specifically remember when I was looking for news on either the fifth or sixth book (most likely the sixth since it was the first to be shorter than its predecessor) in the series, J.K Rowling, or someone else close to the books said we were going to find out more about Harry's parents, and his father in particular, like what his day-to-day job was when not trying to undermine You-Know-Who, and that did not happen.
The only hope for this curse I've seen is in the Twilight books and movies, because the movies stick very close to the books, and unlike the Harry Potter movies where they take things out and add unnecessary scenes (like the choir and dancing lessons scenes), the Twilight movies only take scenes, and it's a pretty close line for line retelling of the story.
True Blood started off close to the books, and just went into left-field for the second season, and completely left the ballpark on the third. Which is a shame because the books were really good and I was looking forward to seeing them played out on T.V after the first season.
To be fair though, the Dexter T.V series is WAY WAY WAY freaking WAY better than the books. The first book was good, but the others were just kind of like wtf? And you wanna talk rushed? Even though the first book was good the ending was so sudden, no warning of any kind, just boom; oh bunch of people died, and it's over.