Here’s a remarkable fact about filmmaking. Disney reportedly spent about $175 million producing The Jungle Book in 2016. The film went on to earn close to $1 billion worldwide.

But one of the most valuable ingredients in that enormous production—the underlying story—came from a book first published by Rudyard Kipling in 1894. That original work is now in the public domain in the United States. In other words, adapting Kipling’s original The Jungle Book does not require buying the copyright to the book or paying royalties to Kipling’s estate.

Think about that for a moment.

The actors matter. The director matters. The cameras, sets, visual effects, locations, music and marketing matter. But the story is the lifeblood of a movie or television series.

Without a compelling story, there is nothing to direct, nothing to perform, no soundtrack to score and nothing for an audience to fall in love with.

And The Jungle Book is far from the only example. We will examine 20 public domain stories filmmakers can adapt without paying licensing fees.

Sherlock Holmes. Little Women. Dracula. Frankenstein. The War of the Worlds. The Count of Monte Cristo.

Some of the world's most durable entertainment properties grew from stories that are now available in the public domain.

That door is not closed to today's filmmaker, tv producer, visual entertainment creator, and YouTube movie creator. It is wide open.

What Does “Public Domain” Mean for a Filmmaker?

When the copyright in an original story has expired, creators can generally use that public-domain material without obtaining permission from a copyright owner.

You can take the underlying plot, characters and story elements that are genuinely in the public domain and build something new from them.

You might:

Change the country.

Change the period.

Change the characters.

Reverse the point of view.

Modernize the conflict.

Turn a novel into a limited series.

Turn a short story into a feature film.

Turn a Victorian mystery into a contemporary African crime thriller.

Turn a European romance into a Bollywood epic.

Move an English adventure from the 1800s to present-day Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, London, Mumbai, Sydney or Los Angeles.

The source story might be more than 100 years old.

Your version does not have to feel old at all.

That is the opportunity.

Importantly, copyright laws differ between countries. In the United States, works published before January 1, 1931 are currently in the public domain. Filmmakers planning international exploitation should confirm the status of a particular work in the relevant territories. You must also distinguish the original public-domain work from later movies, translations, illustrations, screenplays and adaptations that may still contain copyrighted material.

With that in mind, here are 20 public domain stories filmmakers can adapt worth examining

1. The Jungle Book — Rudyard Kipling

At its heart, The Jungle Book is about identity, belonging, survival and the tension between two worlds.

Those themes travel extraordinarily well.

A filmmaker doesn't need to recreate Disney's version—or even make the story about talking animals. The deeper architecture could inspire a contemporary story about an abandoned child raised by a community outside conventional society, a young person divided between two cultures, or an outsider forced to decide where they truly belong.

The setting could be India, Africa, South America or an entirely imagined world.

The opportunity is not to imitate what has already been done.

It is to ask: what is the emotional engine underneath the original story, and what new world could carry it?

2. Dracula — Bram Stoker

A mysterious foreign aristocrat arrives in a new society. People begin falling victim to an unexplained force. A small group gradually realizes what they are confronting and must stop it.

That structure alone has enormous possibilities.

Dracula can become gothic horror, psychological horror, romance, supernatural crime, a contemporary thriller or even political allegory.

You could move the story from Victorian England to Lagos, Johannesburg, Mumbai or New York. Dracula could be interpreted as a businessman, celebrity, politician, cult leader or seemingly ageless billionaire.

You don't have to reproduce the Dracula audiences have already seen.

You can go back to Stoker's source and start again.

3. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

Frankenstein may be more relevant today than at almost any point since Mary Shelley wrote it.

A brilliant creator discovers how to do something humanity has never done before.

He succeeds.

Then he realizes he cannot control what he has created.

Artificial intelligence. Genetic engineering. Robotics. Biotechnology. Synthetic consciousness.

The possibilities almost write themselves.

At its emotional core, Frankenstein is also a story about abandonment: a creator rejects his creation, and the consequences become catastrophic.

That can become science fiction, horror, family drama, psychological thriller or prestige television.

4. A Study in Scarlet — Arthur Conan Doyle

This is the novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

You have a brilliant but unconventional investigator, a grounded partner who becomes our way into his world, a strange murder and a mystery whose origins stretch far beyond the crime scene.

The detective structure is extraordinarily adaptable.

Your Holmes figure does not need to live at 221B Baker Street or wear Victorian clothing. Imagine an obsessive Lagos investigator whose ability to read microscopic details makes him indispensable. Or a Mumbai forensic consultant who solves cases the police cannot.

The archetype remains powerful because audiences love watching someone see what everyone else misses.

5. The Hound of the Baskervilles — Arthur Conan Doyle

An old family curse.

A terrifying creature.

A remote estate.

A mysterious death.

And the possibility that something supernatural is hunting the surviving heir.

That is already a movie trailer.

The Hound of the Baskervilles sits beautifully between detective story and horror, making it particularly suitable for contemporary adaptation.

Move the estate to an isolated African community. Replace the English moor with wilderness, desert, mountains or dense forest. Build the mythology around local history.

Then let the audience spend most of the film asking the same question:

Is the monster real?

6. Little Women — Louisa May Alcott

Not every adaptation opportunity needs monsters, murder or spectacle.

Little Women survives because its central conflict is profoundly human: sisters growing up, wanting different things, loving one another, hurting one another and trying to become themselves.

Those dynamics exist everywhere.

Imagine four sisters growing up in contemporary Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Mumbai or Johannesburg, each with a radically different definition of success.

One wants marriage.

One wants independence.

One wants wealth.

One wants art.

One wants to leave.

One wants to stay.

The costumes change. The city changes. The economics change.

The emotional truth does not.

7. The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas

Few stories contain a better engine for a prestige series.

A man is falsely imprisoned.

He loses years of his life.

He escapes.

He acquires enormous wealth.

Then he returns under a new identity to methodically destroy the people who betrayed him.

Revenge. Betrayal. Romance. Wealth. Reinvention. Political corruption. Secret identities.

A modern version could revolve around a businessman framed by his partners, a politician destroyed by conspirators, or a young entrepreneur sent to prison for a financial crime he did not commit.

Give a writer this structure and there are countless places to take it.

8. Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson

A map.

Hidden treasure.

A dangerous journey.

A charismatic villain.

Betrayal within the crew.

Treasure Island contains the DNA of modern adventure cinema.

But treasure no longer has to mean a chest filled with gold.

What if the treasure were stolen cryptocurrency?

A missing collection of priceless art?

A hidden mineral deposit?

A secret archive?

Evidence worth billions?

The mechanics of the story are more valuable than the period furniture surrounding them.

9. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson

The premise remains irresistible: one person containing two radically different selves.

But a modern adaptation does not even need to involve a literal transformation potion.

Addiction, experimental drugs, neurological technology, artificial intelligence, online identities or psychological manipulation could all provide new routes into the concept.

Imagine a respected public figure who secretly becomes something completely different at night.

Or a scientist whose experimental treatment unlocks a personality he cannot control.

The question remains the same:

What happens when the part of ourselves we suppress gains the freedom to act?

10. The Time Machine — H. G. Wells

Time travel is only the surface.

H. G. Wells used it to explore class, inequality and humanity's future.

A contemporary creator can do the same.

What happens if someone from Lagos in 2026 wakes up in Lagos in 2226?

What happened to the cities we know?

Who became powerful?

Which technologies survived?

What happened to race, wealth, work, religion, family and government?

A public-domain premise can become completely original once filtered through the questions your generation is actually asking.

11. The War of the Worlds — H. G. Wells

Something arrives that humanity cannot control.

Civilization discovers how fragile it really is.

That simple structure has extraordinary cinematic power.

An adaptation could retain extraterrestrials, but it could also use the underlying dramatic framework to explore invasion, technology, biological threats or another overwhelming force.

Most importantly, the story can be told from somewhere audiences have rarely seen.

What does first contact look like from Nairobi?

From Sydney?

From Mumbai?

From Johannesburg?

Why should the destruction of the world always begin in the same handful of cities?

12. The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde

Imagine being able to preserve your beauty while something hidden carries the consequences of everything you do.

In the social-media age, The Picture of Dorian Gray practically begs for reinvention.

A global influencer appears never to age.

A celebrity discovers an experimental anti-ageing treatment.

A tech billionaire becomes obsessed with defeating mortality.

The public sees perfection.

Behind closed doors, something monstrous is accumulating.

Vanity, reputation, celebrity, corruption and the gap between a public image and private reality make this an unusually modern 19th-century story.

13. Carmilla — Sheridan Le Fanu

Published before Dracula, Carmilla is one of literature's foundational vampire stories.

A mysterious young woman enters the life of an isolated family. She forms an intense relationship with the daughter of the house. Strange illnesses and deaths follow.

It is intimate where Dracula is expansive.

That makes it ideal for a lower-budget psychological horror film or limited series.

One house. A small cast. Growing unease. A visitor nobody fully understands.

Sometimes the best adaptation opportunity isn't the biggest story.

It is the story that can create the greatest tension with the fewest moving parts.

14. The Most Dangerous Game — Richard Connell

A man arrives on an isolated island and discovers that its wealthy owner has become bored with hunting animals.

He now hunts people.

It is difficult to imagine a cleaner thriller premise.

Put influencers on a billionaire's private island.

Put corrupt executives on an exclusive corporate retreat.

Put contestants inside what they think is a reality show.

Put tourists aboard a luxury experience that suddenly becomes something else.

The central idea can be reinvented endlessly while retaining its brutal question:

What happens when a human being becomes the prey?

15. The Thirty-Nine Steps — John Buchan

An ordinary man unexpectedly becomes trapped inside a conspiracy.

He knows too much.

The authorities don't believe him.

The enemy wants him dead.

So he runs.

That basic engine has powered thrillers for generations because it immediately gives a protagonist both an objective and a ticking clock.

A modern adaptation could involve cyber espionage, political corruption, terrorism, corporate crime or a secret buried inside government.

Give the protagonist information powerful people desperately need to suppress, and the story begins moving.

16. The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins

A mysterious woman appears on a lonely road.

A wealthy young woman is in danger.

Identity, inheritance, conspiracy and manipulation gradually intersect.

The Woman in White is packed with material for a psychological thriller or prestige mystery series.

Move it into a wealthy modern family.

Replace Victorian inheritance structures with a multinational business empire.

Make the secret worth billions.

Suddenly a 19th-century sensation novel starts feeling remarkably contemporary.

17. The Moonstone — Wilkie Collins

A priceless jewel disappears from a country house.

Nearly everyone has a motive.

Nobody seems to know exactly what happened.

Often described as one of the foundational English detective novels, The Moonstone contains a structure modern mystery audiences already love: an enclosed group, a valuable object, conflicting accounts and secrets everywhere.

Imagine adapting that structure around a billionaire's mansion in Lagos, a destination wedding in Cape Town or a luxury resort in Goa.

One valuable object disappears.

Nobody leaves until the truth emerges.

18. The Phantom of the Opera — Gaston Leroux

A brilliant, disfigured outsider lives hidden inside an opera house and becomes obsessed with a young performer.

Beauty.

Talent.

Obsession.

Jealousy.

Performance.

Secrets hidden behind a glamorous institution.

You do not need an opera house.

A contemporary version could unfold inside a record label, film studio, theatre company, fashion house or elite performing-arts academy.

What matters is the tension between the glittering world everyone sees and the hidden world underneath it.

19. The Man Who Would Be King — Rudyard Kipling

Two adventurers decide to travel to a remote land and make themselves kings.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot.

Ambition, deception, friendship, greed, power and the intoxicating effect of being worshipped all sit at the heart of this story.

A thoughtful contemporary reimagining could become a dark comedy, political thriller or cautionary tale about outsiders who enter a community convinced they are smarter than everyone already there.

The setting and cultural framing would require intelligence and sensitivity.

But the human flaw underneath the story—the belief that success makes you untouchable—is timeless.

20. The Scarlet Pimpernel — Baroness Orczy

By day, he appears shallow, fashionable and ridiculous.

Secretly, he risks his life rescuing people from danger.

That dual-identity structure predates many of the superheroes audiences now know.

A contemporary Scarlet Pimpernel could be a celebrity, billionaire, socialite or politician who cultivates a deliberately unserious public image while secretly running a sophisticated operation.

Espionage. Rescue missions. Romance. Secret identities. Political danger.

You could build an entire franchise from the underlying idea.

The Famous Stories Are Only the Beginning

These 20 works demonstrate something important:

Public-domain literature is not merely a graveyard of old books. It is a goldmine of ideas.

But famous titles are only one part of the opportunity. In some ways, the more interesting opportunities are the stories almost nobody remembers.

Forgotten mysteries.

Obscure romances.

Adventure novels that haven't been filmed in generations.

Short stories with powerful premises.

Plays containing extraordinary conflicts.

Horror stories published more than a century ago that modern audiences have never encountered.

With Dracula, audiences arrive with expectations. With a forgotten 120-year-old thriller that almost nobody has adapted, you get something different:

a strong underlying story without a famous previous version hanging over your shoulder.

No immediate comparison.

No audience expecting you to reproduce an iconic performance.

No franchise mythology you have to obey.

Just raw story material waiting to be rediscovered.

That is where an entirely new screen property can begin.

Public Domain Does Not Mean Your New Work Has to Be Public Domain

This distinction is important.

When you adapt a public-domain work, you do not suddenly acquire ownership of the original story. Everyone else remains free to use the public-domain material too.

But the new original expression you create can be protected by copyright.

Your original screenplay.

Your newly created dialogue.

Your new scenes.

Your original characters.

Your original visual elements.

Your specific creative additions and departures from the source.

That is what makes public-domain adaptation so powerful. You are not starting with an empty page. You are beginning with a story that already has characters, conflict, relationships, twists, themes and a narrative structure, then using those ingredients to create something distinctly your own. And because the underlying work is in the public domain, you can build new intellectual property around your adaptation without first negotiating a licence or paying a rights holder for permission to use the original work.

There is, however, one important rule to remember: adapt the public-domain source itself, not somebody else's copyrighted adaptation of it. Kipling's original Baloo may be available for you to use, but that does not automatically mean every detail Disney later created for its version of Baloo is yours to copy. The same principle applies to Dracula, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and other famous works. A later movie, television series, translation, illustration or screenplay may contain newly created material that is still protected by copyright. The safest and most creatively rewarding approach is to return to the original public-domain book or story, study it carefully, and then build your own world from there.

Change the Setting. Change the Era. Make the Story Yours.

This is where the fun really begins. A Victorian mystery does not have to remain in Victorian England. You could move it to present-day Lagos and make the disputed inheritance a billion-naira family empire. A forgotten European romance could become a sweeping Indian love story. An English country-house mystery could unfold inside the Johannesburg mansion of a powerful business family. An old adventure novel could be transported to the Australian Outback, while a century-old supernatural tale could become a tense Nairobi-set YouTube horror movie.

You can go even further. Take an obscure story built around inheritance, deception and revenge and turn it into a ten-episode streaming drama. Take a character who travelled by horse and carriage and place them in a world of smartphones, private jets and social media. Turn a mysterious letter into an encrypted message, an old family fortune into a technology company, or a remote manor house into a luxury island resort. The original author gives you the seed; what grows from it is up to you.

And no, you do not need Disney's $175 million production budget to take advantage of this opportunity. Public-domain stories can work just as well for independent filmmakers, television writers, YouTube producers, animation studios, theatre companies, podcasters and small production houses. Some of the best opportunities may actually be stories that can be produced with a handful of characters, a few strong locations and an irresistible premise. The real advantage is not having the biggest budget. It is knowing where to look for the right story.

Don't Want to Search Through Thousands of Old Books? Start Here.

Of course, the public domain comes with its own problem: there is simply too much material. Thousands upon thousands of novels, short stories, plays, mysteries, romances and adventures are available, but most filmmakers do not have weeks or months to comb through digital archives, read one forgotten book after another and try to determine which stories actually have strong adaptation potential.

That is exactly why we created the Creator Adaptation Library. Rather than simply collecting random old books from the internet, we have focused on public-domain material with the ingredients creators look for: memorable characters, powerful conflicts, mystery, romance, horror, adventure, crime, comedy, family drama, unusual worlds and ideas that can be reimagined for modern audiences.

Think of them less as dusty old books and more as story assets—raw creative material that can inspire feature films, television series, limited series, YouTube movies, animation, stage productions, podcasts and completely new entertainment properties. You are not being told how the story must be adapted. You are being given somewhere much better to start.

You can choose the size of library that matches the scale of what you want to explore.

Start with the Creator Adaptation Library — 100 Story Pack, move up to the 200 Story Pack or 300 Story Pack, or explore the larger 400 Story Pack if you want an even broader pool of material to develop. Or just go straight to the 500 Story Pack which contains 500 books and 1,924 individual adaptation ready stories.

The RichPete Creator Adaptation Library contains information on each book which will tell you in which countries it is in the public domain and in which countries it is still under copyright. Most of the books in the Creator Adaptation Library are in the public domain globally. That is a plus. Visit https://www.richpete.com/category/creator-resources to take a look and get started creating your next hit.

The books and stories are supplied in editable Word-document format, which makes them especially convenient for adaptation work. You can read through a source story, highlight useful sections, add notes, pull out scenes, study characters and begin developing ideas alongside the original text instead of constantly moving between different formats.

Every library also comes with two practical guides to help you move from discovering a story to actually creating something from it.

From Page to Stage & Screen explains how to recognize adaptation opportunities, evaluate source material and begin transforming a book or story into material for film, television, podcasts or stage. Take a look at the book here https://www.richpete.com/product-page/from-page-to-stage-and-screen-the-complete-creator-s-guide

The Creative Writer's Starter Guide takes you further into story structure, character development, dialogue, world-building and the discipline of actually completing the work. Take a look at the book here https://www.richpete.com/product-page/the-creative-writer-s-starter-guide-how-to-turn-ideas-into-powerful-stories

Your Next Great Story May Already Have Been Written

Filmmakers spend enormous amounts of time looking for ideas. Writers wrestle with blank pages, producers sit through pitches, studios compete for book rights, and creators everywhere keep searching for the concept that could become the next film, series or franchise. Yet sitting quietly in the public domain is an enormous reservoir of characters, mysteries, romances, adventures, betrayals, rivalries and extraordinary premises accumulated over centuries.

Some of those stories have already proved how powerful they can be. Dracula, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Little Women and The Jungle Book have crossed generations, languages and continents. But the more exciting discovery may be the stories that have not yet had that treatment: forgotten novels, obscure plays and short stories that contain fantastic ideas but have barely been touched by modern filmmakers.

Somewhere in that enormous library could be a story that simply needs the right creator to look at it differently. A 120-year-old tale can become a completely contemporary film. An obscure novel can become a binge-worthy streaming series. A forgotten short story can become a breakout YouTube movie. A character readers stopped talking about generations ago could become the centre of a new franchise.

The transformation can be dramatic. Change the country, the era, the characters or the point of view. Change the technology, the social environment and even the ending. Keep the powerful story engine underneath, but build a world the original author could never have imagined.

That is the opportunity hiding inside the public domain. These stories may be old, but the ideas you create from them do not have to be.

Disney's advantage was never simply having the budget. It was also knowing where to look.

Now you know where to look too.

Explore the Creator Adaptation Library on RichPete and find the story that only you can retell.

By Walter Harriot

Head of Creator Development www.stacklee.com