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What became of it

The Beast in the Jungle

Henry James · first published 1903

A story in which nothing happens, which two French directors have now filmed anyway.

3 versions · 1980–2024

Truffaut used it in The Green Room; Patric Chiha turned it into a decade-spanning night at a club in 2023; Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast (2024) took it into science fiction. Three attempts at the least filmable premise in James — a man who spends his life waiting for something to happen to him.

The horror, when it arrives, is retrospective: he was not spared. He simply never noticed what he was being offered, and the story is about the moment he works that out.

A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881
A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 · William Powell Frith · 1883 — a plate from our edition

On screen

3

Film and television, earliest first.

  • 1980 The Green Room François Truffaut
  • 2023 The Beast in the Jungle Patric Chiha
  • 2024 The Beast Bertrand Bonello

Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.