After $270 Million Tom Cruise Hit Mangled His Best Novel, John Grisham Took Stephen King’s Advice

John Grisham and Hollywood have always had a slightly awkward handshake. Case in point: The Firm. He loves the character he created, hated a few big swings the movie took, and yet still calls the whole thing a win. It is a very 90s story: enormous hit, glossy stars, and some truly strange behind-the-scenes choices.

Grisham vs. The Firm (but also... not really)

Back in 2004, Grisham looked back at the 1993 Tom Cruise movie and called the book a "naked stab at commercial fiction." He was not thrilled with how the film re-shaped his hero Mitch McDeere, but he also admitted he liked the movie anyway because he was attached to Mitch. He kept his distance during production (he says he visited the set twice) and tried to keep his blood pressure down by listening to a friend's advice.

"They are just movies. They cannot change a word of what you have written. It is somebody else's interpretation. Take the money and run."

- Stephen King, as Grisham tells it

Grisham also gave Cruise solid marks, saying Cruise nailed the wide-eyed young associate vibe the book was written around. And audiences clearly did not mind the tweaks: the movie raked in about $270 million worldwide.

The ending: book vs. movie

This is where the biggest change lives. In Grisham's novel, Mitch and his wife Abby rip off mob cash and disappear to the Caribbean. Sydney Pollack, who directed the movie, did not want that kind of ending. He said he was sick of "yuppie endings," so his Mitch (Cruise) and Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn) head back to Boston instead. It reframes Mitch less as an antihero and more as a guy who outsmarts the bad guys and tries to reset his life. Different energy, same moral universe, depending on how you look at it.

The cast and the curveball marketing story

The cast is stacked: Cruise, Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, and Ed Harris, plus a murderers' row of 90s character actors. But here is a weird little wrinkle. The role of Mitch's mentor, Avery Tolar (yes, Tolar, not Taylor), was almost rewritten for Meryl Streep. Grisham pushed back, the production pivoted, and Hackman took the part. By the time that deal closed, marketing was already locked around one name: Tom Cruise. Hackman's name ended up off the posters, and when it became a whose-name-goes-where situation, Hackman reportedly asked to be removed from the ad materials altogether. For a movie with that many heavy hitters, it is a surprisingly messy bit of credit wrangling.

What actual lawyers thought in 1993

Because every legal thriller ends up being a Rorschach test for attorneys, the Los Angeles Times asked a few of them at the time if The Firm looked anything like their lives. One tax lawyer, Wayne Allen of Walsworth, Franklin & Bevins in Orange County, basically shrugged: he did not know anyone living that kind of glossy lifestyle and chalked it up to Hollywood and Grisham doing Hollywood and Grisham. Another associate, Jon Meer, said that if you filmed the job as it really is, it would be people sitting in a library, and nobody would buy a ticket. Bottom line, they did not think the movie would make the public suddenly hate lawyers. It is entertainment, not a deposition.

Quick stats

• Release date: June 30, 1993
• Worldwide box office: About $270 million
• IMDb: 6.9/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 76% critics, 64% audience
• Where to watch now: Paramount+

The bigger picture

Hollywood has been hooked on courtroom drama forever, from The Verdict to A Few Good Men to Anatomy of a Fall. The Firm sits neatly in that lane: slick, tense, and engineered for big crowds, even if it nudges the book into a cleaner, more movie-ish shape. Do I wish we got the Caribbean ending? Kind of. Do I think the Boston choice makes sense for a summer blockbuster starring Tom Cruise? Absolutely.

What do you make of it when movies gamble with a book's original finish? Bold adaptation or missing the point? I am genuinely curious where you land on this one.