Adults behaving badly

I had no idea that anyone wanted to make a modern-day film adaptation of Henry James's grim 1897 novel What Maisie Knew, but apparently someone did, and it should hit theaters tomorrow. I will never understand how movies based on stories like this (depressing, melodramatic, and stocked with hopelessly unappealing characters) get made, and yet no one will give me a Georgette Heyer adaptation—and, even if they did, would probably re-write it as a modern day Katherine Heigl vehicle or something. Why is the world so cruel?