Novels tend to have more than two hours of happenings in them.

Think about how long a film would be if rhe book was filmed as written. You may know that screen adaptations of Jane Austen's work are popular. There actually is a TV adaptation if Pride and Prejudice that's faithful to the book. Not many people enjoy it. It's too long, and it doesn't meet the expectations people have formed in their heads.

All the same i think a tv adaptation of Harry Potter could be great.

A bunch of different reasons. Sometimes the director/writer/whoever wants to put their own spin on it, sometimes for pacing reasons, sometimes it just wouldn't work well.

Apparently, because your definition of most important scenes and the creative team making the adaptation differed. That's why it's an adaptation.

You remember how long LOTR was when released in theaters? And remember how much longer the extended edition was? And remember how much even longer the extended special edition was?

The books are longer than that.

That's why.

Adding to the Harry Potter, why the frick did they feel the need to take Peeves out

Any number of reasons, including a difference of opinion as to whether the scene is important, whether the scene works the same way when transferred to a visual medium, time constraints and/or simply a creative choice for the adaptation.

I love watching different movie adaptations of the same book, and seeing the various interpretations. I recently watched 4 movie adaptations of a classic novel, & there was very little overlap of scenes from the book. Each screenwriting team had brought a unique vision to their portrayal of the story, in some cases supplementing from the historical record behind the book, and other times making substitute scenes that summarize what had been a 10-page sequence.

Couple of reasons, but to address Harry Potter in particular, those films were the result of several directors and began before all the books were written so things were ...inconsistent to say the least, some points were skipped and left later directors on a bind. One example is that in the books the first time Harry kills someone is a big deal for him emotionally, but this would make no sense in the film since it had him literally kill someone in the first movie.

More generally, some things don’t translate. Good luck literally adapting what is just internal monologs, or keeping pacing the same as a book that relied on long passages of detailed descriptions, or any story that won’t fit in a ~100min 3 act structure.

The scenes are cut, obviously, because of time constraints. Movies have to be shorter. There are some excellent adaptations in my opinion (Interview with the vampire 1994, the Name of the rose, are two of my favourites) but they are difficult to find. Generally, we are never happy with the adaptations. It's because you are seeing someone's IDEA, someone's IMAGINATION of how the action happened, and the one you wanted and loved is your own.

It’s not always about length. OP is asking about important scenes specifically being cut. One of the major reasons is because the screenwriter is most often not the author. Only in rare cases will the author participate in the screenwriting process or be the sole screenwriter. And even though an author might feel that a scene is essential, and many of their readers may as well, the screenwriter is an artist in their own right and will engage with the material differently, and understand the story differently, creating a whole new work of art with the source text. They are building a multi-sensory experience for the viewer, while the author can only try to evoke that experience through inspiring a reader’s imagination. With a new medium and new artistic personality, a new work of art gets created that can appeal to people who have not engaged with the source text at all. At the root of it is a difference of opinion in terms of what is deemed important.

They inevitably have to cut some things because if you included everything then even a moderately sized book would be like 4 hours long.

Also, movie and TV adaptations have to deal with practical limits. The author is only limited by what they can describe, the adaptation is limited by what the special effects team can pull off. Game of Thrones removed or merged a lot of characters because they didn't have an infinite casting budget and the books have about a billion named characters.

The Sandman TV adaptation removes only a few things from the comic, and once you list them you can see the pattern. John Constantine becomes Johanna Constantine. There's no mention of the Justice League. The Martian Manhunter doesn't show up. Scarecrow isn't there. I realised pretty early on that evidently they didn't have the rights for the DC Universe beyond Sandman himself so all of that got cut.

And sometimes it's just creative differences.

The creators of the film are not obligated to be 100% faithful to the books. It is not inherently bad to do things different. It's an adaptation, not a recreation. Personally, when a favourite book of mine is adapted, I often want it to be at least a bit different, because I already know the story of the book and don't particularly want to see exactly the same story I already know. My favourite parts of the TV version of Good Omens were the parts that weren't in the book, because they were new and exciting.

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I hate it like when the scenes from a book is cut from a movies but unfortunately Its about mostly the budget of the production of that particular movie . Who buys the rights or what not . Who writes the script

they also do like test audience for the film ( I didn't know about that until a couple of weeks ago )

one example was the 1980s version of Flowers in the Attic vs the book. They completely changed it even though they had V.c andrews approval. They actually had two scripts and a test audience who told them the to cut out whole bunch of scenes that were in the book.

I know, right? You read a book you love, you look forward to the movie, and then half the book - always the better half - is just missing. I mean, the reason is clear - you can't actually get everything INTO a two hour movie - but it's frustrating as hell. On the other hand, how many books did you actually love so much you really wanted to SEE every little detail in the movie? You have to have an almost religious attitude to a book to love it that much.

Sometimes, rarely, you find movies that are better than the book they're based on. I can think of "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Hunt for Red October" and then I run out.

Many books were written chapter by chapter and should be a series. The Count of Monte Christo should go on for weeks.

No kidding.

Glares at the LotR trilogy

I'm never going to get over how they butchered World War Z.

Everyone keeps talking about the length. It's the dollars. Cutting characters and scenes save money.

In a word ... $$$$$$$