"I not sure I understand you since.........The movie Rob Roy was based on Sir Walter Scott's novel which is named, amazingly enough, ROB ROY."
Hollywood has made hundreds of movies about real life characters but for good reasons, chose not to title the movie after the character. For example, Helter Skelter wasn't titled "Charles Manson".
Bottom line, Doc, is that Rob Roy was a bad choice for a title. It has nothing to do with the character or the quality of the movie. Just a bad title - period.
I think you're still missing my point. As I've noted above, you're stuck on the word 'character'.
I could rephrase your sentence:
".....Hollywood has made hundreds of movies adapted from books and for good reasons, chose to title the movie after the book......"
ROB ROY, the movie, is an ADAPTATION of a famous novel entitled ROB ROY. They retained the name to signify that it was faithful to the original novel for the more literate viewers who they thought would be their core audiance. If they changed the name to LAND or THE SCOTSMAN then their core audiance would not be aware of the content of the movie in glancing quickly through the 'Movies' page of the newspaper.
Yes, I agree with you [*LOL*!!!] they could have named it something different.....more "Hollywood", as it were. However, they chose not to because it was an 'adaptation' of the novel NOT an 'Original Screenplay'. Indeed, the movie industry itself recognizes two separate, entirely different, Oscar catagories in this regard:
Screenplay, Original
Screenplay, Adaptation.
I'm sure you're aware of this.
What do you think they should have named the ADAPTATION of Margret Mitchell's novel GONE WITH THE WIND?
To my ears this sounds kind of flatulent. Surely they could do better? Or do they want to make sure the core audiance knows that this movie is a faithful adaptaion of the book?