Beckett received numerous requests to adapt Waiting for Godot for film and television.[206] The author, however, resisted these offers, except for occasional approval out of friendship or sympathy for the person making the request. This was the case when he agreed to some televised productions in his lifetime (including a 1961 American telecast with Zero Mostel as Estragon and Burgess Meredith as Vladimir that New York Times theatre critic Alvin Klein describes as having "left critics bewildered and is now a classic").[127] When Keep Films made Beckett an offer to film an adaptation in which Peter O'Toole would feature, Beckett tersely told his French publisher to advise them: "I do not want a film of Godot."[207] The BBC broadcast a television production of Waiting for Godot on 26 June 1961 (see above), a version for radio having already been transmitted on 25 April 1960. Beckett watched the programme with a few close friends in Peter Woodthorpe's Chelsea flat. He was unhappy with what he saw. "My play", he said, "wasn't written for this box. My play was written for small men locked in a big space. Here you're all too big for the place."[208] One analysis argued that Beckett's opposition to alterations and creative adaptations stem from his abiding concern with audience reaction rather than proprietary rights over a text being performed.[209]
On the other hand, theatrical adaptations have had more success. For instance, Andre Engel adapted the play in 1979 and was produced in Strasbourg. In this performance, the two main characters were fragmented into 10 characters. The first four involved Gogo, Didi, Lucky, and Pozzo while the rest were divided into three pairs: two tramps, a pair of grim heterosexuals, and a bride raped by her groom.[210] Each of these embodied some characteristics of Estragon and Vladimir. A similar approach was employed by Tamiya Kuriyama who directed his own adaptation of the play in Tokyo. These interpretations, which only used extracts from the dialogues of the original, focused on the minds of the urban-dwellers today, who are considered to be no longer individuals but one of the many or of the whole, which turned such individuals into machines.[210]
A web series adaptation titled While Waiting for Godot was also produced at New York University in 2013, setting the story among the modern-day New York homeless. Directed by Rudi Azank, the English script was based on Beckett's original French manuscript of En attendant Godot (the new title being an alternate translation of the French) prior to censorship from British publishing houses in the 1950s, as well as adaptation to the stage. Season 1 of the web series won Best Cinematography at the 2014 Rome Web Awards. Season 2 was released in Spring 2014 on the show's official website whilewaitingforgodot.com.[211]
