Author Salman Rushdie says he had to be quite ruthless to his novel "Midnight Children" while writing the screenplay for its big screen adaptation.

Directed by Deepa Mehta, the movie "Midnight's Children" is an adaptation of Rushdie's 1980 Booker Prize winnig novel.

"I had to be pretty ruthless. There are many parts of the novel, the incidents, that we had to decide, were not essential for the central storyline," Rushdie said Thursday during an event organised by Landmark Book Store.

"Really, that was the question. The question we always asked ourselves during the scripting of the film was what is essential for the story? And it was very difficult for 'Midnight's Children' because it is a very digressive novel and has so many sub-plots, some of them, which I feel are quite enjoyable."

"But in this thing (the film), we had to ruthlessly say, what is that line which grabs the attention of the audience and drags them through two hours in cinema? And using that criteria we had to sacrifice a lot," he added.

The film features an ensemble cast of Satya Bhabha, Shriya Saran, Siddharth, Anupam Kher, Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas, Shahana Goswami, Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan and Darsheel Safary. Distributed by PVR Pictures, the film will hit Indian screen Feb 1.