An abridged, two-cassette edition of Waiting to Exhale was published in 1992 by Penguin-High Bridge Audio. The reader is Terry McMillan. An unabridged, eleven-cassette edition was published in 1992 by Books on Tape.

The reader is Dorothy Gray.

A motion picture version was released in 1995 by Twentieth Century Fox, directed by Forest Whitaker with Terry McMillan as co-executive producer. McMillan wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Ron Bass. Whitney Houston starred as Savannah, Angela Bassett as Bernadine, Lela Rochon as Robin, and Loretta Devine as Gloria. The supporting cast of men included Gregory Hines as Marvin. The spirit of the novel is preserved in the film, although the storyline is altered for reasons of structure. Unlike the novel, the film opens with Bernadine's discovery that her husband has left her for a white woman. The direction was conceived from the perspective of maintaining a careful balance among male characters in...