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What Books Should Be Made Into Movies?
At the suggestion of @robtgilsdorf I am moving this from the Ricochet Film Society group to the main feed to see if more people are interested.
I was reading a post about the best western films since 2000 and it got me to thinking, as I was writing my response promoting Elmer Kelton, that there are a ton of great books that need to be made into amazing movies.
For example, it would be amazing if Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was made into a movie that actually bore a passing resemblance to his work. I would love to see The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a movie as well. I heard it was a project that would be called Uprising, Brian Singer was associated with it, and I am not sure how I feel about that.
I would love to see The Dragonriders of Pern made into a film. I doubt that it would survive contact with Hollywood though and the perceived misogyny would make them want to change it entirely. I doubt they could stomach the all-male dragonrider corps, though they might very much like the homosexual nature of the draconic matings that ensues.
I would also like to see John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata books made into a series of films, at least the first four would be awesome.
What are your thoughts?
Published in Entertainment
Yeah, I know. Next someone will suggest something stupid like “The Godfather”.
Not in 2022, they couldn’t.
Nice title! Taken from what that British swell said about the incident: “the most bold and daring act of its age.”
Horatio Nelson.
I shudder to think what a modern adaptation would look like.
Worth a try maybe, but what actor today could play a convincing Rhett Butler?
Kermit the Frog, with Miss Piggy as Scarlett O’Hare.
Oops, wrong thread. That’s this week’s Movie Fight Club.
For a version to be released in, say, 2025, John David Washington would be ideal.
I think we’ll get Hyperion eventually. The studio/people who currently have the rights to it have the money and the name recognition.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Dresden Files gets redone in the future. The book series has gotten way more successful over time, especially since the TV adaptation aired.
Go for it!
McCarthy, like Trump, was a blowhard jerk who was correct. Both were thoroughly Cassandraed by the press.
I didn’t recognize the name, so I did a duckduckgo search . . . and laughed out loud. Yeah, I can see Hollywood trying that.
NO! Please god no. My favorite book, thrown into the Hollywood meat grinder? God, they would all destroy it.
A dark, quiet, sardonically heroic anime, maybe.
But probably just leave yer hands off it.
I know the feeling. Forty or so years ago G. R. R. Martin wrote Nightflyers. Immediately upon reading it, I thought “what a great movie it would be.” Six or seven years later I saw the movie at the old Sunnyvale Town Center theatre, and it was a complete waste of time and money. The crowd agreed.
Some books are written kind of actually to be made into a movie. Michael Crichton was really good at this. The books were good, and most of them make pretty damn good movies.
but this is rare. You forget, in this thread, that as you think about books that you love so much, what the characteristics of moviemaking will do to them. Almost never will the heart, the thing you love so much about the book, ever come out in the movie. Think about atlas shrugged. Good God.
that having been said, the best example of books I’ve read recently that just cry out to be made into movies are the two series currently going by Peter Clines.
The X series, Ex-Heroes, Ex-Communication, etc., are thoroughly entertaining and addictive, and would be able to transition to a movie version that could be the next thing. Who knew that a superhero/zombie series could be so original and interesting?
The other series, starting with 14, then The Fold, then a few more, all seem to be stand-alone books. Then you get to the end and you realize that we are in the same world with the same looming catastrophe, and that a team is being put together. This also brings in Tesla, Lovecraft, and others in a very immediate way. So much fun.
Plus, if Clines got a movie deal, it might inspire him to write some more Ex novels! C’mon dude!
What books would make a great anime?
I was gonna say Denzel Washington.
Re-read it with my kids when they were little. It was awful.
spave ship under the Apple tree was still fun though.
I agree with that.
Tommy Wiseau is gonna be super disappointed.
It’s all in the setup.
It could really work. Take a group of guys like the ones from The 13th Warrior, make them English, and put them in an over-the-top violent comedy (think the Black Knight in Python levels of violent), with aliens who just aren’t prepared for how unbelievably violent people were in the Middle Ages.
And being so violent, they obviously would quickly grasp – if they hadn’t already – space physics and etc.
They don’t learn any tech at all. They force some captured aliens to fly the ship. They do bring their own tech with them, meaning the local blacksmith and his forge.
And when a few dozen or maybe a couple hundred violent guys arrive at the planet inhabited by millions or billions, they’re just unstoppable.
Naw. Not even as a comedy, I think.
Aliens who are so far removed from hand-to-hand combat that they have no defenses once the enemy closes to melee range.
They take prisoners.
This conversation got me to read “At The Mountains of Madness” again, and boy is it good. I still think so much of Lovecraft’s works takes place inside his character’s minds that it’s almost impossible to put on the screen.
Ryan Reynolds may be the only actor alive who could play Skippy.
Great story. I waited years for the DVD to become available, and I wasn’t disappointed. Only disappointed that it wasn’t available in Bluray for even longer.
I nominate The Marching Morons.
Apparently the author, Cyril M. Kornbluth, collaborated with Pohl.
I’d buy that for a quarter!
Edit: The protagonist devises a very cynical solution to overpopulation, and becomes an unintentional participant.