What Book Have You Read Do You Think Should Be Turned into a Video Game or Movie, but Hasn't?
- Thread starter Solnishka
- Start date
Barbara Hambly's The Time of the Dark series (aka the Darwath trilogy). Good, scary books with great characters and one of the best takes on magic ever.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, starting allll the way at the beginning with Shards of Honor.
C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series. Damn what a good sci-fi adventure even after all these years, and a nice twisty premise. They'll need to do something to get all the thinking the heroine does out of her head for the audience to hear, or it won't work. Maybe have her talk it out to the crew here and there.
And last but not least:
Paul Kidd's Mus of Kerbridge. It's not really a story for children, so they'll have to tone down the killing in the wars and do something with the attempted rape scene of the heroine - wayyy too dark. But hey, Disney likes killing mommies anyways, so I figure they can work with it.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, starting allll the way at the beginning with Shards of Honor.
C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series. Damn what a good sci-fi adventure even after all these years, and a nice twisty premise. They'll need to do something to get all the thinking the heroine does out of her head for the audience to hear, or it won't work. Maybe have her talk it out to the crew here and there.
And last but not least:
Paul Kidd's Mus of Kerbridge. It's not really a story for children, so they'll have to tone down the killing in the wars and do something with the attempted rape scene of the heroine - wayyy too dark. But hey, Disney likes killing mommies anyways, so I figure they can work with it.
His Dark Materials - unfortunately the necessary sequels will not be made because of lousy US box office numbers (damn evangelists). The cast of the Golden Compass was too perfect to waste. (For movies)
I'd really like to see Max Brooks' masterpiece "World War Z" turned into an HBO TV show. I remember reading a few years back that some studio wanted to turn it into a movie, but I don't think that's the right way to go about adapting that book. If it were turned into a movie content would have to be cut, and part of what made "World War Z" so good was that all of the content mattered. Not a single chapter in that book was wasted and it was all of that content which made the book so vivid and disturbing. HBO almost always delivers high quality entertainment, above average writing, and wonderful actors. As a TV series it wouldn't be as forced to take time constraints into consideration and thus would be able to truly deliver a visual adaptation of what is possibly one of the greatest novels of this decade.
Or a TV series, I suppose... I probably should've checked all of the pages before I started to type a response.LoathsomePete said:
im reading that book to, its awesome so far,, im in the last story of ''the great panic''Pig Mazurka said:
I think they should make the "The restaurant in the end of the universe"; "Life, universe and everething alse" and "so long, and thanks for all the fish" movies.
Oooh that sounds interesting. And to refer to your question.Solnishka said:
Simple
The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis
Far better than his Chronicles of Narnia
Isn't this already being done? The TV series is called Legend of the Seeker. I watched a few episodes and wasn't horribly impressed with the adaptation.automatron said:
Also, I can't make it past book 4 or so simply because it starts feeling too forced at that point. One of these days I'll force myself to read all of them but it hasn't happened yet.
OT: I'm hesitant to want any of my favorite books turned into a game/movie/tv series because I'm afraid they'd inevitably destroy what made me love it in the first place. If I had to pick one, I'd say the Genesis of Shannara series from Terry Brooks would be my first pick.
Grunts or Lords of the Sky.
Both are a bit different but still fantasy, though Lords of the Sky could arguably be called the most cookie-cutter fantasy story, it just has a different approach to it. A young boy is discovered to have a rare super powerful memory and is made a wandering historian to tell backwater cities of history and remember important things (big deal in that world) somehow becomes dragon master after finding out about a conspiracy by oppressed races, leads an army of dragons to conquer the world and then leaves it in the hands of the leaders that were about to go into all-out war to either take this chance and talk things over to find a peaceful solution or tear each other apart. He doesn't want to rule, doesn't seek the power he has gained. All he wanted was to give them a choice they haven't considered in centuries. There's a lot of undertoned arguments against racism, the emotional conflict over being 'dishonored' leading to suicide of one of the characters as he helps destroy the massive army his people have build up to reclaim the lands the supposedly 'good' humans have driven them out of. Changelings, animals given human form, work as slaves and are barely worth anything, were originally created as dragon bait in previous times, actually are quite intelligent and powerful sorcerers, but nobody really cared to find out about that. It's part run of the mill basic storyline, part really different fantasy stuff
Grunts is downright crazy, a What If story so to speak. Lord of the Rings as a parody of itself, the orks are the heroes, good guys are pompously declaring the victory of the light while slaughtering the injured and dieing soldiers of darkness and a group of almost-Uruk Hai, because of a curse and a dimension-travelling gun stealing dragon, end up with modern world weaponry and become Ork Marines fighting an invasion of aliens. I don't know why anyone thought that would work as a fantasy setting but it does and I'm glad it was made, one of my favourite books.
Both could work really well as a movie, albeit they'd either be really long or would have to cut things down occasionally.
Both are a bit different but still fantasy, though Lords of the Sky could arguably be called the most cookie-cutter fantasy story, it just has a different approach to it. A young boy is discovered to have a rare super powerful memory and is made a wandering historian to tell backwater cities of history and remember important things (big deal in that world) somehow becomes dragon master after finding out about a conspiracy by oppressed races, leads an army of dragons to conquer the world and then leaves it in the hands of the leaders that were about to go into all-out war to either take this chance and talk things over to find a peaceful solution or tear each other apart. He doesn't want to rule, doesn't seek the power he has gained. All he wanted was to give them a choice they haven't considered in centuries. There's a lot of undertoned arguments against racism, the emotional conflict over being 'dishonored' leading to suicide of one of the characters as he helps destroy the massive army his people have build up to reclaim the lands the supposedly 'good' humans have driven them out of. Changelings, animals given human form, work as slaves and are barely worth anything, were originally created as dragon bait in previous times, actually are quite intelligent and powerful sorcerers, but nobody really cared to find out about that. It's part run of the mill basic storyline, part really different fantasy stuff
Grunts is downright crazy, a What If story so to speak. Lord of the Rings as a parody of itself, the orks are the heroes, good guys are pompously declaring the victory of the light while slaughtering the injured and dieing soldiers of darkness and a group of almost-Uruk Hai, because of a curse and a dimension-travelling gun stealing dragon, end up with modern world weaponry and become Ork Marines fighting an invasion of aliens. I don't know why anyone thought that would work as a fantasy setting but it does and I'm glad it was made, one of my favourite books.
Both could work really well as a movie, albeit they'd either be really long or would have to cut things down occasionally.
I remember back when the Artemis Fowl books came out and I was totally into them, I was 100% sure they'd make a movie out of them before long. Sadly that never happenedGeamo said:
I still think it would be awesome, and seeing how studios seem to be looking for the next big young adult book franchise to adapt, I'm not giving up hope ^^
I would've said Eragon if they hadn't already done that (And fucked it up beyond all possible recognition) so I'll have to go with Magik, it's a pretty fun little book and I can see alot of potential.
Night Angel Trilogy. FUCKING YES! I came into this thread intending to post that.
However it makes me kinda sad that the movie rights have been sold. There's no way they'll be able to turn it into as good of a movie as it was of a book. And since any game that's made will likely be a movie tie-in, it'll probably also be shit.
I think those books would have made a much better video game. The scale and depth in the setting could have easily fleshed out a huge RPG. Book to Movie = Bad. Movie to Game = BADDDDDD. Book to Game hasn't really been done (except for Dante's Inferno, I guess) but it has the potential to blow any other media conversion away.
However it makes me kinda sad that the movie rights have been sold. There's no way they'll be able to turn it into as good of a movie as it was of a book. And since any game that's made will likely be a movie tie-in, it'll probably also be shit.
I think those books would have made a much better video game. The scale and depth in the setting could have easily fleshed out a huge RPG. Book to Movie = Bad. Movie to Game = BADDDDDD. Book to Game hasn't really been done (except for Dante's Inferno, I guess) but it has the potential to blow any other media conversion away.