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What would be the book (or series, even)?

I started re-reading C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy the other day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldfire_Trilogy

I forgot how much I really enjoyed her writing,the idea of the Fae, and the setting of Erna.

I think that Black Sun Rising would make an especially awesome movie, if done properly!

* * * *

Your turn!

I really would love the Wildcards series. I love it and am currently up to book 16 . That world is such a dark place and you really have no idea what is around the corner plot wise. There have been more than a few occasions when I have been reduced to staring at the book in horror at what I have just read. Chalkgirl certainly comes to mind in regard to that statement.

I wouldn't be happy with a rating lower than R , most likely unrated would be better.

Wildcards is awesome and any movie adaptation would turn into a gakky misc superhero movie and I would hate it.


I'd like to see a movie version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_for_the_Oaks ... because it is cool and shallow enough to make for a really good movie.

Or a good, long running http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_P.I. series.

Top of my list would be a movie of Jeff Noons "Vurt" http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/jeffnoon/vurt?format=978023076880201.

Would also like to see Movies based around Michael Moorcocks "Elric" and "Hawkmoon", Larry Nivens "Ringworld"

I'd like to see The Last Man on Earth Club done up as a mini-series or something. It's a great book about six people, each from a different alternate universe form of Earth, that have managed to survive as the last member of their own version of the human race after it's undergone some kind of apocalypse.

Iain M Banks' Culture series.

 dæl wrote:
Iain M Banks' Culture series.

You want that turned into a movie? Yowch, I can't think of a thing that would be ruined harder. Movies by their nature lack subtlety and ambiguity .... I mean they would by default turn these into misc popcorn action flicks starring Tom Cruise. It would be terrible.

David Gemmell's Drenai series and somebody needs to have another crack at The Dresden Files as a movie format.

So many. But list list just a few top ones:

Phillip Reeve's 'Mortal Engines' quartet would be visually stunning, and assuming the actors were up to scratch, have great character to it.

Skulduggery Pleasant would make a good film series, it basically reads like an action movie anyway. Plenty of wisecracks, monsters and a skeleton in a fedora. What's not to like?

One I would love to see, but only if it were done properly, would be Patrick Ness's 'Chaos Walking' trilogy. I think to accurately represent 'the noise' (the setting is an alien planet where a virus means you can hear everyone else's thoughts) it would have to have no music, though, and make heavy use of flash-scenes (a la Shaun Of The Dead), and it would require a great director to pull it off. And if they got it even slightly wrong, I'd have to kill people...

Of course, all of these come with the caveat of staying true to the original material, and in the last few years, The Golden Compass, Percy Jackson and the abomination that was Eragon have destroyed all my faith in that happening. So just leave them alone, Hollywood, and have some original ideas!

The series with Elijah Baley and Daneel Olivaw, right up to the end of the Foundation series.

But on the other hand, I'm afraid it might get ruined like what happened to Dune.

The HH of course!

This is kind of a double-edged question because the majority of movie adaptations are abysmal. Films like AVP and Ghostrider pretty much killed the franchise. However, if someone was willing to spend a lot of time and money and do an amazing job...

Preacher the comic book series.
The Hobbit (This was my favorite book and I would really like a faithful adaptation without all the made up Sauron gak, and fat Legolas).
AVP (How could anyone mess this up?).

So many I'd love to see done but off the top of my head my top three would be the Ranger's Apprentice series, The Dresden Files (we can just pretend the show never happened right?) and the Sandman Slim series.

Of course only if they were done right because they'd be so easy to get wrong and it would kill me to see these ruined.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
The HH of course!

While, done right, aHH or 40k movie would be amazing, I don't think it could ever be done right. Firstly, so much of the reason 30/40k is such an interesting setting and story is the rich history and mythos around it, and so a film would either have to omit/tone down that to appeal to a mass audience, or rely purely on fans of the setting for income, which wouldn't work.

The other thing would be scale. In 40k, and especially 30k, tens of thousands of guys is a minor skirmish. Millions is a battle, billions is a war. I don't think there's any way they'd be able to get that across on screen. You'd need a budget ten times that of Lord of the Rings, the best CGI studio in the world, and somewhere in the middle of that you'd still need to follow specific characters and give them decent plots. I think, to be honest, Warhammer 40k is better left to the imagination, where there's no special effects budget.

Warhammer Fantasy, on the other hand, would be very cool indeed, and far more managable. It also require far less backstory, as everyone knows what an orc/elf/dwarf/dragon are.

 Bromsy wrote:

 dæl wrote:
Iain M Banks' Culture series.

You want that turned into a movie? Yowch, I can't think of a thing that would be ruined harder. Movies by their nature lack subtlety and ambiguity .... I mean they would by default turn these into misc popcorn action flicks starring Tom Cruise. It would be terrible.

Well perhaps a TV series for each book, as long as they stay true to the spirit of the source material. The radio version of 'The State of the Art' was good.

 Thorgrim Bloodcrow wrote:
So many I'd love to see done but off the top of my head my top three would be the Ranger's Apprentice series, The Dresden Files (we can just pretend the show never happened right?) and the Sandman Slim series.

Of course only if they were done right because they'd be so easy to get wrong and it would kill me to see these ruined.

I think Dresden Files would really work as a set of films, if done correctly. There are some awesome moments in them that would look really good on the big screen and some really cool characters.

Oh, forgot to mention Bernard Cornwall's "The Warrior Chronicles". I think these would even out shine Vikings

 Smacks wrote:
This is kind of a double-edged question because the majority of movie adaptations are abysmal. Films like AVP and Ghostrider pretty much killed the franchise. However, if someone was willing to spend a lot of time and money and do an amazing job...

Preacher the comic book series.

A tv series is on the way. http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/preacher-tv-series-to-follow-walking-dead-type-path/#!WVM1s

Talking of comic books I would love to see Sandman (have heard rumours), a decent Swamp Thing, Nemesis the Warlock and Strontium Dog.

Good Omens.

Apparently Terry Gilliam has the film rights but hasn't been able to get funding. Which is insane as he's the perfect director for it and it would make a brilliant, hilarious film.

Mortal Engines would be great if done well which is the kicker for every book adaptation of course.

The His Dark Materials film clearly failed commercially. I thought it was done pretty well but it didn't seem to find the audience. Perhaps too anti-clerical.

Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl" books might make a good young teen wacky Bond style of film.

What I would like to see done is the Patrick O'Brian series of Captain Aubrey/Doctor Maturin naval novels. They made a film Master and Commander but I think it would be better to do it as a TV series with high production values and follow the original story more closely.

The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb, though I'm not sure how the use of The Wit or The Skill would be represented. It would work quite well with how popular GoT is at the moment as well.

I'll agree with those talking about the Mortal Engines series, though after the shambles that was the Golden Compass I'm not sure I really want a movie version.

Also agree with Artemis Fowl, and would put forwards a continuation of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

HA! Northern Lights was massively toned down in terms of its anti-organised religion theme.

E.g. Changing all usage of the term "the church" to "the magisterium" (which whilst technically accurate makes it sound more like wizards than priests to people without knowledge of catholicism).

Northern Lights failed because they changed it to try and find a "wider audience" which alienated some fans of the books. Prime example would be calling it The Golden Compass. It's The Northern Lights dammit!

Artemis Fowl could be done right but you'd need a very good young actor to play Artemis in order to pull it off. He needs to be able to scare an adult, to make them feel inferior to him, to unnerve them with a simple look.

The other reason Northern Lights failed is because half of the bloody film was missing. I sat there the whole film waiting for that final scene of the first book (one of my all-time favourite scenes) and then the film sort of... just stopped, and they all lived happily ever after, I guess. In other words, they did a great job of ruining what is, in the book, a masterfully done, tragic, epic and thrilling ending.

Which is a shame, because the half of the story that we actually got was done very well (although I agree, the anti-chuch stuff was toned down a lot, and probably why they didn't do the second and third films. I mean, if they won't name the church as an organisation for fear of offending them, what would they have done about the small matter of declaring war on God?)

Artemis Fowl would work if it didn't suffer from Harry Potter syndrome. ie. The first third of the series is just unwatchable because the actors lack the experience and skills. The last half (Phoenix onwards) is great, though. The novels do lend themselves to a good, fairly light-hearted action movie, but I think that, again, there's too much risk of it being simplified or dumbed down.

 Goliath wrote:


Also agree with Artemis Fowl, and would put forwards a continuation of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Hitchhikers suffered from some really dodgy casting choices. Mos Def as Ford? Really?

Plus it has to live up to the standard of the books and radio show. Which the first film failed to do. It was too Hollywoodised, lacked the insanity and random direction of the original works, in my opinion.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Goliath wrote:


Also agree with Artemis Fowl, and would put forwards a continuation of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Hitchhikers suffered from some really dodgy casting choices. Mos Def as Ford? Really?

Plus it has to live up to the standard of the books and radio show. Which the first film failed to do. It was too Hollywoodised, lacked the insanity and random direction of the original works, in my opinion.

Hitchhikers was good for a laugh. As much as Ford wasn't the best casting choice, I think Martin Freeman, Alan Rickman and Bill Nighy all got their characters spot-on. Stephen Fry as the narrator was also good. I wouldn't say no to an sequel, as even though it did away with the plot (but then, so did the books when you compare them to the original radio show scripts) but it kept the feel of the setting and originals, which is what matters with something like that.

Well, if we're talking the fantasy genre, I can't fathom why no one's done anything with Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, especially in the wake of Harry Potter. It got a horrible Disney treatment (The Black Cauldron) back in the '80s (pre-Little Mermaid, when Disney was still making bad animated films), but that can't possibly have made the whole franchise toxic.

Those books are well-written (a couple of them won Newberry Awards, IIRC), aimed right at that pre-teen/teen audience, and fantasy seems hot as hell right now. I don't get it, unless someone is just sitting on the rights for whatever reason.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Goliath wrote:


Also agree with Artemis Fowl, and would put forwards a continuation of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Hitchhikers suffered from some really dodgy casting choices. Mos Def as Ford? Really?

Plus it has to live up to the standard of the books and radio show. Which the first film failed to do. It was too Hollywoodised, lacked the insanity and random direction of the original works, in my opinion.

The TV series was better though it lacked the production values. When you look at the modern Doctor Who compared to the earlier series, you can see how much things can be improved in terms of special effects and so on.

gorgon wrote:Well, if we're talking the fantasy genre, I can't fathom why no one's done anything with Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, especially in the wake of Harry Potter. It got a horrible Disney treatment (The Black Cauldron) back in the '80s (pre-Little Mermaid, when Disney was still making bad animated films), but that can't possibly have made the whole franchise toxic.

Those books are well-written (a couple of them won Newberry Awards, IIRC), aimed right at that pre-teen/teen audience, and fantasy seems hot as hell right now. I don't get it, unless someone is just sitting on the rights for whatever reason.

Actually, that's a great idea. I remember really liking those books, and I'd much rather see those done to a good standard that have Peter Jackson milk even more films out of Middle Earth (Calling it now, The Silmarilion will be announced by 2016).

Thanks for reminding me I need to re-read those!

Kilkrazy wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Goliath wrote:


Also agree with Artemis Fowl, and would put forwards a continuation of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Hitchhikers suffered from some really dodgy casting choices. Mos Def as Ford? Really?

Plus it has to live up to the standard of the books and radio show. Which the first film failed to do. It was too Hollywoodised, lacked the insanity and random direction of the original works, in my opinion.

The TV series was better though it lacked the production values. When you look at the modern Doctor Who compared to the earlier series, you can see how much things can be improved in terms of special effects and so on.

Actually, I thought the TV series was the worst version of the 4. I do think the guy that played Ford in that would have made a great Doctor in that period, but I think the low production values meant it was better left as the radio show, as the scripts, from what I recall, were all but identical. I think the book, despite not being the original, is the best version, and the Radio and film versions are plenty good, but I really couldn't get on with the TV series (although I do agree a modern version would be much better, it was the low budget and middling acting that makes it bad)

I would be happy to see the Thomas Covenant saga filmed, particularly the first trilogy. It would have to be done carefully because of the strong anti-hero theme.
Neuromancer, though that has been on the cards for a while.
Also some of the Battletech books would be filmable, some.

For me it would be Altered Carbon, American Tabloid or Cathedral.

Only if they were done really well and stayed close to the book.

there are four books i'd like to see brought to the screen.

stephen king's 'the eyes of the dragon'
michael crichton's 'pirate latitudes'
robert a. heinlein's 'the moon is a harsh mistress'
and cormac mccarthy's 'blood meridian'

i'd want to see them written and directed by people who have read the books, and enjoyed them, and understand what it is that makes them great, though. blood meridian would be kinda hard to get right, though, as it's unflinchingly violent, and restrining that even a little for film would defeat much of the point of the story.