Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy deserves a good adaptation, rather than that trash movie and that too short BBC series.
I would love that, I dont think the movie is terrible, its just that everything after Ford and Arthur get thrown out the airlock isnt as funny or absurd as the books. The main issue is the first 2ish books are unadaptable because there is no central conflict (or arleast the main cast dosent care or know there was supposed to be one).
Zaphod is the only person with motivation to do anything other than to continue existing, and he is unaware (or dosen't care) he is being hunted until they meet those suprisingly progessive law enforcment officers on Magrathea and when he visits the guides publishing offices.
The BBC series does up to them being on >!prehistoric hairdresser and middle management earth!< Iirc
Which I'm pretty sure is the third book. But I haven't read it in a loooooong time.
Wha… really? I’ve seen the BBC HHGTTG, but I’ve never even heard they did the sequels!
Book 2 was Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and book 3 was Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Two books followed… So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless constituted Books 4 & 5, but were detached from the main characters and plot.
Ah, ok. The [Show](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(TV_series) does the first two books. Not the third.
Because I remember them going to the restaurant and then meeting the hairdressers and telephone sanitizers and the mess they get the main characters into, but forgot about the Krikket/wikket people.
For being what I would consider one of the founding fathers of cyberpunk, I'm surprised there hasn't been a Neuromancer film yet. Especially when so many of the tropes we know from the cyberpunk genre originated from Neuromancer, to begin with.
The question is do they stick with the existing Johnny Mnemonic movie as the prequel story, recap it in an intro scene, or ignore it completely?
Neuromancer has been optioned before but no one did anything with it. I think it was in play again but recently but haven't heard much lately.
Hyperion Cantos would be great.
Gormanghast might also be cool.
https://www.theverge.com/24086056/apple-tv-plus-neuromancer-streaming-series-william-gibson
Neuromancer Might be getting made.
Watch Inception and think of Neuromancer and you will find that its probably the best closest match for the way the story is told. So many things made me realize there are so many little "I loved that story but I cant make that movie so I will just give you clues". The throwing star is the top.
Always felt like that Eragon series could have been good. Too bad they never made a movie for it. Never once. I'm sure it would have been solid if they had. But they didn't.
I think they are making an Eragon adaptation (for the first time, of course). I think Disney+ is making a series, similar to them restarting Percy Jackson.
Oh boy. Disney adaptation track record is very hit or miss. I hope they don't mess this one up like the last adaptation.
I feel the same way about Avatar: The Last Airbender. It would have been such an amazing movie, or perhaps even a series. But alas, they've never attempted it once.
Ah, it appears you have forgotten or have simply Mandela'd in from a different timeline. Allow me to refresh your memory for you in the kindest way possible:
Eragon was a 2006 dance film featuring Jeremy Irons and Ed Speeler on a ship. Some fighting is involved. And I dunno, a dragon maybe.
The graphic audiobooks are pretty great already. Would love some visuals to go with it. Would need a big budget though..
Similarly, I'm reading through the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks and I think it would be a great candidate for an adaptation. It's a really good story and the magic is all based on the colour of light which I think would make the special effects pretty easy to create and should also look nice.
I know I recognise the name Brent Weeks, and I know I remember a magic system based around colour. Does that book start with someone who brings his cloak to life with colour magic? And as you get more magically powerful, you can see more and richer colours?
No, that's another Brandon Sanderson book called Warbreaker.
Lightbringer has people who can do magic, but you have to see the colour in order to start using it. And all the colours do slightly different things as well as affect your emotions.
Lots of great world building too.
Thanks.
I've read Night Angel series, that's where I know the name from. Not the sort of book I'd usually enjoy but I remember good things. I think I'll add Lightbringer to my list of books to read :)
The Iliad. Not a "take" or an "adaptation" or a "re-imagining". Just play it straight as it is, cut out some of the monologues and replace the "throwing spears at each other" parts with swordfights.
I want to see the gods descend from Olympus to fight on the battlefield.
Old Man's War by John Scalzi was made for this, I swear. His latest books also read a lot like movie scripts are contained therein.
Charles Stross' Laundry series has a ton of potential too, if less Chtullu is required, I wouldn't mind a Merchant Princes series either.
I heard rumours about Forever War being optioned at some point, but nothing came of it.
I had thought that some Hollywood people were talking to Scalzi about Old man’s war, but nothing ever came of it. Sad.
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and some guy who's name is harder to remember.
An inventor uploads a schematic to the Internet for a cheap, easy-to-assemble device that lets anyone (or almost anyone) "step" into parallel earths. A nearly infinite stretch of untamed wilderness sees people abandoning the polluted, crowded, government-run Old Earth in search of new opportunities. The catch: No iron or iron alloys can "step" across, sending these new earths back to the bronze age.
Also: Zeppelins that are also reincarnated Buddhists that are also the first true machine intelligence; robot cats; libertarian communes; sapient nonhuman primates; sapient nonhuman non-primates; radioactive ziggurats; space programs to parallel moons; and grumpy survival chicks.
Stephen Baxter
The premise was better than the execution, but I've definitely been curious if you could use the world stepping premise in an RPG in a compelling way.
Announced over 3 years ago (2021) in this article that mentions Amazon Prime optioned it in 2017: Tech Advisor article about “Ringworld” on Amazon Prime
So…
Sanderson's Mistborn series could make some good film or TV. Honestly they could probably even pull off a whole cosmere MC universesque type thing... Although I think deals keep falling through because the author wants full creative control.
Although I think deals keep falling through because the author wants full creative control.
I mean looking at the ruins of the Game of Thrones franchise that David Benioff and D. B. Weiss left behind, maybe that's not such a bad idea.
Dragonriders of Pern, by Anne McCaffrey. Currently doing my umpteenth read-through completely accidentally. I wanted to read one of the books then got sucked in. I'm nine books in and read several of them in one sitting, despite having read them all plenty of times.
And while I'm on the subject, I don't think I've ever seen anyone taking about Pern online but I see mentions of Isaac Asimov every few weeks. They're of a similar age and Pern is equally good as Isaac's work, if not better. Grumble grumble...
I'm a lifelong pern fan, but... the immense fear of thread won't come across well on the screen in my opinion. And thread fighting will be hard to make such that it has the same magnitude as it can in your imagination. All in all, thread is over played. It can't be such a harrowing fight in the skies, and still be so devastating if one got through unnoticed. Cause if the fight in the skies was so hard, more would get by, and some would get missed over the years. And that is played off as the end of the world. In your imagination, that can work, but on screen, not so much. That means they would need to make some fundamental change to film it.
You're probably right, but I was trying to say it deserves more recognition. I don't think it would be a good TV show either. And Eragon has put me off all dragon-related adaptations I think!
Canonically some gets by every time, which is why they need ground crews with flame throwers, right?
It changes based on the book and situation, honestly. Sometimes a weyr boasts than none has got through their wings for several years. Sometimes it's just a couple of Threads. But often, whenever a character is caught outside, it's taken to be certain death. For example
::: spoiler Spoiler Menolly's fire lizards die as they're hatching and go out into thread
I can't remember the book, but one punishment for murderers is to leave them outside in Threadfall to be killed
In Renegades of Pern, many of the traders die in the opening chapter despite there being dragonriders nearby :::
I feel like a lot of Anne McCaffrey's writing is inconsistent and is more based on what's good for the plot than anything else. And (at least in the early editions I own) could have done with a better proofreader. Couple of spelling mistakes, but a lot of people and dragon names changing and other consistency errors. But I still love the books, don't get me wrong!
Yes, this. The assumption of certain death outside during threadfall, and the supposed inate fear humans have of Thread just doesn't work. If only a few Thread get through for the ground crews, you could just run away. It falls slow enough. For books, you can get away with that. But film would need to rework Thread significantly.
Yup. Or it would lend itself to a 3-4 season show. The CGI time would seem prohibitive thanks to the dragons, Thread, and sci-fi aspects of the story.
This is what I was looking for. Sure, we have a crappy animated movie, but all I have ever wanted was to see the Heroes of the Lance in real life.
There are a couple animated adaptations of some of the books, and the live-action adaptation of Hogfather is pretty good!
I would have loved Name of the Wind, but that lazy fuck Rothfuss is going the way of George Reorge Reorge Martin: he's been promising book 3 for a decade and can't finish it.
He wrote himself into a corner. Somehow he needs to wrap up a spiralling plot in one book...
It's never gonna happen.
I would love a true to the book series of World War Z. I’m not even sure anyone involved with that movie read the book. It should be a 3 season HBO series with an episode for each persons vignette. Intros and outros of each episode has the recurring reporter meeting the person and starting his recording as they launch into their narrative of what happened. If you need more episodes, just write additional vignettes. Season 1 is the events that lead up to the outbreak, season 2 is the war itself, season 3 is the aftermath. I’m pretty sure this is what Max Brooks was writing towards. It could be amazing.
I've been saying this for years. It's ideal for a series. Was terribly disappointed with that zombie movie that borrowed the name.
mass effect could be a huge tv and movie franchise but the designs of the aliens would make the effects budgets prohibitively expensive. damn would I love it though.
Old Man's War
Tom Godwin's The Survivors, it's pretty short so they could do their thing where they always mess with the story and it wouldn't have much effect.
Asimov's Robots stories, particularly those with Powell and Donovan, US Robots, etc could be the basis for a cool series, ideally retro-futuristic...
Surely you've seen the 100% faithful adaption, "Will Smith Shoots Stuff"?
And apparently Amazon made an adaptation of Foundation, not that I've watched it yet. Not sure if I even want to, part of the charm is how long ago it was written and how crazy some parts of it are
Oh shit. The Baroque Cycle getting the Game of Thrones treatment... minus the executive meddling.
You wouldn't even have to obsess over the history, alchemy, etc., just don't fuck it up. People get too wrapped around an axle thinking every single infodump has to be there. Stephenson's got issues (coughendingscough), but the stories are informed by the same research as the infodumps, and they'll hold up well.
Seveneves is coming as a series. Not sure if they could pull off Baroque, but I'm game. I'd love a Snow Crash film.
Typing that comment made me do my semi-annual check for adaptations, and I just saw that announcement came out a couple of weeks ago. Hope it comes along better than the movie that got stuck in development hell.
Seveneves would be the bomb (eta : they could even do the last part as a separate animated short)
Yeah, it certainly doesn't hold up as well as the "origin" story, but silly though it was I liked the last part of Seveneves. It could definitely work as an animation.
FALL could as well, or at least kind of a Tron-like thing.
Seveneves is functionally two separate books jammed together. I hope they do the serious TV show on just the first book.
You ask as if that was a good thing. Like an honor for a book. But I way too often find myself defending books with "It's nothing like the movie. Don't juge it by the awful movie."
Especially fantasy adaptions are regularly awful and damaging for the books.
Examples: The Dark Tower, Eragon, Percy Jackson, The Giver, Inkheart.
Netflix's Persuasion, The Beach to name a couple of non fantasy as well.
So I'd rather they leave the books alone and make original stories into movies.
After the Dark Tower movie came out, I heard a whole bunch of people on the internet saying that the movie was awful and the books are so much better. I didn’t see the movie, but if the books are so well-liked I thought I’d give them a try.
I tried my best, I really did. But I just couldn’t finish the first book. It was just way too surreal and abstract for me.
You are not alone in this. The first book is awful. It made me doubt my english reading comprehension. Everybody hates it.
It's unfortunate, that such a great series starts off with the worst book, not only of the series, but imo of all of Kings books.
Somehow the real story starts (for me) with the second book. The first is more of a world introduction, a world building tool. And otherwise quite irrelevant.
I urge you, to give the second book (The drawing of the three) a chance. You won't regret it, because if you disregard the first book, the series is fantastic.
I generally prefer to start series from the very beginning so I don’t miss anything, but I think I’ll go pick up that second book and give the series another try.
The second book begins with a kind of forword that summarises all relevant details of the first book.
Try reading it alongside the podcast the KingSlingers. The podcast is set up where they read a couple chapters at a time, then spend a 2 hours talking about those chapters. One person read the series multiple times and the other is just reading it for the first time. I'm halfway through the series, and now I want them to break down and discuss every book I read.
You said it better than i ever could. Starting at Jurassic Park, and going all the way to The Wheel of Time, just keep Hollywood away from my literature!
I don't mind it if it's a labour of misguided love, like Stephen King's many many many hit-or-miss film adaptations pre-2020.
I do mind being told repeatedly that I should like it by viral media, it being overhyped to the point of ridiculousness, it being given the full red carpet treatment by one of the two main studios, and then when I actually watch it it's been changed to suit some audience mass appeal (e.g. make the clown scarier / less scary / not like that) .
I guess what I'm saying is, I like it when books are adapted into films where the director can do whatever the hell they want, for good or for worse, without the studio whipping them to appeal to the mass audience, many who weren't even fans until they were told to be 5 minutes ago.