I’ve often wanted a movie/series based on the Dragonlance books or the Dark Elf trilogy. What would you all like to see done if you had the ability to do it?
The Preston & Child “Diogenes trilogy” books.
Or just everything around Agent Pendergast
The Gaunt’s Ghosts Warhammer 40,000 stories.
If I were allowed some creative direction, I would specify that unless it was there in the source material there will be zero scenes of people just explaining shit instead of showing it
Discworld - preferably the City Watch novels. Books have been adapted a few times, but usually as lone events, and even the ones with a serious cast are just… okay.
Looking from one beloved dead author to another, Douglas Adams mercilessly chopped up the Hitchhiker’s Guide between mediums. There was no “original version.” It was all the same story, but sometimes with different events. That is the attitude necessary for capturing why Discworld is so good. Don’t film a book, page-for-page. That’s not how moving images work. Keep the characterization clear and fill in a storyboard from the Wikipedia description.
Anyway the real reason to go for a series would be consistent casting. Have the same guy play Vimes across a bunch of stories. Get cameos for Vetenari from the same wizened thespian. Call-forward future stories by turning bit-part scammers into Moist appearances, throw Gaspode in any scene with dogs, that sort of thing. Make Ankh-Morpork feel connected. Lived-in. Real, for a reality where wizards sometimes where fake glasses so people think they’re badly disguised as wizards.
Ender’s Game as season 1, and then Speaker For the Dead as seasons 2-3 (with a reworked ending rather than drawing from Xenocide).
The Gentlemen Bastards series could work well: Not too much CGI needed, and fancy rennaisance italy aesthetics deserve a fantasy show about thieving orphans!
Not a book, but I would love to see a cinematic adaptation of “East of West”. The universe is beautifully drawn.
Angry ghosts
Early Mormon church history is about as bizzarre and dramatic as it gets. I think a well-produced & historically accurate dramaticization of the weird beginnings of the Mormon church would make for a good miniseries.
GONE, really enjoyed that as a kid and when they then started making hunger game movies and everyone seemed to be following the formula I think it would’ve worked a treat around that time. It’s not that similar to those however it’s more supernatural mystery lord of the flies, but it would’ve felt like it belonged alongside the lines of hunger games and maze runner.
On another note the Jack Tanner books, especially Odin Mission would make great films or short series per book. Really enjoyed the pseudo retelling of world war 2 with bits of fiction mixed in.
The Webnovel “Mother of Learning” It has four arcs. Each arc is long enough to be made into two seasons, each containing 8 episodes.
Ender’s Game.
Hate the author, love the series. I’ve never been more angry with a movie, and a TV series with someone that’s actually read the books BUT has also largely disassociated from OSC would go a long way towards repairing things.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson.
bobiverse by dennis e taylor
I really don’t know about this one. I love the books, and with their success they’ve genome a bit more compatible with a screen adaptation, but a lot of it, and especially the first one, is a lot of internal monologue. In addition, the space physics and combat are amazing, but don’t translate into visuals easily either. Like I said, love the story, and pains me to say it. Some stories are just not made for the screen, and I think this is one.
None.
I don’t see what making a film or TV series adds to any book, all they ever seem to do is a disservice to the original story in the attempt to squeeze as much money from it as possible.
I’d rather more fully voice acted audiobooks were made staying more true to the original texts but adding that extra element to draw you in than just one narrator trying to differentiate characters with different voices.
I see your point. But if done right, the movie/show can be almost as good as the books (Fellowship of the Ring and One Piece). It just takes someone who loves the material being used or (in the case of One Piece) the creator watching over every step.
Yep. I wanted to mention Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series but it already has a stellar GraphicAudio adaptation.
Yup, I love Graphic Audio and am currently listening to Stormlight Archives by Sanderson produced by them. It is great!
I love Sanderson novels and especially the Stormlight Archives. I know if Amazon or someone picked it up, they’d absolutely ruin it. Probably the only way we’d see a faithful adaptation would be in animated form.
I don’t see what making a film or TV series adds to any book, all they ever seem to do is a disservice to the original story in the attempt to squeeze as much money from it as possible.
It’s that last part that effs it up. For example, I really liked Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet. That was a creative interpretation. I enjoyed Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I thought the books were decent, but the movie captured the best bits, IMO. Early seasons of Game of Thrones were good. I like some of the changes made to move the internal dialog to conversations. It gave the side characters more life.
It’s when the artistic vision is cast aside in the name of profit, then the work of art suffers.
The Culture series by Iain M Banks.
They turned the inside the suit moments of Iron Man into pop culture. They could figure it out, I bet!
I always thought the drone scenes would be so interesting on film like a mic between bullet time and 10000fps. Also weird storytelling seeing the other scenes pop up in drone time.
I honestly think that would ruin it for all the Culture fans. Much as I love Banks’ work, I like the movie of the books that I’ve produced in MY head more than what anyone else could make.
I understand your point but feel it is a bit selfish.
I honestly think that would ruin it for all the Culture fans.
But it would also create a lot more Culture fans. Just as the LOTR movies got a huge number of people to read Tolkien.
I would love to see more people read Banks.
I like the movie of the books that I’ve produced in MY head more than what anyone else could make.
If they are ever adapted no one is going to force you to watch and you can reread them when ever you want.
Totally agree with you, many people said the same about Lord of the rings before Peter Jackson made an amazing adaptation. That doesn’t mean every adaptation is good, far from it, but that shouldn’t stop people from trying.
I’m kinda in this boat too. I’m glad Banks’ estate didn’t let the Amazon series go through. Something about a guy like Bezos hailing the books while being a billionaire capitalist egomaniac just makes me uneasy with the whole idea.
Post-scarcity communism is fine. I’d actually consider the culture just lib, not even left or right. It’s a totally voluntary society. Except maybe for some special circumstances.
Post-scarcity communism is fine.
Post scarcity makes labels like communism/capitalism meaningless. They are both systems to deal with the scarcity of resources.
One of the best lines in Bank’s work to describe this is from LTW:
“Money is a sign of poverty”
Ie: A society that needs money to apportion scarce resources is always poor as there is never enough to go around.
It certainly has shaped my own ethics and ideas.
My first thought. Though you could do Use of Weapons, Inversions, and The State of the Art. The Algebraist, Feersum Endjinn, The Player of Games, could all be their own trilogy. Use of Weapons, Look to Windward, Surface Detail etc.
