Books Into Movies

BonzaiBlitz

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I'm totally stoked that Ernest Cline's masterpiece Ready Player One is getting a movie adaptation.
With Steven Spielburg, no less.

So since Hollywood has apparently decided that branded properties are the only financially viable sources for films, what novels, short stories, or comics would you like to see adapted (well) into film?

I'm still waiting on a movie adaptation of The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor.
THAT is the serious Wonderland movie(s) we need, not Mr. Burton Sets Fire To Wonderland.
The novels are extremely well-written, the world feels alive and has an actual culture rather than Burton's Dark Insanity for Dark Insanity's Sake, and there's even an in-universe explanation of the difference between Lewis Carroll's stories and the "real" Wonderland.
Also, Hatter Madigan.
Full stop.

And assuming AMC's take on Preacher goes well, I'd love to see a finale movie made (Serenity-style), if only so we in Christian-Fundamentalist Land can see the Saint of Killers kill GOD on the big screen.

What about ya'll?
 
My favorite authors are:

Douglass Adams- (and Hitchhiker's Guide has already got its fair share of onscreen love)

Jacqueline Carey-
OMG the thought of them turning the Kushiel's books into films, especially with a super serious adult rating, like a mega-effects fantasy film meets (barf) 50 Shades of Wrong...But done right... Oh, yes please. That whole series of 9 books are among my favorite series of all time, and they do a great job of illustrating culture of consent versus the awful alternative. I recommend them to all of my kinky friends.

Juliet Marillier-
I'd like to see her writing get the Game of Thrones treatment, but some of her standalones like "Heart's Blood" or even "Wildwood Dancing" would make great movie material. She seems to work in turning folk stories into more fully realized novels, and she is a master of using tone to create environments you can practically smell and feel.

In fact honestly, after getting all into GoT (though I have yet to read the books) I like the format of using production and casting as slick and lovely as Hollywood's finest...but doing a show with season after season instead. Solves a lot of potential problems with trying to shoehorn literary content into movie runtimes and how many films to contract for and so on.

I actually wish that they would show episodes of shows in theaters. Just for the "lets go out and watch this together" factor, I'd have gladly shelled out to see episodes of shows, or specials related to shows, on the big screen. In fact that 50th Anniversary Dr. Who thing was fantastic in the IMAX!

Alice In Wonderland...y'know as a serious visual effects junkie (one of my favorite movies ever is Hellboy II) I see previews of the next installment of this, and while I'm intrigued...I sort of feel that I don't do nearly enough drugs to enjoy this properly.

I'll probably endeavor to go see The Jungle Book in 3D instead.

Unless someone gives me some hallucinogens in the near future and I need something "trippy" to go stare at...
 
The Kushiel series would be EPIC and Julliet Marillier's "Heart's Blood"... yes, please!

Others:
  • ANYTHING from Lynn Flewelling: she works with alot of interesting LGBTQ+ themes in a fantasy setting, which is not usual for the genre at all. Plus, "The Bone Doll's Twin" and her Shadowstalker series are just good fun.
  • Naomi Novik's "Black Powder War" series (all dragons, all the time!)
  • Carol Berg's "Song of the Beast", or the Lighthouse Duology. Some of my favourite books, ever.
  • Kate Elliot's Spiritwater series would make a batshit insane movie. The trilogy includes (but is not limited to): an interesting magic system in an alternate history timeline with an extended Ice Age, clockwork steampunk dirigibles, sword fighting, air and sea pirates, zombies, sentient feathered dinosaurs, the emancipation of slaves, espionage, assassins, dragons, shapeshifters, mages, alternate universes, aaaaaand a sweet romance story that is not a damsel-as-reward-for-hero trope. Sign me up!
 
Featherfool, I think I will look into some of the books you name. I have not taken the time to find good new authors to feed my reading habit in a while and I haven't been reading as much as I usually like to do. I've thought lately that I wished I knew someone who appreciated Carey and Marillier and could recommend material that I might like.

I have found that I tend to like female authors...male sci fi and fantasy writers (my humble opinion here) often write in styles that are too factual and not real enough for my taste. I want characters that really feel deep and human and relatable. Not brief sketched in tropes and battle stats, or a story arc serving primarily to illustrate their political beliefs.

I also enjoy Jennifer Roberson's books about the shapeshifters, but they follow a fairly predictable formula of generational royal succession, prophecy, etc. It's just the little girl who loves animals in me that revisits them every few years.
 
Featherfool, I think I will look into some of the books you name. I have not taken the time to find good new authors to feed my reading habit in a while and I haven't been reading as much as I usually like to do. I've thought lately that I wished I knew someone who appreciated Carey and Marillier and could recommend material that I might like.

I have found that I tend to like female authors...male sci fi and fantasy writers (my humble opinion here) often write in styles that are too factual and not real enough for my taste. I want characters that really feel deep and human and relatable. Not brief sketched in tropes and battle stats, or a story arc serving primarily to illustrate their political beliefs.

I also enjoy Jennifer Roberson's books about the shapeshifters, but they follow a fairly predictable formula of generational royal succession, prophecy, etc. It's just the little girl who loves animals in me that revisits them every few years.

If you're a fan of medieval-ish fantasy that deals primarily in emotional content, you have to check out Patrick Rothfuss and The Name of the Wind.
Very little "Magic A + Potion B = Incantation C," except as it relates to the emotional development of the main character.

The whole book (and series) is the main character telling the story of how he went from an idealistic prodigy with the world at his fingertips to a broken shell of a man waiting to die.

And if you are or have ever loved a musician, the way Rothfuss writes musical performance from the perspective of the musician will Big Bang your perception of reality.
 
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The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.

And, the Sword of Shannara (Book One).
 
If you're a fan of medieval-ish fantasy that deals primarily in emotional content, you have to check out Patrick Rothfuss and The Name of the Wind.
Very little "Magic A + Potion B = Incantation C," except as it relates to the emotional development of the main character.

The whole book (and series) is the main character telling the story of how he went from an idealistic prodigy with the world at his fingertips to a broken shell of a man waiting to die.

And if you are or have ever loved a musician, the way Rothfuss writes musical performance from the perspective of the musician will Big Bang your perception of reality.

For better or for worse, I have loved many musicians...

It's not even necessarily dealing in emotional content that I'm looking for. I'm cool with epic adventures with magic and battles and whatnot. I like authors who are skilled at writing to the senses. Who can fully describe, without rambling into absurd detail (*cough* Jean M. Auel *cough*) the scenes and characters in such a way that you can imagine them fully. Who strike a good balance in how many people are involved in the story.

I want to know in my mind how the light is, if there is a smell of primordial loam under the ferns, if the birds are singing or silent. I want to follow a character whose tone and texture of skin I can imagine well beneath my fingertips. Jacqueline Carey is good at this sort of thing. Some have accused her of overuse of "lofty prose." Whatever. I love it.

The sort of thing I do NOT like...
Wheel of Time books, for over-reliance on established tropes and repetitive and annoying stuff.

Anne Bishop's books about the society ordered by jewel colors and dominated by a gendered power struggle. While some of the character concepts could be sort of interesting, so many of them were basically interchangeable. She had a small handful of person-archetypes she worked with, and it got real old real fast. The women were constantly flipping between silly girl and terrifyingly powerful queen bitch, and the men were constantly flipping between mighty protectors, victims, and emotional babies.

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth books. Ugh. Repetitive story frameworks and pacing to each book, and then at the end, the whole damn thing was just a big political statement.

Melanie Rawn's Sunrunner books. Wayyyy too many characters. How do you even keep track of all these people? I can't. Her Exiles books are just as bad.

I guess female authors can be just as guilty. The only thing I'm saying is that the books with the kind of rich language and sensory enjoyment that really draws me in, have usually been written by women. In all fairness, there are not a whole lot of them that stand out. Carey and Marillier are head and shoulders above most.

Another way to look at it... Remember history classes in school? Books full of dates, names, and data that you were supposed to memorize? They made me hate history, I thought it was an insufferably dull subject. Then I started going on haunted tours...I don't believe in ghosts necessarily, but I love doing tours like that because TELL ME A STORY. You usually get a nice lesson in history and local folklore that isn't boring you to tears.

And to come back to the subject...I've been complaining for a long while about this thing of revisiting and remaking older movies, when there are so many awesome stories to be told from books. Does anyone have a literary franchise they've waited a lifetime to see made into a movie, and you keep getting teased about it, but it has yet to materialize? I have a guilty pleasure love of Elfquest that goes back to age 11 or so...and they've been dropping teases that it might be a movie one day, more or less forever.
 
Re:
"Does anyone have a literary franchise they've waited a lifetime to see made into a movie ..."

Yes, the books I mentioned. Although I'm afraid I'd hate the way the books were interpreted if they were made into movies.
 
I have found that I tend to like female authors...male sci fi and fantasy writers (my humble opinion here) often write in styles that are too factual and not real enough for my taste. I want characters that really feel deep and human and relatable. Not brief sketched in tropes and battle stats, or a story arc serving primarily to illustrate their political beliefs.

I agree! Also, I find female authors tend to do more interesting things with romance, if it's included in the plot, and, lets face it, I prefer it to be :D I find male authors particularly in fantasy and sci-fi venues really go for the woman-as-reward thing, which I am not a fan of. People are not trophies. You don't go around collecting relationship points by slaughtering helpless dragons until DING! sex happens with the first doe-eyed bit that comes along.

I'll have to check out Robertson; her series is not familiar to me. Any book that includes animals is fine by me! Well... within reason. My friends and I run a Dramatic Reading of Bad Books Club where we dramatize awful, awful published novels. One of the more recent ones was a shapeshifter erotia where the main studly-man-type was... a hedgehog. It was predictably awful, but also hilarious when preformed by six tipsy ladies.

If you're a fan of medieval-ish fantasy that deals primarily in emotional content, you have to check out Patrick Rothfuss and The Name of the Wind.

"Name of the Wind" was super fun, but it didn't stand up to additional readings. You start noticing character issues, plot holes, etc. It was a fun ride, though, as long as you don't look at it too closely :p

Spork, have you read Scott Lynch's "Gentleman Bastards" series? My god, the descriptions are epic. Just...whoa. Also very exciting and unpredictable story line which is nice! I'd very much recommend it, as long as you are comfortable with a certain amount of gore and descriptive rambling. Also, I agree with all your sentiments on "Sword of Truth", et al. Blech. Apparently we have similar taste in books!

I've wanted the children's story "Dragon's Milk" by Susan Fletcher to be made into a movie FOREVER. It was my first taste of an epic fantasy story, and I have to admit I reread it every few years even though it's definitely written for kids as a "first chapter book" type thing. I love that series. I can't even be objective at all about it, so don't ask lol

As a young person I desperately wanted Anne McCafferey's "Dragonriders of Pern" to be make into a series, really quite badly. There were even hints that it could happen from time to time. However, I reread one of the first books as an adult and realized... uh, nope. Not good at all! the stories are kind of dumb, and the characters are flat and uninteresting. Lots of "hit them till they love you" relationships in there, too. I was definitely too young to understand the dynamics between characters when I first read the books and rereading them made me feel real squicked. They were some of my favourites when I was 10 years old: I had to sneak them from the library because I wasn't allowed to read them.

Basically, if it had dragons in it, I will read that book and immediately want it in movie form!
 
As a young person I desperately wanted Anne McCafferey's "Dragonriders of Pern" to be make into a series, really quite badly. There were even hints that it could happen from time to time. However, I reread one of the first books as an adult and realized... uh, nope. Not good at all! the stories are kind of dumb, and the characters are flat and uninteresting. Lots of "hit them till they love you" relationships in there, too. I was definitely too young to understand the dynamics between characters when I first read the books and rereading them made me feel real squicked. They were some of my favourites when I was 10 years old: I had to sneak them from the library because I wasn't allowed to read them.

Have you read Todd's contributions to the series?
His characters (and dragons) feel much more human, he explores different relationship types (LGB, polyamory, etc), and in general makes the struggle feel so much more real.
 
Ooh! Kevin, I would love a Thomas Covenant movie series, but have you read the author's other work? The Gap series is completely amazeballs, and the 2-book set The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through is my absolute favorite, hands down.
 
Yeah, I mainly just prefer the First Chronicles.
 
Featherfool, I have not read the stories you mention, but I'm taking notes and I'm gonna hit up the interwebs later (or maybe the library, even!) and put these recommendations from this thread to good use.

And I don't judge you one bit for liking a chapter book written for young people. Marillier wrote a series of two (so far) books that were written for adolescents and I loved them so, so much that I gave one of them as a gift to a friend, an adult who seemed into fairyish fantasy magical storytelling kind of thing...and she flipped the book and saw on the back where it said it was written for young people and raised an eyebrow at me as though I were calling her a child. Well I wasn't! I had to show her where those books are totally on my shelf and tell her I've read them a dozen times.

They're just good stories, and that's all there is to it!!

Realized, at least a few of the stories I love feature a theme that I play out in my life, sometimes to my own peril and sometimes not... I love to be the one who chooses a partner who is shy, hidden, who is not appreciated easily by everyone around them. One who is so much more than what they appear to be. And to be the special someone who sees their secret self, and nurtures it and appreciates it. To understand my loved ones better than anyone ever has, and sometimes better than they do themselves. That is my favorite kind of love. Remember Beauty and the Beast? I was mad when Beast became a pretty, pretty princeling at the end. Not that I'm into the bestiality or even the Furry thing, but I loved the story where she defied social expectations and found his hidden self inside a monster. That story was beautiful. Turning him "back" into something pretty felt disappointing to me. Oh, now that he looks nice, now it's ok with everyone if she marries him. Of course. :rolleyes:
 
I like the "Beauty and the Beast" concept.
 
Is anyone else excited that we seem to be making progress toward an American Gods miniseries?
 
Never heard of it

...dude.

American Gods

Arguably the preeminent work of fantasy of the 21st century by its unquestionable master, asking and answering the question:
"What happens when the rites and rituals of the old world collide with the attitudes and addictions of the new?"
 
Interesting. Magic in the Sword of Shannara operates on a similar mechanism (i.e., collective belief).
 
Realized, at least a few of the stories I love feature a theme that I play out in my life, sometimes to my own peril and sometimes not... I love to be the one who chooses a partner who is shy, hidden, who is not appreciated easily by everyone around them. One who is so much more than what they appear to be. And to be the special someone who sees their secret self, and nurtures it and appreciates it. To understand my loved ones better than anyone ever has, and sometimes better than they do themselves. That is my favorite kind of love. Remember Beauty and the Beast? I was mad when Beast became a pretty, pretty princeling at the end. Not that I'm into the bestiality or even the Furry thing, but I loved the story where she defied social expectations and found his hidden self inside a monster. That story was beautiful. Turning him "back" into something pretty felt disappointing to me. Oh, now that he looks nice, now it's ok with everyone if she marries him. Of course.

Oh, Spork, you gotta read Robin McKinley's "Beauty". Like whoa is that a better retelling of the Beauty/Beast saga. Actually, she does a lot of fairy-tale retelling. "Deerskin" is one of my favourite books ever, and "Spindle's End" was good too. Unfortunately her husband recently passed away and it apparently tore her up but good. She said on her blog that she won't be writing anymore, which is a bummer because 1) she is awesome 2) she is leaving a series half done. That is probably selfish of me, though. She is obviously going through a hard time.

On another note:

The American Gods miniseries better be epic or I'm gonna be mad! The Sword of Shannara just had a miniseries, didn't it? It was presented as basically a "high school musical" version, which kind of... worked, actually :p
 
Oh, Spork, you gotta read Robin McKinley's "Beauty". Like whoa is that a better retelling of the Beauty/Beast saga. Actually, she does a lot of fairy-tale retelling. "Deerskin" is one of my favourite books ever, and "Spindle's End" was good too. Unfortunately her husband recently passed away and it apparently tore her up but good. She said on her blog that she won't be writing anymore, which is a bummer because 1) she is awesome 2) she is leaving a series half done. That is probably selfish of me, though. She is obviously going through a hard time.

Wow, that is really sad. I hadn't been following her recently but I *love* her fairy tell retellings.
 
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