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?
Pretty much any Brandon Sanderson book series. Mistborn, Steelheart, Way of King’s, Skyward… Etc
*Stormlight Archives
I was gonna say that… Even if I just read Way Of Kings yet. It’s so good. Really liked it.
I’m currently entering “The slump” in Wheel of time. Can’t wait to get to Brandon books.
Wot-encyclopedia.com it has excellent chapter summaries for the slog books.
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.
The Culture series by Iain M Banks.
Though I am not sure how you would translate some of them (Excession…) into a visual story.
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’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.
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 always thought the drone scenes would be so interesting on film like a mix between bullet time and 10000fps. Also weird storytelling seeing the other scenes pop up in drone time.
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.
They turned the inside the suit moments of Iron Man into pop culture. They could figure it out, I bet!
Robin Hobb’s fantasy books would be interesting. Probably quite hard to adapt well though.
I would love to see a movie or miniseries based on the “Bas-Lag” novels by China Mieville, which are “Perdido Street Station”, “The Scar”, and “Iron Council”
I think the best description of these books would be “Gritty Steampunk Fantasy” with a very generous dose of Weird. The writing is very descriptive, even when you really would rather not know about what’s being described.
Some things that are mentioned in these three books:
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Mosquito people. The males are quiet and studious, the females are strong, dangerous, and driven mad by hunger
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Punishment factories. Criminals are sentenced to “Remaking”. The Remade are people who have had either machinery or animal parts grafted onto them. Most Remakings are cruel and useless.
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Smokestone. Rock that will change unpredictably into smoke - and back into stone.
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Frog people who can make water hold a shape for a short time. A longshoreman’s strike in one of the books involved a bunch of these guys forming a large gap in a river.
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Sentient steam powered constructs
*Drugs that let you experience other people’s dreams.
There is a lot I have to leave out due to spoilers, but it would be an awesome series.
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Ursula le Guin anyone?
The Left Hand of Darkness might be interesting. The Word for Tree is Forest would likely get thought of as an odd Avatar clone. But The Dispossessed would probably never get made, people would find worth in the politics and abandon the megacorp making it.
Le Guin prose is exceptional and would be nearly impossible to bring to screen well. I’m sure it will be tried at some point. Maybe a dark horse, but I actually think The Lathe of Heaven might be the most adaptable. It’s the simplest story and has plenty of room for exciting changes and visuals in a film.
And… the 1980 adaption of Lathe of Heaven is fantastic. (There’s also a remake I refuse to acknowledge.)
Her Earthsea book was actually adapted. By Studio Ghibli no less. It was so bad that the dad of the director left the theater halfway through to have a smoke. Said dad was no other than Hayao Miyazaki (Director of Spirited Away, Howl’s Miving Castle, Castle in the Sky, etc)
Redwall.
Do it in full photo realistic CGI; I want to see the beautiful castles and countryside, all the delicious food, and the gruesome battles in all their glory.
That would either be fire or a smoldering pile of shit.
There’s so much source material that I think it could work.
Or they could hire furries
No thanks
Anything to do with Pern. Some good high fantasy and tech mixed. Might be a harder sell to the general public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern
The Brainship series (The ship who sang). This would go over well with the Star Trek, Star Wars fansbase, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ship_Who_Sang
The Vorkosigan saga. This would also go well with the Star Trek/Wars fanbases. More political than Brainship series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga
The Dragearan books about Vlad Taltos by Steven Brust. Especially the first few. High fantasy mystery novels. This would be an easy sell, IMO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust#Vlad_Taltos
This made me realize I haven’t read any new books in a while.
Holy crap I forgot about Pern. I read a few of those in middle school and remember liking them a lot
The Amtrak Wars.
Red Rising
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson as the caterpillar)
The name of the wind.
A Name of the Wind adaptation would either be incredible or fucking awful, no in between.
Patrick needs to finish the dang o Series first and foremost, no more adaptations without finished source material plz.
The Riftwar Cycle from Feist. Each series is a season. And even side-series, like The Empire trilogy.
It seemed like it was finally going to happen - someone even acquired the rights, after Feist knocked back offers over and over due to them not being a “good fit”.
But, a year later, it fell apart.
The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance.
It’s an old series, but the imagination and world building put into it should make for some great stories.I’d love to see the last 3 books of The Expanse series made into a trilogy of movies.
I would prefer at least 10 episode seasons, but I’d take anything at this point. The last 3 books were the best of them all, and that’s with the first 6 being absolutely amazing as well.
Greatest series ever, I will die on that hill.
This whole thread is making me want to listen to the audiobooks all over again.
Let the dark sideExpanse flow through you
Three Body Problem/ Liu Cixin’s Dark Forest goodness
It’s being made by Netflix I think. I’m 2/3rds of the way through the books. I think it lends itself well to TV because the characters are only devices to move the plot along, rather than specific identities that you can invest in/relate to etc. Interested to see how it goes.
A Chinese show has already been released and an American one is releasing on Netflix soon. The Chinese version can be streamed on Viki. I’m about 1/3 of the way through (30 episodes) and I’m absolutely loving it. They don’t dumb down any of the details with the science and is staying very true to the books so far. You just have to be willing to watch a subtitled show
I’m happy to be surprised but I doubt I’ll like the US version as much. Nearly every US book adaptation I’ve watched has been dumbed down “for a wider audience” and changed quite substantially (looking at you, Silo and Beacon 23). This is also coming from D and D of GoT infamy, so we’ll see if they can turn their track record around. At least this book is finished so they have the entire source material to work with
Uh… it is being made into a series. I also don’t get the hype about three body problem. I thought that book was mediocre at best.
Laurell Hamilton’s Anita Blake series Kim Harrison’s Hollows series Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Piers Anthony Xanth
