General / Off-Topic What book would you like to see made into a film?

Bill Clement

Bill Clement
My search-fu is weak, I can't find the thread which is almost certainly already posted. :eek:

But the question stands- what book would you like to see turned into a movie?

With the right producer and director, Ian M Banks' Use of Weapons could be a film to redefine modern cinema. The twin narratives, rushing headlong to an astonishing, visceral, shocking reveal, painted against Banks' impossibly huge, galaxy spanning Grand Space Opera Culture background, could stun and enchant audiences in equal measure. It could be that rarest of creations- a cinematic event that lives up to the title!

What do you think, guys? What would you like to see up there on the Big Screen? You can name your dream lead/cast/production team if you like. :D
 

OnePercent

OnePercent
Obvious answer!
220px-TheKillingStar.jpg
 

jasonbarron

jasonbarron
I no longer wish to see my favorite books/stories/novels adapted to the silver screen, but instead think an 8-10 hour treatment on Netflix, HBO, Amazon would be more able to do them justice.

With that said, I've longed for a treatment of the beloved Chronicles of Amber by the incomparable Roger Zelazny since I was a boy.
 
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Vasea Azure

Vasea Azure
There are actually two my fav books that screams to be put on the silver screen The Invincible sifi novel by Stanislaw Lem and H.P. Lovecraft`s In the mountains of madness. Both could be incredible as a full movies but I`m also afraid that with the current politically correct trend the script writers would butcher the characters. But if properly made, I would love to see both in a cinema.
 

GreyAreaUK

GreyAreaUK
Magician by Raymond E. Feist. Although I'm with Jason on this, I'd rather see it given room to breath as a TV series instead of being shoe-horned into a film or three.

As for the Culture books...tricky. I'd love to see some of them adapted, but it would be so hard to do it properly. Consider Phlebas and Player of Games are probably doable though. After that the complexity starts to ramp up and they become harder to do justice to.

HailVectron said:
ALL the David Gemmel - "Druss the Legend" series.
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Agree wholeheartedly, although the Shannow stories might be easier. Plus, you get Sipstrassi as a bonus :)
 

GreyAreaUK

GreyAreaUK
HailVectron said:
Brilliant, thank you - now I'm going to have to read them all again, now you've reminded me...

The world feels slightly diminished without any more Gemmell to look forward to.
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Morningstar would be a good'un as it's essentially a standalone book. It's been a while...does it technically take place in the same universe as Knights of Dark Renown?

And how about the Skilgannon The Damned books? Gods damnit, so much good stuff. You're right, the world is a little duller without him. I guess we'll just have to learn to be strong in the broken places...
 

StiTch

StiTch
It's an awkward question because I don't respect the ability of film makers to reproduce any book I respect/enjoy that much.

I mean if the author and all the world's best screen writers and directors came together to produce a master piece, and I could choose that master piece, I would probably pick the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. But I'm pretty sure many of the themes in it wouldn't go down well and I'm not sure many screen writers are interested in developing a day-long film. I could go for the Gap Cycle by the same author, but there's even more themes that wouldn't go down well. At least we'd have the Elite-esque film I've always wanted.

That aside, an adaptation of Rankin's Brentford trilogy would please me no end if it captures Rankin's marvelous sense of humour.

But again, I'd trust no-one to faithfully reproduce the feel of any of the above series, and nothing short of a few hours for the film could do so in any case.
 

StiTch

StiTch
GreyAreaUK said:
Oh, lordy. Can you imagine trying to reproduce the darts match in 'The Brentford Triangle'?
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*chuckles*

My concern would be Marchant. I would stop watching if they captured anything but the perfect personification while remaining an inanimate object. An oxymoron at best, but Rankin's humour knows no categorisation...heh.
 

GreyAreaUK

GreyAreaUK
StiTch said:
*chuckles*

My concern would be Marchant. I would stop watching if they captured anything but the perfect personification while remaining an inanimate object. An oxymoron at best, but Rankin's humour knows no categorisation...heh.
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I confess I rather lost track of Rankin after 'The Sprouts of Wrath'. I may have to reacquaint myself.
 

Schembri

Schembri
How many would dream to see a movie series based on Gaunt's Ghosts or the Horus Heresy of WH40K without the involvement of the originators (whatever they do as cinema is a flop, except DOW intro trailer)
Gaunt's Ghosts has the potential to be the new Star Wars especially if the author (Dan Abnett) has a final say on the appearance, at least in descriptive writing he is a genius.
 

Morbad

Morbad
The 120 Days of Sodom, and not any of that watered down low budget softcore nonsense either.

Also, Peter Watts' Blindsight. Need to remedy that distinct lack of hard-sci in film.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
Bill Clement said:
What book would you like to see made into a film?
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The Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by Richard P. Morgan:
. Altered Carbon
. Broken Angels
. Woken Furies

Dark cyberpunk filled with cool ideas and concepts.

About Altered Carbon:
Set roughly five hundred or so years in the future, Altered Carbon imagines a world in which death has been overcome by the technology of "sleeving." A person's consciousness is stored in a doodad called the cortical stack, located at the base of the skull. Upon your body's physical death, your stack goes into storage, where your survivors (or someone) can have it either reloaded into a virtual environment or even another body. And not necessarily the body you last had. But this technology has given birth to new class distinctions. Only the richest folks can afford the best resleeving, and the top tier of those, derisively called "Meths" (after Methuselah), can afford to have their own bodies cloned repeatedly and kept on ice in swanky private clinics, effectively becoming immortal. The hoi polloi, on the other hand, have to make do as best they can, their families often barely able to afford the storage fees. And they're often subject to the indignity of having their own bodies used as sleeves by others while their own stacks languish in storage (a common penalty for almost any crime).

Speaking of crime, sleeving has redefined it as well. What was once murder is now called "organic damage," and the victim can be pulled out of storage to testify, unless, for religious reasons, they have a conscientious objection placed against their revival. You can still actually kill someone for good, by destroying their stack. While most crimes will land a person a century or two in storage, some, like "real death," can get you erased. Morgan definitely drives it home that commodifying life like this makes life cheap, a view that certainly butts heads with the emerging transhumanist/extropian view that life extension by any means necessary is humanity's most desirable goal. And Altered Carbon is an often brutal noir-ish thriller set in a world where life can't seem to come any cheaper.

http://thegreenmanreview.com/wordpress1/books/richard-k-morgans-takeshi-kovacs-trilogy/
 
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