For those that have read the story (all six books of it), can you see it being a successful movie adaptation, epic fantasy LOTR style, or not?
IMHO it has the prerequisites… but how would you condense it into a film? Do you think given the success of LOTR it would have an audience base of sorts already, or is it unfair to compare the two stories?
No I can’t see it as successful. There is way to much crap about leprosy and as a hero the guy sucks. He rapes the girl and spends the rest of the series whining and sticking the problem on others to save him and the world.
Wow, I was going to say much the same thing, but you said it a whole lot better than I had it planned. The only cool thing I remember about that series was the gravlingas? rock singing guys.Granted, I read the first 3 and then gave up on the series about 25 years ago.
Just wikipedia-ed, ok the name “unbeliever” is pretty cool too.
There are more than 6 books. He started a new series in the past few years. Yawn.
Any movie would have to eliminate the rapist angle. And I doubt the author would go for that.
The Elric movie is currently in limbo, and he (and his universe) are much more filmable than Thomas Covenant. No effin’ way IOW; for me, he’d be about 30th in line behind a bunch of other currently unfilmed fantasy heroes and heroines: Rhialto and Cugel of the Dying Earth, Corwin of Amber, Morgaine, and even Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
A Thomas Covenant movie would suck donkey balls as badly as the books did. Maybe even worse.
I always thought it would make a good anime.
Wow, that may be one of the weirder things I’ve seen on the internet. Which is saying a lot.
I’m not sure. Covenant is whiny, yes, but Elric is full-on emo, and the whole morally ambiguous hero bit won’t sell to film audiences.
Do you mean Cherryh’s Morgaine?
I reckon yes, it could be a great film - certainly the first three books. Agreed, the rapeyness would have to be mitigated somehow, so you would end up with a significantly altered TC. But they’re very iconic, extravagant books in a lot of ways that could well transmit to cinema. There’s little in the way of subtlety or complex narrative to stand in the way of an adaption, and the imagery is very strong - the giants, the bloodguard, leprosy, ravers, the whole environmental concept of the land and its people etc. Whilst the protagonist is famously morally conflicted, the story as a whole is very black and white.
This is a bit of a left-field suggestion IMHO, John Difool . Cherryh is a miles better writer than Donaldson in general, but her mainstream fantasy can be really dull. Struggling to see how you could build a film around Morgaine. Been ages since I’ve read them, though, maybe they’re better than I recall?
Whenever I think a TC movie needs to alter the rapeyness (thanks for the new word, Busy Scissors- feel free to use mine that I coined to describe Schindler’s List- “holocausty”), I think of soap operas- Luke & Laura on GH, Todd Whoever on OLTL. Just cast a handsome swoony actor as TC & all but the most ardent feminists will get all “It wasn’t REALLY rape!”
It is hard for me to imagine it as a movie, and if a movie harder for me to imagine it having the massive built in audience to make for success. And unlike nearly everybody here, apparently, I love the first three Thomas Covenant books.
I could, however, see it as a reasonably successful HBO series.
In a perfect world it could be done, but in ours it would never be green-lit. Sure, movies get made where the central character is a child molester (The Woodsman), but these sorts of films aren’t set in fantasy settings that require ridiculous budgets. You can’t film a series about The Land without showing off The Land.
They’d have to re-imagine the rape scene as something else, and whatever they chose it would water down Covenant and the reactions to him of those around him. If they left it in, a lot of folks would walk out of the theater, just as many copies of the first book are discarded after the rape scene. A mainstream audience would never stand for Covenant as a protagonist. He is too self-loathing, cowardly, and unlikeable.
Given all that, it becomes a niche film for a niche audience, so probably the only way to do it well on a niche film budget is to animate (anime) it.
The idea of an HBO series is interesting, although much would ride on the success of the upcoming A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Lena was 16, wasn’t she? Mighty hard for even a swoony actor to justify that.
And what about the second (third?) book, where TC is about to go all rapey on Elena, before he finds out she’s his daughter from his first bought of rapeyness.
The Bloodguard would be cool though.
Leper Outcast UNCLEAN!
What? Have antiheroes gone out of style now? Or even if you are ostensibly a rapacious bloodsucking fiend (thinking of Twilight <ahem> not Elric per se), you’re still cool in the eyes of the audience as long as you don’t actually do any vampirish things?
Yep. I’d be perfectly content if Cynthia would just get a new Morgaine novel out already (22 years and counting-I check her website at least once a year in the vain hope).
But an unsheathed Changeling would rock on the screen, IMNSHO. The 2nd book might work the best, as you’ve got that whole dying earth angle and a young heroine (the girl not Morgen Andharen) who could be the emotional center of the story.
I, too, like the Covenant books. But unlike Busy Scissors I think they’re too subtle for movie audiences. Specifically, that Covenant’s character and character arc is too subtle.
The whole point of his success against Lord Foul is that he didn’t go all Hile Troy and wage spectacular, action heroey war on Foul. I’m just not seeing any success for a trilogy of films with a fantastic backdrop that promises action and excitement, but ends in a climax where protagonist and antagonist… chat.
We already have The Golden Compass for that, after all.
Elena was putting the moves on Covenant, so while ooky, that’d’ve hardly been rape. (Of course, the ooky was there to put Covenant through the wringer again about the rape.)
edit: Weird. This is about the fourth time Cherryh’s Morgaine series has come up for me in the last two weeks. Looks like fate is suggesting a re-read… 
Elric sells out his own city and makes a habit of killing people he loves, plus, you know, the whole demon-worshipper angle. It’s a *leeetle *bit more anti- than most people want in their heroes, I think. Maybe if you have *Moonglum *as the POV character, it’d work better?
I like it just fine, but even a lot of my SF-reading friends don’t like Elric because it’s just so much a downer (for them).
OK, so it would just be incestey, not rapey. Still not quite fantasy action movie fare.
And doesn’t Lena show up in book 3, clearly insane from the rape 50 years ago? That’ll play well in the theaters.
Yep. In fact, the whole series is just chock full of things that won’t play well with theater test audiences.
Kinslaying of the Giants? That’ll get a rewrite. Armies of the Land continually getting their ass handed to them? Rewrite. Covenant’s endless moaning about leprosy? Boring; rewrite. Eyeless Hile Troy? Ooky; rewrite. All the endless parade of people being nasty to Covenant for very good reasons (e.g., Trioc)? Casts the “hero” in a bad light; rewrite. Heck, the “hero” being completely unheroic and is in fact a passive asshole who doesn’t actually do anything – that’ll not only be re-written, but completely reversed.
They’ll cast Jason Statham or someone the audience will like, and the ad copy will be something like: “In a Land, where Evil rules, only One Man can …”