I was thinking about a book I read about 10 years ago, as it made a very large impression on me, and it dawned on me. This book would make a wonderfully good movie, if it were adapted right off the page. The title of the book is “Maniac Magee” by Jerry Spinelli. Of course, it is a children’s book of sorts, but its quite a good read for anyone IMHO.
So, my question is, Do you think that Maniac Magee would be a good movie?
What books do you think would make great movies?
Fight Club…wait, that’s already been done, and quite wonderfully at that. The book is better, but the movie still kicks ass.
I don’t remember much of the details of MM, but I’m surprised it didn’t get turned into a movie. It seemed like such a popular book back in grade school…
Hollywood occasionally gets it right, but generally they have trouble translating a book onto the silver screen.
I think it’s because they don’t trust their audience to understand any subtelties of plot or character development. They try to over emphasize, simplify, and make it more “interesting” by adding scenes, deleting or combining characters, or leaving important plot points out all together.
I’ve got a myriad of books that I know of that, if done correctly, could make fabulous movies. Unfortunately, I think a lot of them would be ruined by Hollywood.
Well, they did make a tv movie of Maniac Magee that was on Nickelodeon. Here is the IMDB entry for it. The user reviews are negative but my 11-year old boy really liked it.
the DVD for First Blood says one of its features is audio commentary by the guy who wrote the book the movie is based on. I’m dying to get this thing; that sounds fascinating.