# Ever read a book or short story and thought "they HAVE to make this into a movie!"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 19, 2010, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706 "2010-12-19T10:27:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Curate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Curate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Curate)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/21 "2010-12-20T14:39:55Z")
I’d like to see _Old Man’s War_ by John Scalzi. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/22 "2010-12-20T15:17:27Z")
Yeah, every single thing by [Neal Stephenson!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson) But I ain’t optimistic. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/23 "2010-12-20T15:34:21Z")
[Marvels](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvels). The Marvel Universe from the perspective of the average man. I thought it was brilliant. Will never get made, though. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/24 "2010-12-20T15:44:56Z")
> [@plankter](#): > > _His Majesty’s Dragon_ by Naomi Novik. Peter Jackson has plans to make a “large budget miniseries” from Novik’s books. As of [this interview](http://screenrant.com/peter-jackson-temeraire-adaptation-ross-36862/), he was looking at 2010. But those Hobbit movies will be keeping him busy… Mark Frost’s _The List of 7_, a truly ripping yarn, would make a wonderful movie. (I think there were plans that fell through.) I still hope–it could certainly qualify as steampunk & the heroes are A Conan Doyle & the mysterious agent who inspired those stories… ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/25 "2010-12-20T15:48:49Z")
**Fletch**. It was a movie script to begin with. Unfortunately, they cast Chevy Chase in the role, and the film was turned from an intriguing adventure to a second-rate comedy. **Day of the Triffids** was the perfect outline for a horror film. Unfortunately, the producers of the film didn’t think so and made it unwatchable. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/26 "2010-12-20T15:49:17Z")
Two by George R.R. Martin that would make awesome movies in the right hands: _Fevre Dream_, a thriller about vampires along the Mississippi River before the Civil War (as if Mark Twain and Bram Stoker had cowritten a novel). _Tuf Voyaging_, an environmental satire about an oddball captain who comes into possession of a gigantic, long-abandoned biowarfare starship and goes from planet to planet, solving (or not) their ecological problems. > [@Curate](#): > > I’d like to see _Old Man’s War_ by John Scalzi. Hear, hear! Ridley Scott has optioned Joe Haldeman’s _The Forever War_, which is similar in many ways, and I’ll take that, too. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/27 "2010-12-20T17:12:04Z")
I remember reading _K-Pax_ and thinking “The guy wrote this just to sell the movie rights”. ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/28 "2010-12-20T17:21:06Z")
Denis Johnsons’ “Jesus Son” a collection of short stories that tell a large story. I read it when I was 18 or so and thought it was the best non-genre fiction I had ever read. Later, I was in an ‘writing adaptations’ class in college and started to turn it into a stage play. While I was doing this, I learned a movie was shortly coming out. The movie was decent. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/29 "2010-12-20T17:21:08Z")
H. Beam Piper’s **Little Fuzzy**. Especially now, when CGI has advanced to the point where CGI Fuzzies would be feasible and believable. The merchandising money alone should make the movie a hit and probably spawn at least a couple of sequels! ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/30 "2010-12-20T17:22:45Z")
[Motherless Brooklyn](http://www.amazon.com/Motherless-Brooklyn-Jonathan-Lethem/dp/0375724834), by Jonathan Lethem. Basically a detective with Tourette’s. He’s not a detective by trade, he’s a small time criminal flunky, just solving this one crime. [Maybe it will be a movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385887/), but the 2013 release date used to be 2010, then 2011. I don’t have high hopes. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/31 "2010-12-20T19:06:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Yeah, every single thing by [Neal Stephenson!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson) But I ain’t optimistic. Oh god, yes! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/32 "2010-12-20T19:34:26Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > H. Beam Piper’s **Little Fuzzy**. Especially now, when CGI has advanced to the point where CGI Fuzzies would be feasible and believable. The merchandising money alone should make the movie a hit and probably spawn at least a couple of sequels! Writers do sometimes write [author tracts.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorTract) Much of [Piper’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beam_Piper) SF was barely-disguised apologia for historical and contemporary colonial imperialism, ETs (such as Fuzzies) substituting for human “natives”. The same imperialism that was being dismantled during the period when he wrote. As we see in _Uller Uprising,_ ETs are, like natives in Earth’s colonial history, to be classified as “good” or “bad” depending on whether they are friendly or hostile to their colonizers. As we see in “Oomphel in the Sky,” the colonizer-native relationship is presumptively beneficial to the natives, and do-gooders who think otherwise just don’t get it. This is largely forgotten, now, by anyone who has not read Piper’s books – unlike Heinlein, he has no reputation with which even non-readers are familiar. But, if a Fuzzy movie were made, it would draw at least some public/academic/fanboy attention to all of that. Which would be interesting. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/33 "2010-12-20T19:59:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Day of the Triffids was the perfect outline for a horror film. Unfortunately, the producers of the film didn’t think so and made it unwatchable. I’ve mentioned it several times on this Board, and I’m sure you must have run across it, but there was a BBC adaptation that was very faithful to the book, and is now available on DVD. > **[Amazon.com: Day of the Triffids, The : John Duttine, Emma Relph, Maurice...](https://www.amazon.com/Day-Triffids-John-Duttine/dp/B000TSTEO6)** > > Product Description Day of the Triffids, The (DVD)All humans eat vegetables. But what if we were the helpless ones, and the plants were eating us? Following the Earth's close encounter with a comet, a meteor shower strikes Britain's... (There has also apparently been yet another British TV version, which I hear isn’t very faithful at all. I haven’t seen it.) > **[The Day of the Triffids (2009 TV series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids_%282009_TV_series%29)** > > The Day of the Triffids is a drama made in 2009. It is a loose adaptation of John Wyndham's 1951 novel of the same title. The novel had been adapted in 1962 as a theatrical film and by the BBC in a 1981 series. > In an alternate version of contemporary Great Britain, triffids are large carnivorous plants capable of vicious and intelligent behaviour, equipped with venomous stingers that they use to stun their prey before feeding on them. Bill Masen (Dougray Scott), whose mother was killed by a tr... ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/34 "2010-12-20T21:08:56Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Writers do sometimes write [author tracts.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorTract) Much of [Piper’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beam_Piper) SF was barely-disguised apologia for historical and contemporary colonial imperialism, ETs (such as Fuzzies) substituting for human “natives”. The same imperialism that was being dismantled during the period when he wrote. As we see in _Uller Uprising,_ ETs are, like natives in Earth’s colonial history, to be classified as “good” or “bad” depending on whether they are friendly or hostile to their colonizers. As we see in “Oomphel in the Sky,” the colonizer-native relationship is presumptively beneficial to the natives, and do-gooders who think otherwise just don’t get it. > > This is largely forgotten, now, by anyone who has not read Piper’s books – unlike Heinlein, he has no reputation with which even non-readers are familiar. But, if a Fuzzy movie were made, it would draw at least some public/academic/fanboy attention to all of that. Which would be interesting. Interesting! I didn’t know that. But given the popularity of _Avatar_, which has similar themes, I think \*Little Fuzzy \*would do very well today (and you have to admit, stuffed Fuzzies would sell so fast they wouldn’t be able to keep them in the stores!). It would be especially interesting if they made it in the very 1960’s-intensive “cocktailin’” style that the book was written in, though I doubt they’d do that. I could see Clint Eastwood as Jack Holloway. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/35 "2010-12-20T23:27:30Z")
Timefall, James Kahn The Man Who Folded Himself, David Gerrold The Green Futures of Tycho, William Sleator For some reason, they tend to be time travel novels. Also Momo, by Michael Ende. Apparently there are one or two version in German, but I’d love to see an English one, or obtain the others with English subtitles. I was highly anticipating the movie of Sphere, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/36 "2010-12-20T23:34:39Z")
Battlefield Earth (seriously). Needless to say I was wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/37 "2010-12-20T23:41:38Z")
The books I love do not make good movies. But I’d like to see Ann-Marie MacDonald’s play [Good Night, Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Desdemona_%28Good_Morning_Juliet%29) on the screen. It is extremely cinematic in presentation as written; in fact, in the script notes, MacDonald specifically denies that she meant the play to be produced in Hollywood, so certainly I’m not the only person who thinks so. It’ll never happen, of course. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/38 "2010-12-21T01:58:34Z")
Oh, and Anathem is something I’d really like to see as a movie (or miniseries). ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/39 "2010-12-21T02:03:55Z")
Is Guillermo del Toro available to make **Perdido Street Station**? ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706/40 "2010-12-21T02:03:56Z")
Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, by George Lucas. But seriously: Susanna Clarke’s book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, two early-19th century English magicians that bring magic back to England. Great story. also, mentioned many times before: Larry Niven books, e.g. Ringworld, or The Integral Trees, or The Mote in God’s Eye. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-read-a-book-or-short-story-and-thought-they-have-to-make-this-into-a-movie/564706.md?page=3)