I would go and see the movie. I would. But I just don’t think it’s POSSIBLE to make a movie that’s anything like the book. You could get the story in there and a really determined writer and director and designer team could get the melancholy and the setting, but the infinitely creepy (and infintely long) build would either make an incredibly dull movie or need to get cut. And the book doesn’t really climax, per se. Stuff keeps building slowly, building more slowly, building, building… and then it sort of eructates.
Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely love this book and I would love to see any movie based on it. I just don’t think it can be done.
Manhattan Transfer by John Stith. Aliens take Manhattan; not in a “troops seize the city” sense but literally take Manhattan Island out of the Earth and into their ship.
I’d love to see a version of The Master and Margarita. It has tons of visual imagry which would work well in a film … Satan comes to Stalinist Russia and, literally, all hell breaks loose … complete with a pistol-packin’ Cat fighting it out with the KGB.
I’ve heard there was a Russian made-for-TV version made, but I never saw it.
I started a thread about how they would go about making Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell into a movie, based mostly on how they would show one character walking around in two worlds at the same time. At the time someone posted that there was info on IMDb that they were going to make it, with Don Cheadle attached to the project.
Howl’s Moving Castle. When I read this, I thought it would make an incredibly charming children’s movie.
There is a movie, animated by Miyazaki. I read the synopsis when it was still in production, and it seems Miyazaki took many liberties with the plot, even to the point of adding a war, to add his own personal political subtext. But because I love Diana Wynne Jones and Miyazaki so much, I can’t bring myself to watch it.
Another is Bridge of Birds. Not a live action movie, or even a movie, but a series. This book is so full of stuff that trying to cut it to 90 minutes would be a travesty.
Waverly by Sir Walter Scott. Braveheart was such a hit, I really don’t see how another piece of historical fiction with REALLY A LOT OF HIGHLANDERS wouldn’t do well. There are parts where the book reads almost like a screenplay.
Came in here -just- to say this one. I think visually alone it could be stunning, and the quirky interactions with Master Li would be very fun. Only problem I have is, if it made any bank, they’d make the sequels into movies… Which … Uhm… Well, let’s just say if Hughart could just make the sudden reveal in the later books… A little less predictable… That’d be nice.
Yes, I always thought that incident could make a horrifying, gripping film.
The Collyer Brothers also deserve a big-budget movie, perhaps based on the recent Doctorow novel. I suspect there could be Oscars in it for a pair of older actors:
The Body, a novella by Stephen King. Happily, Rob Reiner took it on and made Stand By Me, one of the few King book-to-movie successes.
The Milagro Beanfield War, by John Nichols, probably the funniest book I ever read (four or five times). Robert Redford turned it into a movie, but it lost a lot in the transition.
