I think you missed The Body, made into Stand By Me.
H.F. Saint’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man. The movie was just fucked up
The Charles Laughton version is considered quite good.
Will I get shot if I bring up the original Dune?
“The Great Gatsby” has been discussed here and elsewhere as impossible to do a decent screenplay, let alone film.
I’m surprised they even bothered to do “Breakfast of Champions.”
I also second The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or LotM). The first foulup is to always cast a red-haired freckle-faced 12-year-old type for Huck Finn. Huck was on the verge of manhood, that was one of the key points of the story. His becoming a man. It’s not a children’s story.
I challenge you with the Corman-Price MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.
And I also challenge the Lovecraft poster with the first RE-ANIMATOR, and a decent TV adaptation (Rod Serling’s Night Gallery) of PICKMAN’S MODEL.
I’ll say Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD- the 1981 NBC version starring Bud Cort was faithful to the book but too “Buck Rogersy” in its look & feel, while the NBC one a few years ago starring Peter Gallagher was better done but totally unfaithful to the book.
And they also always try to “politically correct” the story. Jim always has some mawkish soliloquy that wasn’t in the book and usually speaks far too properly less somebody think the director is really secretly pro-slavery (and the N word is gone). To me the irritating thing about TAoHF always being banned from libraries is that it’s probably the MOST clear novel in American history (at least to that point) in its promotion of the equality of the races: Jim doesn’t talk like Stepin Fetchit because he’s stupid, it’s because he’s extremely ignorant because he’s been willfully kept that way, but he’s also so strongwilled and loving a father and husband that he risks his life to make it to freedom in a place of which he knows nothing just for the chance that one day he can buy his wife and children back. I think a TAoHF told from Jim’s perspective might be a good novel and film.
(In one overblown miniseries of the book they tried to work in as many celebrities as possible; I remember among others a 90-ish Lillian Gish in a cameo as a character described in the book as 20 something.)
The OP said “books” and Poe’s Masque of the Red Death was a short story.
I think possibly short storis may lend themselves to successful conversions better than books.
I think the problem with making Huck Finn into a movie is that most people think it’s a kids’ book, and done properly it would be so shocking that people would think it unsuitable for children. Parents would bring their kids along to see a movie about those idyllic olden times, and find that for some they weren’t idyllic at all.
There was Swann in Love with Jeremy Irons, but I’m not sure it got very wide release here, and it only covered a very small part of the books.
His Dark Materials would make an excelent film trilogy (given to the right director), but it’s too religiously controversial.
Sorry, I know that’s slightly off topic as it has never even been attempted. But I still think it would make a good film or trilogy.
Aside from Swann in Love, parts of Proust have also been adapted as La Captive (2000) and Raoul Ruiz’s Le Temps Retrouve.
Personally, I felt the latter fell to bits in the last half hour, but it’s otherwise an honourable film version of the end of the novel and more successful as such than Swann in Love. I also suspect it’s the most likely of the three to be countable as a commercial success.
I do believe Poe wrote one or two novellas, but nothing I’d consider a full-fledged book.
RE Lovecraft also THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD was well done in THE RESURRECTED starring Chris Sarandon.
It’s in development as we speak.
I should have said that none of the movies I’ve seen based upon Lovecraft’s works worked very well. :smack:
FWIW here’s my list:
[ul]
[li]James Joyce -* Ulysses *[/li][li]Thomas Pynchon - *Gravity’s Rainbow *[/li][li]Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment[/li][/ul]
The novels that fundamentally delve into the human psyche are very difficult to translate into film.
I haven’t seen it yet, but 2003’s Bloom got some good (and bad) critical buzz.
If successful books that have never been made into movies count, what about Atlas Shrugged?
I think if they ever did that one they’d have to make it a miniseries. Too long for even a three-hour movie if it were done right.