Frans G. Bengtsson’s viking novel novel about Orm Tostesson the Wide-travelled deserves a better treatment than the 1964 abomination.
Raiding parties at dawn, heroic deaths with famous last words, love, death and betrayal, good deeds being rewarded at unexpected moments. Men of action and honor. Wisecracks and understated humour, and a wry look at Christianity, Judaism and Islam as offered by a heathen outsider.
Retief. Keith Laumer.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Robert Heinlein
Time Must Have a Stop. Aldous Huxley.
She Hates my Futon. (Once it’s finished.)
The Lord of the Rings – a version that includes the stuff PJ left out, and fixes he parts he effed up. Probably a 6+ movie series, but you did say any film I wanted…
This an excellent choice and, since we’re doing fantasies here, an art house / indie oriented presentation, with multi-night viewing, would be excellent.
What would you think of a production under the aegis of say PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre series? Then, why not do a Passion of the Christ minimal subtitles presentation, given the audience that would entail? Made-for-TV though, miniseries or not, hell-to-the-no: Oprah screwed up Their Eyes Were Watching God badly enough (probably due to production input from ABC), though Halle Berry was an excellent casting choice.
Any casting/directing choices from you two? For my film, I’d like to cast Forest Whitaker, as Erskine Fowler and Jean-Marie Baptist as the female lead. Denzel Washington woudl certainly occur to most Hollywood minds, but Whitaker would be the right age and carry the gravitas needed.
Peak Banana, you’re so going to Purgatorio.
If Lightnin’ is like everyone else who hated the ending, I’d hazard a guess that Lightnin’ is also pissed off that the book ending and the movie ending are polar opposites. The movie ending is one of those irritating gotcha! twists that M. Night Shamalan is famous for, and just not at all fitting with either the tone of the rest of the movie or what seemed to be the message of the novel’s ending. Stephen King claims to like the movie (though I haven’t heard his opinion on the end, just the movie in general), but a lot of people thought the movie’s ending is inappropriate considering it was a fairly faithful adaptation until the last five minutes.
I should have disclosed that I didn’t see the movie, so now this makes sense. It seems Shyamalan got in his own way by ignoring the good material that he and going for the twist-shtick he seems to be known for.
Do you have any suggestions?
I’d love to see Good Omens finally be filmed. As long as I get my dream cast, Jonathan Pryce as Aziraphael and Rupert Everett as Crawley.
Well, torture porn is big these days, but I wouldn’t want to be around for the backlash to this:
I would have said Paradise Lost, but it looks like there might be one in the works by somebody with a better chance of it getting made.
A movie that absolutely could not get made by Hollywood, except as a perversion of the source novel: The Space Merchants. The most scathingly satirical anti-consumerism novel I’ve ever read. I’d also have vending machines in the lobby of every theater it was shown in selling “Popsie Pop” and “Crunchies”.
As an off-the-wall choice, I’d like to see Have Space Suit - Will Travel made either as an animated film or live action. Great story, lots of action, pretty much no politics, large sweeping themes, and a story kids and adults could both love.
Maybe I’m naive, but why would it be necessary to leave out the anti-semitic parts of his later life? From the history in the link, a mini-series would be essential and all of it interesting, but if you have to pick one period of his life to condense into a one-sitting movie of any length, which would it be?
Well, you’ve got Muhammed and Ali there. Just replace them with Muhammed Ali. What he’s doing in Hell while he’s still alive, that’s for the producers to figure out.
As for a film I’d like to make? An adaptation of David Sheff’s book Game Over, a history of the Nintendo corporation and how it made it big in both Japan and the U.S. Since it’s a non-fiction book, most of it would have to be dramatized, of course.
Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula. I’m thinking Charlotte Gainsbourg or Miranda Otto as Genevieve Dieudonné. You could probably cast a lot of characters as cameo appearences (Dr. Jeckyll, etc) by actors who’ve played the same or similar parts in the past.
Royal Consort Dracula himself might be a bit hard…I think there have been three or four actors who’ve done his role justice, in the last few decades. (Plus, his own dialogue in the book wasn’t that great, oddly enough.)
Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Perilous Gard. My favorite book as a kid (hell, it still is). Period piece (set in 1557) featuring a smart strong heroine (not stereotypically feisty, not beautiful) who saves the brooding handsome hero, fairies (who may just be humans whose ancestors escaped the coming of Christianity by retreating to underground caves) and human sacrifice, a retelling of the ballad of “Tam Lin,” and a little bit of a love triangle to hook the teens. Oh, and a makeover story in its own way. Not to mention a straightforward plot that would be easy to film and did I mention the fairies? With fairy queen? And human sacrifice? And love? And a fantastic heroine?
I’ve been mentally casting and recasting the roles since I first read the book at age 11 and I’ve never found anyone suitable, but now I’m thinking Sean Bean for the handsome hero’s older brother. And come on, what man or woman can resist seeing a movie with Sean Bean? 
To answer the second part first, a movie would definitely deal with his adventures in the American West. Think of it! A French nobleman turns gunfighter in the old West!
As for the anti-Semitism, I was thinking of Hollywood there…the POTB would be unlikely to have an anti-Semite as a protagonist unless you were setting him up as a villain. Me, I think biographies should show the complexities of the person being studied, warts and all, but Hollywood is more likely to fund either a hagiography or a study of the man as a tragic villain.
I’ve day-dreamed about making a biopic of “Princess” Alice Roosevelt Longworth, TR’s daughter. The popular image of her as a Gilded Age Riot Grrrl who grew up to be the feistiest old gal on the DC social scene could be tempered with elements which show that, in many respects, she was also a maladusted, damaging bitch.
Looking at the rest of Teddy Roosevelt’d kids, the movie could be expanded to display, through their invovlement in politics; wars; safaris and explorations; big business and the Civil Rights movement how they lived in TR’s shadow as well as at the center of the “American Century” Lots of good period visuals, plus great parts for whoever wold be cast as Alice and Kermit
I came in to say what Sampiro said - The Baroque Cycle. It would definitely have to be big budget and a miniseries - there’d be so many costumes and sets. And so many pages in the books.
I’d like to see it as a BBC miniseries, myself. Hollywood might try to make the entire cycle into one big stupid film and leave a lot of the good stuff out. I have no idea who I would cast as any of the characters…I don’t think I care. I just want to SEE it.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell would make a good movie…
Man, I hoped to see more adventurous replies to such a promising OP!
Now that Philip K. Dick’s books are progressively getting moviefied, I’d love to see The Divine Invasion done by someone like Michel Gondry or Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Hell, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was basically Ubik with a more whimsical setup…someone could easily knock out a great rendition of that book.
One of my personal dreams is to do a great film of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 - I think it would be totally hot done as a seventies CA period piece. It would be fun enough to just be able to film the Baby Igor movie that’s shown on the TV, the Paranoids doing their serenade outside the motel room while Oedipa and adult Baby Igor get it on, the electronic music bar scene…
Outlander - by Diana Gabaldon.
But I would want to be Claire.
And I don’t know who could be Jamie, but I think Gerard Butler would make an excellent Dougal.
Sigh.
It may be that some people, even when they read something and think “movie” in their heads, have given up and not taken the time to think this through in regards to some of their tougher, more personal “what if’s.”
Glad to you see participating here, more comment on your excellent choices later.