Foundation made for great books, but it’d be a lousy movie. Everything happens off-stage, so to speak. In a book, that works fine: You can follow the characters’ thoughts and actions as they respond to the events. In a movie, though, you need to show people what’s happening, not tell them.
Nangleator’s suggestions of Pern and Honor Harrington, on the other hand, would be pretty good movies (or TV show, in Harrington’s case: 10+ novels is too much for a movie or series of movies). Ringworld might also work, but they’d be hard-pressed to satisfy the physics nerds the way that Niven did.
If you want an Asimov suggestion, I’d love to see a TV series or movie(s) from the Lucky Starr books. Seeing as they were written with the intent of a screen adaptation in the first place, the adaptation shouldn’t pose any major problems. I won’t trust any more movies supposedly based on Heinlein, though, unless Ginny has complete creative control over every step of the process. Actually, I’d prefer that Robert himself had that creative control, but unfortunately, that’s no longer possible.
If he’s wearing Nike Shox, they’ll never catch him
The Wheel of Time could only be improved by an adaptation. Kill all the unnecessary plot threads, the pages & pages of descritions will be on the screen to see instead of read. You’d have to use actresses with coke addictions though (all that sniffing).
There have been a number of attempts at bringing the Dragonriders to either the big or small screen–one potential TV series got as far as having mockups of dragon saddles to cover the interface between actors and digital dragons. There may even be footage of McCaffrey sitting on one of the saddles. The series was scrapped in the late 90s before it got into production. http://www.annemccaffrey.org/ says that they’re still looking at TV/movie productions, but offers no details. Encouragingly, the reason most of the projects haven’t gotten off the ground is McCaffrey’s creative control–she won’t let it happen until she’s confident that it will be done right. I’m willing to wait for it.
As for Wheel of Time…wouldn’t it take the entire SAG to fill out the cast? Then I would have to kill them all. No, it’s much more convenient for everyone not to start down that path.
Let’s pretend the series didn’t happen. Gentry Lee (or whateverthhell his name was) never soiled himself on Clarke’s masterpiece.
Chronos:** The Caves of Steel** could make a great movie and you could even spin it off into a TV Series. (“He’s a detective. He’s a robot. Together they’re COPS!”)
I see the validity in the points not to make Foundation into a movie-miniseries…I second Amber. DarkRabbitt when is suppose to be aired? Or has it been aired?
People are right about WoT - way too boring and long, maybe after rewriting to condense all 9 books into 2 (which I think should be doable)
Never been aired but I believe the projected date of airing will be next summer. Sci Fi bought a lot of classic Science Fiction stories last year with the objective of turning them all into either mini-series or as 2 hour pilots for television series.
Jack Vance’s “The Dying Earth”…obvious series potential.
James Blish’s " a Case of Conscience"…a stand alone movie, although religious types would have a very difficult time with this.
Speaking of Jack Vance (Foolonthehill) - how come he is so ‘unknown’ here in the US??..I hardly manage to find his books in the mainstream bookstores. Back in Europe you can easily find 15-20 books of his, but here you can count yourself lucky to find 5…
Gotta agree with everyone who said that “Foundation” would suck as a movie. Too much talking, not enough showing. Plus, I don’t know that people are ready for that many exclamation points in a sci-fi movie.
I’ve read that “Ender’s Game” is in pre-production, but, I don’t think it’s possible to do the book justice. What kind of audience wants to see at 6-year-old beating 2 people to death, and also naked a lot?
Ben Bova’s “Mars” would make a decent movie, if not memorable. Good sci-fi movie placeholder, anyway.
Greg Bear’s “Queen of Angels” series would be great.
And, even though it’s not “hard” sci-fi, the “New Jedi Order” series would be fantastic.
Another series that would make a great mini-series would be Harry Turtledove’s World War books; big cast, lots of action, multiple plotlines, a story that’s SF but not too exotic.
