Agreed. I read grude’s post and thought “It’s been done.”
For mine, I’d like to see a movie version of John Varley’s “Gaea” triology.
You sound like me. 
A few years back, as a challenge to myself and a way to keep myself occupied during a period when I was having serious medical issues and couldn’t be very active, I wrote a screenplay about Ludwig II of Bavaria.
This was just a sort of fantasy project – I only showed the result to my mother and two of my friends – but it was an interesting experience and gave me a lot of sympathy for the screenwriters responsible for those minor historical errors that always get noted on the IMDb. Even if you’re just writing for fun, committed to trying to be accurate, and not worrying about coming up with a hit, reality doesn’t fit neatly into the structure of a three-act drama. Things have to be simplified, left out, compressed, combined, and rearranged, especially if you’re trying to cover a large portion of someone’s life rather than some specific event. I struggled a lot with the ending, because the circumstances surrounding Ludwig II’s death were mysterious. In a documentary one could acknowledge this and present some of the different theories, but “we still don’t know what really happened, but anyway he died” is an unsatisfying ending for a dramatic film. On the other hand, I felt guilty about just picking the most dramatically satisfying theory and going with it because there’s a good chance this isn’t actually true.
I would love to see films on the late Roman empire, of which there arE a paucity. I saw Agora recently which was good, but we need more. Something on Adrianpole or Julian the Apostate would be very welcome. The Roman Persian wars should also get good treatment.
Elsewhere the war of the roses, the Hellenistic World (Greeks in Afganistan and Pakistan! ) the colonization of Australia, a new film on the Napoleonic wars all should be made.
On fiction, it’s a travesty that the Honor Harrington novels have not been adapted.
Finally, I have wanted for a long time new and good WWI movies. With the centenary coming up, we have and will continue to get new movies, good on the other hand…
You don’t count that Star Trek episode of the same name?
I’ve always wanted to see a movie based on Keith Laumer’s **Retief **stories. Back in the day, I’d have had Tom Selleck and John Hillerman play Retief and Magnan. Now of course they are both far too old.
Selling point: Retief is James Bond In Spaaaace. (sorta)
I’d love to see the Vorkosiganverse on screen. Each book’s probably best done as a mini-series.
That sound great, and I’d love to see it. I’d like to make a case for one about Glenn Hammond Curtiss. The film could start with him setting a land speed record of 136.36 miles per hour on a freaking V-8 motorcycle in 1907, going on to experiment on aircraft with a group of other inventors including Alexander Graham Bell and building the first aircraft (The June Bug) to take off and file a kilometer under it’s own power.
The problem with making the film is that the villains of the film are the Wright Brothers, who sued Curtiss and others who were building planes, apparently believing they had secured a patent on flight with their catapult launched powered glider.
The climax of the film would be Curtiss’ 1910 flight down the Hudson from Albany to New York City, rounding the Statue of Liberty and landing in Battery Park.
I’d love to see Neuromancer, but I’m afraid it might feel passe by now.
Divergent, by Veronica Roth. It’s a YA novel about a society in which people divide themselves into “factions” by their character traits. I suspect it will be filmed, though, since it’s very cinematic.
Absolutely not. If you’ve ever read Brown’s story, you probably wouldn’t, either. (If you have, do you really think it’s a good adaptation? I certainly don’t)
The story I’ve heard is that Gene L. Coon started writing the story, then the similarity to Brown’s story was noticed, and they decided to forestall any claims of plagiarism by getting the rights. The Wikipedia account agrees with this:
This sort of thing has happened frequently, especially in SF cinema. You’ve undoubtedly heard of many of these cases. One of them is the I, Robot movie, which started life not as an adaptation of Asimov’s book, but as an original script set in a robot-containing world with the Three Laws. It was “turned into” an adaptation of “I, Robot” by getting the rights, but asimov’s book it ain’t, by a very long shot. That’s why I, Robot is up there on my list.
Similarly for “Arrena”. The original story has no reptilian alien, no gunpowder, and there’s an invisible barrier between the combatants that keeps them from directly getting at each other, making it a really serious challenge.
And the ending is completely different.
Thanks for the explanation. I was being mostly tongue in cheek, but a little bit serious. I read the story years ago, and when I saw the Trek episode (years later), it reminded me of it, so I assumed it was at least somewhat based on the story.
Rendezvous with Rama
The Foundation series
Blood Music
Blood Music would be freaky in its later stages.
Along the same line, how about Childhood’s End?
Exactly the two I first thought of! Done right these would make incredible films.
Here are a few others I’d love to see made into movies (always providing they’re helmed by intelligent directors).
The Demon Prince series by Jack Vance.
The Paratwa trilogy by Christopher Hinz
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
I’d like to see The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made!. Apparently the idea was first developed in 1985, and Frank Oz is still enthusiastic about getting it made.
In Coon’s defense, it wasn’t all that unique a basic idea: two massive forces about to meet in battle each have a single champion called forth and the fight between these two will decide the battle. Coon could certainly have thought of this idea independently of Brown and written his script. And then when the studio realized the similarities to Brown’s story, they bought the rights but used Coon’s script, which explains the differences between the two stories. If anything, I think Coon’s ending is more interesting.
It’s amazing how you repeated what I said.
Brown’s story has been very highly rated, and heavily anthologized. I have it in at least four anthologies that I own, particularly in The Science Fictiion Hall of Fame, the entries of which were the stories voted “all-time best”, at least by 1964. If you knew anything about SF literature at the time, you’d probably be aware of Brown’s story. TSFHoF hadn’t been published yet, but the story had been anthologized a half dozen times by the time Star Trek hit the air, and was apparently pretty well-known.
FWIW, Brown’s story explicitly considers the “Star Trek” ending, and the human hero tries it, but it’s rejected by the alien. For my money, the original story’s more interesting.
Weren’t there reports that Roland Emmerich was developing a version of *The Foundation Series *for the big screen? This was maybe a couple years ago. I haven’t heard anything about it recently.
Grayson. (video)
I saw a documentary on TV about the Wright Brothers and thought that their story would make a great feature film. It’s loaded with great cinematographic themes (e.g., their relationships to their parents, and the fact that Orville was the daredevil and Wilbur was the technician) and moments (e.g., when Wilbur accidentally discovers the key to controlled turning – wing-warping – when idly twisting a cracker box in his shop).
I would love any of these to be made into a movie:
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“Towing Jehovah” (Saga of a sea captain towing the 2-mile corpse of God to the Arctic (or Antarctic). Features Deophagia, debauchery and a naval war re-enactment)
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Blameless in Abbadon (Two-mile corpse of God being indicted and tried for crimes against humanity. Features a delightful romp inside God’s brain with the protagonist looking for answers to the leading theodicies, meeting such archetypes as that of Augustine, Lot, Job, Noah, Jesus, Behemoth, the Devil, etc along the way.)
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Memnoch the Devil (One of the more sympathetic renderings of Lucifer set against the backdrop of the Vampire Chronicles of Anne Rice)