I hope that story is beyond recognition. As it, it would depress a hyena.
Technically, it can be done. I’m not arguing that.
I also neglected the Prawn exoskeleton in District 9. If you have only one guy in a suit, though - especially an easily recognizeable world-famous character like Iron Man, there’s no confusion on the part of the audience. The CGI suit becomes the character almost as much as the actor “wearing” it!
In Marvano’s graphic novel version of The Forever War, the UNEF troops have their last names stenciled above the visors on their helmets. This works in a book where you can stare at each frame as much as you want, but you can’t hand it over to Bruckheimer…
To some degree, I think you could also try to get around the problem by having the actors speak their lines as the camera focuses on their suits, but what remains is a nigh-insurmountable problem of the human subconscious; the moviegoing audience will have trouble identifying with their favorite characters if they can’t immediately recognize them visually. Iron Man gets a pass because his famous armour is as much or perhaps even more (in some circles, at least) easily identifiable as Robert Downey Jr.
I’m sure it’s not a question of identifying characters – actors emote through their faces, especially their eyes. You don’t want to take that away (which is why, I’ve argued, “alien” makeup has come to be appliances glued around the head, but leaving the mouth and eyes free to react). Iron Man showed Tony stark out of costume most of the time, sand frequently cut to interior views to show his reactions.
Another factor is that people partly or mostly unarmored are perceived as vulnerable. the audience feels concerned that they’ll be hurt – more so than if they’re in armor.
For both these reasons, James Cameron put his grunts in only helmets and jackets, even though he admittedly was taking his inspiration from Starship Troopers. Verhoeven carried this to absurd lengths when he pitted unarmored soldiers against huge numbers of damned near unkillable bugs. And Iron man was a comic-book wish-fulfillment fantasy. He’s supposed to be proof against most dangers. You wouldn’t be as worried if Iron Man fought Aliens, just as the odds were evened at the end of Aliens.
That’s not to say you couldn’t do Starship Troopers much as Iron Man was handled – lots of inside-the-suit reaction shots and the like. But I can see why filmmakers have thus far avoided it.
Lord of Light has some serious problems as a visual story, mainly because the main character (and several other characters) changes bodies several times. You’d either have to
(1) throw out the body-switching element of the story, which involves reworking great swathes of the plot
(2) use four[1] different actors to portray the central character (as well as another actor pretending to be the central character as a ruse)
(3) come up with some lame excuse for why all of his bodies look alike (including the two bodies that he ends up in that weren’t intended for him).
[1] Old sam at the start of the story; Sam after he gets the new body but not the one intended for him; Sam after he steals what’s-his-name’s body; Sam after he comes back from the aurora borealis or whatever.
I’m right in the middle of Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” and already badly want to see this as a film. Stephen Daldry was attached to direct, but it’s been in development hell over the last ten years and is no closer to ever getting made. There was recent talk of wanting to do it as an 8-part HBO miniseries which I think would be perfect, but who knows if anything will happen.
I think Heinlein’s Methuselah’s Children would make for a grand epic. I see it as a two-parter, the first part starting from the establishment of The Howard Families and ending with them being driven away from Earth in the stolen ship by angry mobs hungry for “The Secret”, and the second part being the great adventure followed by the return to Earth.
I don’t blame her one bit - we’ve seen what Hollywood can do to great stories. I can dream though … Maybe she can use some of that big Hugo money to produce the flicks herself. 
That would be awesome. I’ve directed it in my head about one million times.
I would love to see any of the works of Terry Pratchett turned into a miniseries. And I mean pulling a storyline out of the novels.
Let’s see, there’s:
Sam Vines
The Witches
And oh, could I mention…Death?
And don’t forget Lu-Tze!
A sweeper can go everywhere!
They have made 4 Discworld books into films.
Here’s a few I’d like to see made: Sequel to Master & Commander and Rocketeer, and a continuation of the Hornblower series from A&E or someone.
Before his success with the Myth series, Robert Asprin wrote several smaller novels that would be terrific movies: Tambu, Mirror Friend Mirror Foe, and Cold Cash Wars. Cold Cash in particular feels like it was plotted to be a movie. Great story, nice social commentary, and several utterly badass moments that I’d like to see on film.
Which is why it will never get made. I still would like to see it as faithful to the books as possible, but there probably isn’t much of an audience for it.
I’d rather see the second trilogy, but it wouldn’t make much sense without the first trilogy. It’s too late now, but I would have cast Dennis Quaid and Nicole Kidman in The One Tree, which is easily one of the best fantasy novels ever written.