No more so than other comedies about religion/the afterlife, I think. (Dogma/Wristcutters/Cold Souls/etc). And this would be an excellent addition to that genre - for one thing, it has zeppelins! Zeppelins!
Funny thing is, the writers for The Trouble With Tribbles knew that their idea was quite similar to Heinlein’s, and they wrote him to ask his permission. The only thing he wanted in payment was a copy of the script signed by the writers.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress would be a great movie, with good action sequences, funny characters, and snappy dialogue, but only if it were cut down to a reasonable length in a very careful way. Cutting it badly would either leave out important parts of the novel or make it a frenzied mess.
The Rolling Stones would make a dynamite Anime flick.
Another vote for making a movie based on the text of (as opposed to the dust-jacket of) Starship Troopers.
Not true, according to David Gerrold, who wrote the script. As he recounts it in his book about this, The Trouble with Tribbles*, he wrote the script without recalling the Martian “flatcats” from The Rolling Stones (which he’d read). “I thought I was retelling the case of the rabbits in the Australian Outback,” he recalled. It was a shock when they received a letter from Heinlein pointing out the similarity. Heinlein, IIRC, didn’t legally press the issue, or demand payment, even in the form of a script.
*duh
I’d love to see it, or for that matter, perform in it, even if I wasn’t cast as the lead. I could do the Devil part, Odin, or even Loki…
Orphans of the Sky is my favorite Heinlein book. When I was in High School I wrote a book report about how superstition and religious devotion developed over the years on the ship. I got a perfect score on that one.
Though I think Stranger in a Strange Land would probably be the most suited toward a film. It wouldn’t require a lot of expensive effects, but would still be epic. It’d also fulfill a lot of pop-culture archetypes and would be kind of a sexy movie if done right.
I’m on the wagon with this one, too. While I appreciate the notion of jackbooted aryans from all over South America stomping on giant meteor-farting space bugs, the best part of the book is the armored suit. Doing things on the “bounce” and tossing around nuke grenades just can’t be done the way they did it in the movie.
Another vote for Glory Road.
I have no idea who would play the roles, but they better have a drop-dead, total knockout beauty for Star.
I agree, this is where to start. If you are going to get people interested in movies made from Heinlein you are going to need a big box office draw to start . Tunnel in the Sky has elements that will accomplish that. Although the stargate idea has been ripped off (or Heinlein ripped it off from someone else, don’t side track) the idea of college students passing a performance test by being placed on an alien world is great. You can have a large ensemble cast of Hollywood’s current young darlings. Incorporate elements of everything from Jurassic Park to Lost to Survivior. It’s a gold mine if done right.
Fantasy, adventure, sword fights, beautiful smart, powerful woman, bravery, discontented youth, and a frivolous sense of humor, it has it all.
You need a story that can be started and finished in 2 hours tops. Move fast and not be connected to some larger mythology. Because it will need to be a commercial success before you will get any more Heinlein ideas past marketing.
My favorite Heilein character is Lazarus Long. If you would like new audiences exposed to Heilein and you start with any Lazarus Long story you are going to bore the socks off the kids who buy movie tickets, long before you can even begin to tell part of his story. For this reason, most ‘time line’ or future history stories will not work as a commercial success.
They could work as a television series or mini-series, though. SyFy, are ya listening?
Hush, you! SyFy fucks up everything they touch, movie-wise. And they are batting less than .250 series-wise. Plus, they don’t do nudity. The Lazarus saga has to be HBO, at the least.
Another vote for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
No, I think it should be kept.
For example, the part where Manny meets Stu makes no sense without the sex imbalance, and if it’s there, having marriages with only one man and one woman being the most common implies a large population of unmarriageable men, with all kinds of tension that is not in the book.
Yes. I was so disappointed that they eliminated the flying cars, as just one example.
That’s another one that could translate well. Though I fear that the slave society would be portrayed as stereotypically Arabic. If I were doing it, I would work hard to avoid that–maybe set it in a Seattle-like environment.
That’s interesting. I think that it might work really well as a movie. Once the students are through the gate and on the planet, it becomes a more conventional survival story. And we know that we can do the alien animals now.
But I wouldn’t try to make the high school and society the same as ours. I’d retain all the anachronistic detail that Heinlein added, and make it a period piece.
But there are plenty of stories within Time Enough for Love that would make great movies. That episode with Lazarus pioneering and taking wagones over Hopeless Pass, for example.
Yes to *Methuselah’s Children *and Time Enough for Love. (I wrote an unauthorized screenplay for the latter back in college.) I don’t recall being enamored with To Sail Beyond the Sunset. (Nathan Fillion? Robert Urich? Really? Wow. I’m not seeing it.)
And another BIG vote for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress from me and all the girls down at the Cradle Roll Creche.
Good point. HBO would be a better choice to make it. Somebody get Skald working on a way to clone Alyson Hannigan to play Lapis and Lazuli…
If This Goes On would do nicely in this political climate
Oh I agree. There are at least 5 good movies within ‘Time Enough for Love’.
But they already made Space Mutiny. 
I remember seeing an ad in the Village Voice looking for someone to write a script for Stranger. In 1967. Clearly people have been thinking about this for a long time. I’m afraid that most of it would be seen as very outdated today.
I’m all for Mistress, and Glory Road being made. I think Tunnel would be an excellent starter, since your average scriptwriter might do a reasonable job on it, since most of it is survival and character interaction. I think Have Spacesuit Will Travel would be an excellent juvenile. Something either not mentioned or mentioned very little, The Star Beast, might be good also.
My favorite line: “I am a ten-second bomb! I am a ten-second bomb! Ten… nine… eight…” Clears any room in a hurry.
I agree with Double Star, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Job: A Comedy of Justice and Door Into Summer
Time Minear (writer for Angel, Firefly, Wonderfalls, Dollhouse, and other shows) wrote a screenplay of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. (["]Downloadable pdf available on this page](http://socalbrowncoats.com/?p=28), and direct link to pdf here) I think it’s a pretty good adaptation for a feature length film - inevitably you have to cut some stuff out.