What science fiction stories you have read that you think would work well as the basis for a low budget movie? By “low budget” I mean a budget that calls for a largely unknown/new cast or stars willing to work for a percentage, and a relatively modest special effects budget. Say we’re talking a 5-10 million dollar total production budget.
What science fiction stories have you have read that you think could be filmed as movies within these economic parameters?
Nightfall.
Inconstant Moon - Possibly the greatest SF story to feature just some basic science and a love story.
Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time won the Hugo in 1958.
Forget “low budget movie.” It could have been made into a high-quality TV feature at that time. One set, a small cast, good costumes–and a bit of puppetry for one character–make it almost stageworthy…
"No Great Magic’–also set in the Change War & using some of the same characters–would also be quite do-able.
Telempath.
Emergence.
Puppet Masters.
The problem being that most novels are going to have WAY too much plot to fit into just one movie.
I’m reading Ray Bradbury’s October Country again. It should fit the requirements.
That’s a short-story collection. Might make for series of Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories or Outer Limits or Tales from the Darkside segments . . . if anybody’s doing that format of show any more . . .
Harlan Ellison has two gripping stories which fit:
‘A Boy and His Dog’ (I think this one has been filmed already though)
I’d say The Screwfly Solution.
You wouldn’t need to show the aliens directly in this story, which would save you on SFX.
“Reason” by Isaac Asimov.
Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters has already been filmed, and most people complained more about the script than about the SFX.
Larry Niven’s teleportation stories. Or his Gil Hamilton stories. The Patchwork Girl would be too expensive, but the organlegger stories could be done on a fairly modest budget.
Donnie Darko (the original theatrical cut) was produced for $4.5M using a combination of newcomers (Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone) and industry character actors willing to work for scale (Holmes Osborne, Mary McDonnell, Beth Grant). The special effects were primarily some inexpensive practical effects with dark lighting and quick cutting, and the one major CGI rendering (the floating tentacle that was so impressive in 1989’s The Abyss). So you have a baseline there to consider.
For practical purposes, CGI rendering has become inexpensive; it is the labor to perform the artistic work to make it look realistic (or in the case of a film like Avatar, suitably alien). WETA actually went to the effort to create an automated animation system for mass battles so that individual creatures and effects didn’t have to be created individually. It is the closeup effects and interaction with people that makes CGI expensive and laborious.
In any case, aside from high dollar star salaries, a large amount of the cost of producing a film (separate from marketing it) is in the post-production. If you actually look at the shooting budgets for most blockbuster films, you would be astounded for how little they actually get to do filming. All of the editing, and meetings, and more meetings, and screening, and more meetings, et cetera…there are millions of dollars spent there on a high value “product” that a low budget film doesn’t generally endure.
As for science fiction stories for low budget films, the best adaptations are long short stories or short novellas, because they don’t require trimming. Something like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress or Methuselah’s Children is far too long and convoluted to make a movie. Something like Gulf or The Door Into Summer would be more possible, although the mangling of The Puppet Masters (which is really a pretty straightforward alien invasion story that has been done many ways since the novel was first published) suggests that nothing can be too simple for a major film studio to seriously fuck up.
Stranger
Roger Zelazny’s “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”
Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle
Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s The Space Merchant
A. J. Deutsch’s “A Subway Named Mobius”
Flower’s for Algernon
Yes, Jason Robards.
Outstanding.
“Send them to the farm.”
“Inconstant Moon” was also made into an episode of the 90s version of The Outer Limits .
Lawrence Watt-Evans’s “Why I Left Harry’s All-night Hamburgers” would make a great TV episode. Just some make-up effects; have the main character narrate but not be actually shown until the end.
The OP didn’t specify that it hadn’t been filmed before.
“Spice Pogrom” by Connie Willis.
Why would you need to hide the main character? He’s a normal-looking human. In fact, most of the characters are just normal-looking humans, with at most funny clothes.
John M. Ford’s Mandalay, one of his Alternities stories, all too few in number.