What’s wrong with Hollywood? Pterry has been writing hilarious books for years. I for one would love to see Granny Weatherwax, Commander Vimes or DEATH on the big screen. If JK Rowling can become a billionare because of Harry Potter, then Pterry should own the world by now.
It seems like they’d really have to water things down to do so. While reading the books I keep finding things which there’s no way they could represent it in picture. Like the voice of death or the 8th color. I can’t help but imagine I’d be really disappointed by them.
But I’d definately see the movie opening day, first showing. Just like I will with the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie.
I agree with Fern, I think that a lot of the humour wouldn’t translate to the screen. The little footnotes at the bottom of the pages, DEATH’s voice, the 8th color and a lot of the stuff that goes on in the character’s head, headology, and lots of other bits.
Would you look at that, I spelled humor with a “u”. Just thinking about the books made me type with a British accent. I’m just going to leave it that way.
Besides, they’d probably just cast Tom Cruise as Rincewind and ruin the whole thing.
Dunno if you know, but Soul Music was done in 1996 as an animated show. Christopher Lee did the voice of Death.
I started watching it once, but didn’t get more than a few minutes into it before I had to leave. Can’t say if it’s worth watching or not.
–Patch
I’m not a big fan of the Discworld series… read a couple, liked 'em well enough, just didn’t get ‘into’ 'em for one reason or another. Dunno why.
Regardless, I did recently rent some movie from NetFlix… lemme look it up…
Ahh, here it is: “Wyrd Sisters”.
It was animated.
The average review was “Three (of five) stars”, and the feedback says it’s generally thought of as “Dry, not as good as the book” but most people still enjoyed it.
I did too, particularly Granny Weatherwax.
I should read the books.
The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic have more slapstick visual humor than the later books, so they’d make the best movies. The imp poping out of the camera with his easel and paints would be hilarious if done right. The fight scene at the inn could be visually funny if exaggerated correctly.
What Pratchett has to say about the idea.
Think about it. How likely is it that if the movie were made, they’d Americanize Discworld? What would you fans say then? We’d have to get new hamsters for the Board. 
We have the Wyrd Sisters DVD. I’ve only watched it once (we don’t have a DVD player yet, which makes things difficult). I had kind of an “eh” reaction. It’s rather long, and you miss all the humor of the writing style that doesn’t come out in the dialogue.
I was bothered by the fact that they pronounce Magrat differently than I do.
According to legend at least there was once some Hollywood interest in doing a Mort movie, but Pratchett decided against it when he realized the kind of changes that would have to be made. Like dropping the whole “death” angle because it was too dark. Ouch. Also, despite Pratchett’s huge success and popularity in the UK, his audience in the US is kind of a niche market. The Harry Potter books were already gigantic bestsellers in America before they became movies, so Hollywood wasn’t taking much of a risk on that front.
Apparently Pratchett and Neil Gaiman did not have good experiences dealing with Hollywood types who wanted to do a Good Omens movie, and I wouldn’t expect to see a major American motion picture based on the work of either anytime soon. But as others have mentioned some Discworld books have been adapted as animated videos in the UK, and there are stage versions of some as well.
This was, of course, right before Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey featured Death getting “melvined”. 
As much as I’d like the idea of one, the truth is that a Discworld movie would end up being so watered down and mutilated for the big screen that it’d surely be a disappointment for the die-hard fans out there.
And I don’t think Pterry needs the money. He was the best selling writer in the UK pre-Rowling, and it’s estimated that 1% af all books - all - sold, had his name on them.
I’ve seen the Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music cartoons (on free to air tv down here!), and they were both badly done. Straight-forward adaptations from the books with no changes for visual media, poor animation and excessive use of zoom. Ick.
I’d like to see an original screenplay based on the Discworld universe. It could be a good way to introduce new newbies to the ideas(1), and give it the flexibility to take advantage of filmography techniques. Maybe something along the lines of a novella-sized sequel to Pyramids?
(1) So long as they don’t use a " ‘real-world’ people being sucked into the Discworld" plot device. The ‘Masters of the Universe’ movie should be enough of a warning.
I’ve got the Soul Music DVD. The animation isn’t great, but the story is pretty good, and sticks closely to Pratchett’s original. Then again, the whole thing seems to have been done for television in half-hour segments, and runs quite long.
Trying to do much of anything with any of his books in a two-hour time frame seems like it would be difficult at best.
Terry Gilliam was signed on to do that IIRC - whatever happened to that project? I can’t find any recent development besides that it seems to have been stalled.
I think I’d probably be disappointed by something or other in a Discworld movie - whenever I read the books I have everything in my head right as it should be. Casting choices alone would be the cause of many a heated debate, I guess (please don’t bring up James Earl Jones as the VOICE OF DEATH, just don’t - he’s not Luke’s FATHER, you know - YMMV).
As a die-hard Discworld fan, I start becoming violently ill at the thought of a Hollywood-ised version of Pratchett. I don’t think they’d translate too well to the big-screen. A whole lot of the appeal is the various twists etc, which would have to be dumbed down. All I can say to that is:
NOOOOOO!!!
That said, I did see a stage adaptation of Wyrd Sisters, which worked out OK, but then Pratchett was parodying the Scottish Play.
Some friends of mine are making a short fanfilm of a Discworld short story called Troll Bridge which features Cohen the Barbarian. Details here.
I know nothing of this movie apart from some of the people involved behind-the-scenes, but I think it looks pretty good. If they pull it off, perhaps it’ll inspire more.
Well, Americans don’t read the books*, so that’s a big market that wouldn’t be interested.
- to a rough approximation
I for one, would really love to see this!
This would be because it was.
That’s probably down to the fact that the plays were written by Stephen Briggs (the guy who, with Pterry’s help, created all the maps of the Discworld) and have been fully approved by the man himself. I’ve seen an adaptation of that too and, although a few of the actors forgot a line or two, it did do the books about as much justice as I was as hoping for.
I read an interview with Pterry once in which he was asked a similar question. He replied that he wasn’t completely ruling a Discworld movie out, but he was getting tired of running away every time a Hollywood exec told him they wanted to take Death out or rewrite Nobby and Colon.
The only way a Discworld movie will ever happen is if Pterry has complete creative control and I very much doubt that any Hollywood producer will ever give him that.