I could see it, Bo: fast-paced, snappy, nothing too challenging or controversial for domestic or foreign audiences. Room for CGI spectacles. Heist movies often do well.
I can totally see Ryan Reynolds in the titular role. Who would you go with for Angelina?
Dear Og, please, not Ryan Reynolds.
Dunno tho, never really thought about casting before (I just don’t like Mr. Reynolds much and besides: he’s too old). I’ll have to give this some thought; I am not really “up” on who the young talent is these days.
But yeah, the stories are simple and easy to follow and there’s plenty of opportunity for spectacle.
How “too old?” Just kick the series up a decade or so. No biggie. Personally I adore Reynolds.
My first thoughts for Angelina were ScarJo or Morena Baccarin. But Angelina is too close to Black Widow, so no Scarlett. Maybe Lashana Lynch?
I’m sorry, but what you want is Deadpool. It’s already a thing; you should prolly check it out.
Everybody needs a second franchise.
I disagree.
well that’s a weird error/outcome
I’ll second the Fuzzy books and I’ll nominate Frank Rich’s Jake Strait books.
The DVDs are available on Amazon- I think about $45 will get you the whole series.
As long as we’re going with books that will perpetually be made into movies only to fall through, I’ll go with Neuromancer. The latest supposed attempt is to be directed by Tim Miller, Deadpool director - announced in 2017, and surprise surprise, no word since then. Even though some of the tech seems outdated 35 years later, I still think it could be awesome in the right hands.
I’d rather see Snow Crash; YMMV.
Snow Crash would be something. Should have been made 20 years ago. Now…the “look, I am a moving Avatar in the Internet” might seem a little dated.
Even though so many of the ideas about the internet that we take for granted were invented by the author of this book and appeared here for the first time…
For me the internet avatar thing was never the most compelling part of the story. I recognize that it caught the fancy of a lot of people back then, tho. And I think there’s still a lot of room for creativity in how internet avatars might play out in the future; after all, we still don’t virtually move thru fake-space in our first-person Avatar bodies, so that part could still be visually and emotionally appealing and engaging.
The reality of the world setting tho: private security forces for walled enclaves, a generally impoverished populace, etc. would be compelling and the story of Y.T., Raven and the Rat Things would be exciting to see on a big screen.
I certainly wouldn’t complain about Snow Crash (although that novel has been unfairly diminished somewhat in my mind because of too much bloated dreck put out by Stephenson since it). They’d have to bump up Y.T.'s age a bit for some of the stuff in the book to fly today.
But I still think Neuromancer makes a better movie. It’s a heist movie at its root with a diverse cast of fascinating characters. I can already picture how it should open, with Corto in the failed Operation Screaming Fist, before jumping into Henry Case’s story.
Oh, I definitely agree it could be very entertaining in the right hands.
The US Gov’t reduced to a few paranoid guys with modern weapons. Then privatized military, e.g. “Uncle Bob’s Navy.” The Pizza delivery car…I’ve always wanted to see that in action!
I heard that the Google Earth starting screen (a spherical Earth waiting for you to interact with it) came directly from Snow Crash, where it was an app simply called “Earth.”
As for the human interface for gaming, it’s been done already, maybe better than Snow Crash, in “Ready Player One.”
For a long time I have championed Ton Hiddleston to play Simon Templar in a new The Saint series, but maybe he’d be good for Jim DiGriz in The Stainless Steel Rat. You need someone charismatic and charming, incredibly smart, but also who can blend into the crowd when he needs to.
Morena Baccarin, though, is a great suggestion for Angelina.
Hiddleston is too old. Jim is a young man in the first couple of books, not middle-aged. He’s at the beginning of his life and career, after all.
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Another book I’ve long wanted to see made into a movie is Phil Dick’s Ubik. I even have a copy of the screenplay and IMO it would be filmable in the right hands (by which i mean “not Richard Linklater”).
ETA: Oh, and all the Jumper novels should be made into movies, including the first one again (because the movie they made sucked).
I loved this book! It would make a quietly powerful movie.
For the non-PBS movie(s), I’d love to see Mick Herron’s Slough House books made into a series.
Yes, those would be nice.
I hope they skip the humans teaching the fuzzys to smoke however, that would ruin it.
They did all the earlier ones, on A&E, very good:
But they stopped with Hornblower and the Hotspur , I want the rest!