Some of Fredric Brown’s mystery novels. Some of them have been adapted, but only with massive changes, so they’re not really his stories anymore.
The Screaming Mimi – They made a movie of the same name, starring Gypsy Rose Lee and Anita Ekberg, but the plot just wasn’t the same. Apparenbly also used as the basis for Dario Argento’s Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which I haven’t seen but, from the description, ain’t the same, either. I wanna see a drunken Bill Sweeney going through Chicago’s underbelly and reclaiming his sobriety by trying to track down the man who assaulted a stripper, dammit!
The Fabulous Clipjoint – Brown’s first mystery novel won him an Edgar and introduced Ed and Am Hunter. It’d make a helluva period piece. Maybe HBO can do a miniseries based on this one alone.
Night of the Jabberwock – wonderfully off-beat mystery in which a small-town newspaper editor gets caught up in a crime with clues related to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
I’ve always thought Freredick Forsyth’s The Devil’s Alternative would be a great thriller, but it’s too long for a movie. again, maybe as a miniseries, and necessarily as a period piece. Terrorists execute the head of the KGB in circa 1980’s Russia. when the truth doesn’t come out, they hijack a supertanker and threaten the biggest of all oil spills unless the world finds out. I kniw that someone else on the Board thought this would be a good thriller to film.
I’ve mentioned many of my other choices, either above or in other threads in the past.
Ridley Scott was rumoured, in 2014, to be making a Flashman movie. Unfortunately it is listed among the 86 projects in Ridley Scott’s unrealised projects as “in development hell and its fate is unknown.”
Another one that’s been in development hell for years, if not decades. Unfortunately, the longer it takes, and the more derivative fantasy films/series made (I’m thinking particularly The Witcher, which I like, but there’s no denying its influences), the less likely a proposition it becomes.
OB
ETA: I actually think some of the other EC series may work better in terms of their more unique aesthetics - Hawkmoon, Corum, even maybe the Von Bec or, um, Bastable, books.
I’d heard, long ago, that Scott was also interested in making a Judge Dee movie, based on the novels by Robert H. Van Gulik. If so, it never materialized. Too bad – as a fan of Van Gulik’s Judge Dee novels I would’ve loved to have seen it.
The recent Chinese films about Detective Dee are a whole different concept. They re-imagine the Judge as a martial arts expert and the films are filled with wire work and fantastic (in the literal sense) ideas. Interesting, but not what I wanted to see.
I tend to agree with this. All too often, what makes the book great doesn’t translate to the screen. And there are plenty of examples of mediocre novels becoming great films (e.g., Psycho). I’m aware that there are exceptions, but they are just that—exceptions.
My favorite book is Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, which has been in development hell for as long as I can remember, but I actually dread seeing it filmed because it’ll probably turn out badly. Dick himself wrote a script for one of the attempts; it’s filled with internal-monologue voiceovers à la David Lynch’s Dune. When I read it, I thought, “Thank God this didn’t get made.”
Whenever somebody talks about wanting their favorite novel turned into a movie, my typical response is, “If that happened, you’d probably hate it.”
Case in point - look at the current production of “The Watch,” which is ostensibly based on Terry Pratchett’s Nightwatch. The details released so far reveal an abomination that needs to be cleansed with fire.
richard s prather’s shell scott series …he’s a manly pi whos not overly serious … in fact rumor has it its the source of stacey keach’s portrayal of mike hammer(he hated the character the way spillane wrote him ) … and theres almost 40 books … Richard S. Prather - Wikipedia
I’m a big fan of Erik Larson’s series of beautifully written non-fiction about the great events of our time. Tom Hanks has apparently optioned In the Garden of Beasts, but I don’t believe any have actually been made into movies. They would be great, but most of them would be very expensive to film. I just finished reading Isaac’s Storm, for example (for the second time!) about the hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900 and is still the most destructive hurricane in history to ever hit the US, and was completely and totally unexpected (the US Weather Bureau was predicting a fair day with moderate winds). For many reasons that would be quite a challenge to film.
Flashman’s mistreatment of women-I believe he committed rape in one of the novels-makes him to non-politically correct for films now. His being a cad is the whole point of the novels, though.
I would like to see Roger Zelazney’s Lord of Light as a film.
What about Job - a Comedy of Justice? I could see that. Especially the beginning - a man on a Hawaiian cruise, enjoying a luau, walks over coals, comes out the back end in a different “universe”. I think that would hook the viewers.
Have they ever done a movie version of The Once and Future King? Looking around a bit, it looks like Disney’s “The Sword In the Stone” was a Disnified version of the first part of the novel; reading the description, it sounds like they missed the mark.
I think it’d be useful as a series of movies (only one would not do it justice).
The primary antagonists appropriate Hinduism to enforce their rule. The other antagonist appropriates Christianity. Any deplorable behavior is attributed to those characters being the bad guys. I’d love to see theocrats in India and U.S. get their noses tweaked.
The protagonist reluctantly then uses Buddhist themes to counter. He makes clear he doesn’t really believe any of it. I’m not Buddhist so I can’t really comment if it’s offensive.
A great reason to make a series of movies is that the cast would be filled with people of color. As the characters reincarnate, the movies would have different casts. One of characters is female who’s reincarnated into a male body. We need more science fiction movies like this.
I think the movies should be made, but I’m not sure who’d be able to do them properly. Maybe Studio Ghibli, but I’d prefer live action. I agree that doing them poorly is worse than not making them at all.
Job? A Man who abandons his faith for his wife, after knowing his faith is right?
No, it is a fine version of the Arthur as a kid with Merlin part, which was meant to be light hearted and funny. Until he re-wrote it with some dark anti-war parts
I vote for Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea novels, especially the first one, which would probably be easiest to film. It’s basically the original young-man-with-magical-talent-goes-to-a-school-for wizards story; and that worked pretty well for Harry Potter. The plot allows for plenty of action, and they could throw in the philosophical stuff about ‘balance’ to give it some seriousness.
Checking, I see that Earthsea was actually made into a miniseries, but I’m disregarding that because it was a cable TV miniseries and apparently it blew chunks.
The musical Camelot was based on T. H. White’s book, so, technically, the movie Camelot is, too. It’s not a very good interpretation of White, though. I wouldn’t mind seeing a straight adaptation of TOAFK, myself.
Again, to be technical, Disney’s The Sword in the Stone isn’t really based on The Once and Future King. It’s based on T.H. White’s book The Sword in the Stone. And if you think that The Sword in the Stone is just the first “book” of The Once and Future King, read the original edition of The Sword in the Stone side-by-side with the first section of The Once and Future King. White made very significant changes in The Sword and the Stone (which was an earlier, a stand-alone kids book) when he incorporated it into the larger story. Mim, for instance, is in there. She wasn’t an invention of Bill Peet and the Disney storymen.
For that matter, as I’ve long said, I’d like to see an adaptation of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court . Every “adaptation” I’ve ever seen completely changes things, removing Twain’s particular brand of humor and radically changing the story. I two cases they made the movie into essentially a vehicle for a popular entertainer (Will Rogers in one case, Bing Crosby in the other) rather than adapting Twain’s story.
And for those naysayers who think it can’t be done because it offends the Catholc Church and it gets grim at the end, you can certainly do it without including those elements. Og knows the previous adaptations did. But I want to see Hank Morgan blowing up Merlin’s Tower, and restoring the Fountain of Holiness. And I want to see him launch the Arthurian era newspaper, plaster advertising banners on Knight’s armor, and be rescued by a troop of armored knights on bicycles.