You were excited that they announced an adaptation of [insert book title] but...

De gustibus.

Yeah… it’s a shame. Highlander was such an awesome movie, it’s too bad they never made another. But knowing Hollywood, it’d be some awful tacked-on sequel that made no sense at all instead of an awesome series of prequels.

Don’t even get me started on Starship Troopers. Adventure on a galactic scale, powered armor, mini-nukes, hand to hand combat with swarms of giant bugs. Hell, the potential for Avatar-level cinematic vision alone would’ve sold the movie. Damn… it would have been incredible if it’d ever gotten made.

I’m always wary when they announce a movie of a book I like. Part is that it’s rare that they get completed; the other part that even if they are completed, it’s likely to be disappointing.

Two fantastic **Wally Lamb **novels, *I Know This Much is True *and She’s Come Undone, have both had film adaptation talk over the years that seems to go nowhere. Last I heard, a director was attached and Matt Damon was up for the lead in IKTMIT but that was quite awhile ago, and I haven’t seen any new news.

Studio Ghibli did an animated adaptation of some of the books that actually got Ursula K. LeGuin’s blessing. A friend gave me a Japanese copy years ago, but it was officially released by Disney last year. Gorgeous scenery:

There exists a movie with the title Starship Troopers. There does not exist a movie which is an adaptation of the book Starship Troopers. This is not just an expression of disgust by the fans, but a universally-accepted truth: The director of the movie by that title was even proud of the fact that he never read the book, as it meant that he couldn’t even subconsciously make it similar.

I read Jumper in anticipation of the movie (the trailer looked bitchin’) and the thing was so dated that they had to change everything or else the movie would have been a complete crapfest.

Piers Anthony’s On A Pale Horse has been in production purgatory for years.

Not a book, but I really wanted them to finish American McGee’s Alice.

I hate the “Highlander 2 / Star Trek V / Some Other Disappointing Movie doesn’t exist” crowd with an intense, burning passion, but if literally the only thing they lifted from Starship Troopers was its title, then I have to give them a pass on this one.

Ender’s Game. I doubt it will ever happen.

I was all geared up for a small-screen version of** Dragonriders of Pern**. The sets were up and casting was about to start when “creative differences” reared their ugly heads. THis was back in '99 and apparently they were going to Buffy-ize the show. Then there was Copperheart Entertainment, who were going to make a big-screen version. Artwork was out on the net and it looked like a go. I have no idea what happened there.

It’s been years since I heard of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell being made into a movie. I’ll go to my grave wondering how they would have managed it, if they had.

Rendezvous With Rama - supposedly Morgan Freeman was trying to get this made into a film years ago. According to IMDb, he’s still trying…

A Soldier of the Great War used to have an IMDB page as a pending project, but now it’s gone. :frowning:

Chronos tells the precise truth here. The scriptwriter did lift the names of the protagonist and a few – I count four – minor characters from the novel, changing the characterizations utterly (one turned male-to-female for no apparent reason), but that literally is all they used of it – title, the misleading “adapted from” attribution, and those five names.

I’m still waiting for a movie of a Larry Niven novel.

But then I was once pleased to hear that John Varley’s ‘Millenium’ was to be made into a movie. My pleasure was completely unwarranted.

I started a thread wondering how they’d do it after I’d finished reading it. Someone posted a link in that thread that they were optioning it into a movie. IIRC Don Cheadle was involved. Link’s dead now, but here’s the archive. Nothing looks more current than 2008 - New Line had it so I guess it’s in Limbo or whatever.

It’s slim pickings, but there are two Niven adaptations for television out there:

1.) They adapted his short story The Soft Weapon as “The Slaver Weapon”, an episode of the short-lived animated Star Trek series that ran in 1974. As a result, the kzin re now part of the Star Trek universe…sorta.

2.) The new Outer Limits adapted his story Inconstant Moon back in 1996. It was pretty faithful, too – a rarity for any TV adaptation.

If it does get made I hope they improve the story by adding killer aliens or mutants. :dubious:

Michael Moorcock’s Elric (with David Bowie starring).

CMC fnord!

Nah, they renamed all the characters and stretched the first book out into eight movies . . . you might know it as the “Harry Potter” series.