What book would you like to see made into a movie or TV show that hasn’t been?
I’m still waiting for somebody to get going onThe Beekeeper’s Apprentice.
A.
19 thoughts on “Weekend Question Thread”
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What book would you like to see made into a movie or TV show that hasn’t been?
I’m still waiting for somebody to get going onThe Beekeeper’s Apprentice.
A.
Comments are closed.
I’d kind of like to see someone doThe Sparrow, probably as a miniseries, but I have no idea how they’d cast it properly.
I am a fan of the Maisie Dobbs mystery series (set in Post WWI England with a female private investigator and lots of PTSD in all the characters). I think it would make an excellent or “cracking” mini-series, as the Brits would say, for Masterpiece/Mystery on PBS.
The Sparrow is one of my favorite books but I don’t know how they would film it – unless the people from Galactica were involved (!)
Fuck Hobbes. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
I’d like to see a movie version of the Koran. Not because I’m particularly interested in the story, but because HOLY BALLS the freakouts over said movie would be the most entertaining thing since the Marx Brothers.
I’d like to see Tad Williams’ “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn” trilogy made into a set of movies, or a TV series. Tad Williams’ writing style is so very emotionally engaging.
Would love to see Robert Jordan’s “Wheel Of Time” series done, too. Just because it is so HUGE.
Great question.
For serious drama, I’d say any of James Baldwin’s novels. “Another Country” would be a great four- or six-hour series on cable. “Go Tell It On the Mountain” would be a tour de force for African-American actors.
For fun, how about “The Big Love” — the story of fiftyish Errol Flynn and his affair with a teen starlet named Beverly Aadland? The book (written by Beverly’s mother, who seems to have been the 1950s prototype for Lindsay Lohan’s mother) was so jawdropping it had a fan base among mid-century literati and even had an introduction by William Styron. Sort of “Lolita” meets “A Confederacy of Dunces.” There was a play made of it in the 1990s by Tracey Ullman but it warrants a full screen treatment.
Speaking of “Confederacy,” I hope they never film it.
Peter Mathiessen’s “Far Tortuga”. One of the best ever.
i am not sure the decameron would work as a movie.
The Decameron would work great as a 10-episode series.
I have to vote for the “Out of the Silent Planet” trilogy by C. S. Lewis. They’ve had success with his books before and I kept visualizing a slightly mad, slightly crazy Gandalf inflicting Babel speak on the college faculty from the third book while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Heck, I’ll even put my two cents in for Peter Jackson to direct.
At first, I could only think of books that had been made movies that did a terrible job of it.
But Cyscrub is right – the C S Lewis space triology would make a great movie.
I think any of Flannery O’Connor’s work would be fascinating as a movie (I’m thinking ofThe Lame Shall Enter First for some reason; it just begs to be made). I’m not sure that no one has ever adapted any of her short stories, but I’d be surprised if they have. Maybe they are too gothic?
Regards,
Tengrain
Roger Zelazny’sLord Of Light, as a high-budget Bollywood Ramayana/Hollywood action-adventure crossover, a masque of love and power and sex and death.
Ursula LeGuin’sA Wizard of Earthsea
Connie WillisDoomsday Book
Eric SevareidCanoeing With The Cree
Umm, John Huston did do O’Connor’sWise Blood, in 1979. It’s now mostly known as a curiosity piece.
I spent part of a summer, when I couldn’t find work between semesters teaching, blocking out howGravity’s Rainbow could be done. I managed to keep the story roughly intact in seventeen hour-long episodes. Then, over thirty years ago, there would have been no way to do it, but today, with cable networks doing miniseries of all sorts, there are venues. Still, it would be horribly expensive, and very doubtful that one could get Pynchon to sell the film rights.
No one has yet attempted, IIRC, any of Richard Powers’ novels.The Goldbug Variations, Plowing the Dark orThree Farmers on Their Way to a Dance are all strong candidates for film, if done by someone competent in translating interior monologue into visual language.
Several of LeGuin’s Hainish novels would translate to the screen. The Dispossessed would be excellent.
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Did that work?
The unclosed em is probably mine. I regret it already.
I fearThe Dispossessed would be too large for one movie, and would suffer from omission.The Telling I think more tractable.
anent Richard Powers, I think a splendid drama could be made ofGain
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Get the gang from “Cloud Atlas” to do it. War, paranoia and sexual perversion. Sounds like Oscar ™ bait to me.
October Light by John Gardner Family drama mixed with action picture. As I read this book in the nineties I could not but think of it as a movie. An old lady locks herself in the attic and reads a trash spy novel while her family crumbles around her.
I’m a sucker for David Weber’s Honor Harrington books and Eric Flint’s 1632 series.
“A Beautiful Friendship” would be excellent, and so would (not to mention hilarious; but casting … oh, the decisions!) 1632.
Imagine mining trucks, Dodge Ram pickups, camo’d West Virginia deer hunters with their arsenals … all dropped overnight amid the Thirty Years War…