Novels you’d like to see made into a films?

[Pirate]

What novels would you like to see made into film? If it’s a novel that was already adapted, tell why you think it should be remade. Also list any directors, actors, writers, producers that you’d like to see attached to the production.

Catcher in the Rye
I love this book and although it would be damn near impossible to film, I think the right team could pull it off. A lot of people would choose a more eccentric filmmaker like Terry Gilliam to make the film, but my first and possibly only choice would be Mike Nichols. His deft knowledge of character and his ability to create powerful human stories would be perfect for this in my opinion. As for actors, I’ll take the easy way out and say I’d cast an unknown as Holden.


Where the Heart Is
I love Natalie Portman and I did enjoy her version, but it really didn’t do the material justice. If you haven’t read it “Where the Heart Is” is a wonderful book and it’s a lot more complex. If done correctly it would make a wonderful, wonderful film.

I would like to see someone like Cameron Crowe tackle this. A writer/director would need to be able to take this quirky, character driven book and create a complimentary script. And, who knows, if they waited a few years they could use Portman again in another role.


Moby Dick / 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
I’d love to see large budget versions of these with big names, big FX, and a big director! Real studio blockbusters!

I can see Peter Jackson doing a fine job with “Moby Dick” and Bryan Singer making a glorious version of “Leagues.”

Andy Serkis can play the whale.


Jonathan Livingston Seagull
This is one of my favorite books and although I think they turned it into a cartoon at some point, I would love to see PIXAR use this as their first dramatic CGI film. I don’t want Disney to get their filthy hands on this, so it might need to be another computer animation company, but PIXAR would make it look beautiful.

-PH

[starryeyes]

Dragonriders of Pern - I loved this book the first time I read it but I always felt it was unfilmable. But hey, they did justice to the Lord of the Rings and also Dune which I also thought was unfilmable. As far as a director, I probably would like to see Peter Jackson or a Ridley Scott do it since it's such an epic story. I think both of them would do the book justice.

The Mist - a short story by King. My favourite of his short stories and one that just creeped me out the first time I read it. I had read a couple of years ago that Frank Darabout was once attached to this project. I haven't heard anything about it in awhile. While Darabout did justice with other King projects, I think a Steven Spielberg would do a better job. As far as cast, I'd have to think about that one, perhaps by re-reading it again.

Great topic, Piratehunter. There are other books that I'll add at a later time.

[elwood731]

Nice topic. I'd love to see some literary classics get adaptations (or new and improved ones). 1984, Brave New World, Aniaml Farm (with the team from Babe), Farenheit 451 (which Mel Gibson is supposed to be doing), etc.

Every few years, luckily, we do get a decent adaptation of Shakespeare.

[LeChuck]

I really liked the original Fahrenheit 451 with Oskar Werner directed by Truffaut. Check it out if you have not seen it.

[elwood731]

Originally Posted by LeChuck

I really liked the original Fahrenheit 451 with Oskar Werner directed by Truffaut. Check it out if you have not seen it.

I have, and you're right about it being good. I just think each of these books has a lot to say about our world today. I mean that less from a political standpoint, and more of a social one. That's why I'd like to see remakes or first time adaptations. I'd also prefer to see them done as small pictures and not big Hollywood films.

[Reaver]

Part of me would love to see cinematic adaptations of King's The Dark Tower series, but another part fears how badly it all could go. If a good cast was put together and a great director, I'd love it. Otherwise, don't bother...

[movie diva]

Originally Posted by Reaver

Part of me would love to see cinematic adaptations of King's The Dark Tower series, but another part fears how badly it all could go. If a good cast was put together and a great director, I'd love it. Otherwise, don't bother...

I was going to also say The Dark Tower, I feel this is one of Kings best stories, but as with all of his work it is so complex, maybe if done on HBO as a limited series, but like you stated you would need a great director and good actors, and people that loved the story.

[Astrakan]

The Ender's Game series could be really good. I could see someone like Joss Whedon do great things with the source material.

I'd also like to see The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series made into movies. I'm not sure who I'd like to see as a director. Peter Jackson I suppose would be the obvious choice, but it'd be interesting to see someone like David Fincher tackle it. It's certainly dark enough for someone of his sensibilities.

KM

[MooglePorn]

How to be Good - Nick Hornby: The authour of High Fidelity and About a Boy, and this novel is almost equal to those. It's somewhat regarded as a lesser work, but I don't think so. It wouldn't be a blockbuster, but it could be very entertaining and motivational as well if put in the hands of the right director and producer.

The Gunslinger - Steven King: The fact that all of King's shitty novels have been made into movies but not his greatest work amazes me. I also love Wizards and Glass, and that would make a really cool film as well.

Lullaby - Chuck P.: I'm not even trying to spell his name right... anyway... This probably the most filmable novel of his I have read past Fight Club, and I would love to see it made into a movie. Diary is my favorite of his, and would love to see a movie of that as well, but it would take someone REALLY talented.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by elwood731

Nice topic.

I know. He's on a roll.

Peace...

[Taxi]

Originally Posted by Astrakan

The Ender's Game series could be really good. I could see someone like Joss Whedon do great things with the source material.

The movie version of Ender's game is in the works, but nothing new has been posted on the official site for some time, which probably isn't good.

Along with Thomas Covenant, I'd love to see Donaldson's Mordant's Need or The Gap series made into movies.

[Astrakan]

Originally Posted by Taxi

The movie version of Ender's game is in the works, but nothing new has been posted on the official site for some time, which probably isn't good.

Cool, I didn't know that. Thanks. From that link it looks like we should see an update soon. They had one in February 2004, then another in March 2005. So maybe April 2006?

KM

[Taxi]

Well, they've been "in progress" for quite some time.

(Also, I did a little searching and found where we've talked about this before: Here are those threads.

[Pirate]

Originally Posted by Taxi

(Also, I did a little searching and found where we've talked about this before: Here are those threads.

Yeah but I used the word "novel" which sounds more sophisticated .

-PH

[From a Buick 8]

Originally Posted by MooglePorn

[b]
The Gunslinger - Steven King: The fact that all of King's shitty novels have been made into movies but not his greatest work amazes me. I also love Wizards and Glass, and that would make a really cool film as well.

The whole dark tower series of books made into a trilogy of films, would be good.

opps sorry did not see the post from Reaver above

[DVDdetective]

Black Like Me

[movie diva]

Originally Posted by DVDdetective

Black Like Me

it was alrady made into a movie in the 60's

[LeChuck]

Originally Posted by MooglePorn

Lullaby - Chuck P.: I'm not even trying to spell his name right... anyway... This probably the most filmable novel of his I have read past Fight Club, and I would love to see it made into a movie. Diary is my favorite of his, and would love to see a movie of that as well, but it would take someone REALLY talented.

I was going to mention Mr. Palahniuk (that is how it is spelled BTW), but am very nervous over such a scheme. He is such a talented writer that Fight Club worked so well since it was in his head a lot and they can keep the wonderful prose in there. Lullaby is my favourite and, while it is possible, I feel it is best to leave him alone.

[Jellodyne]

Chuck Palahniuk has said that he tries to make his novels unfilmable -- that if he's not challenging the reader to the point where a film can be made of it, why bother? That said, pretty much everything he's ever written is either optioned or in production.

Personally Choke is the one I'd like to see most. It's a lot more Vonnegut-like in its sensibilites.

[Volcane]

Anne Rice's Vampire Chroicles done properly.

(I was quite impressed with Interview With The Vampire but dont even get me started on Queen Of The Damned).

Oh, and the rest of Tolkien's Middle Earth material (The Hobbit, The Silmarrilion, The Adventures Of Tom Bombadil etc etc).

[Nicholas S. Folsom]

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I really, really hope this is done WELL by Peter Jackson, his wife Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens. This is one of the most beautiful books ever written. By that I mean about the afterlife... Simply amazing. My eyes tear at the thought of it.

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life." – Susie, page 320.

[scarlettlil]

Originally Posted by Nicholas S. Folsom

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I agree with this book. It was a great book and it could be beautiful visually.

[Reaver]

Armor - John Steakley

[papibear]

Originally Posted by piratehunter

Moby Dick / 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
I’d love to see large budget versions of these with big names, big FX, and a big director! Real studio blockbusters!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049513/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046672/

Originally Posted by piratehunter

Jonathan Livingston Seagull
This is one of my favorite books and although I think they turned it into a cartoon at some point, I would love to see PIXAR use this as their first dramatic CGI film. I don’t want Disney to get their filthy hands on this, so it might need to be another computer animation company, but PIXAR would make it look beautiful.

-PH

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070248/ (not animation, live action)

By the way, Disney now owns Pixar, so your comment about Disney's "filthy hands" is rather asinine. Pixar IS the future of Disney animation.

Personally I'd like to see adaptations of a few novels:

John Dos Passos' "U.S.A." trilogy:
* The 42nd Parallel
* 1919
* The Big Money

Harry Mazer's The Last Mission

Cupcake Brown's A Piece of Cake: A Memoir (not a novel, but it'd make a terrific biopic)

Delores Phillips' The Darkest Child

Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run?

[Pirate]

Originally Posted by papibear

By the way, Disney now owns Pixar, so your comment about Disney's "filthy hands" is rather asinine. Pixar IS the future of Disney animation.

Well, I think when I created the thread, Disney and Pixar were still having issues, so the comment was fine at the time. At even if Pixar and Disney are BFF, I still would like to keep them from make it cutesy nonsense.

Also, I was aware of the previous versions of Moby Dick and I started the thread to discuss the possibility of new films.

[SeanL]

There are several I'd like to see get made, that is if Hollywood wouldn't screw them up.

Gates of Fire- by Steven Pressfield- It was supposed to already be in production, but I think it is in development hell.

Ice Station- by Matt Reilly- The book was very good... Antarctic setting, gun battles aplenty, man eating killer whales.

Hunters of the Dark Sea- by Mel Odom- Sort of a blending of Herman Melville and Jules Verne.

Neanderthal- by John Darnton

[tazer floyd]

Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

I know there were rumors years ago about this getting made, by Morgan Freeman's production company (I think) and David Fincher, but so far nothing has happened. I would just love to see this on the big screen. The set of the interior of Rama would be beautiful to see on a huge screen (imagine it in IMAX!).

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

I think this one was also rumored (loosely) to be made at some point. This, if done correctly, could look really, really cool on screen.

[mighty mint]

Uther - by Jack Whyte, pre-Arthur, it would be great to see a gritty movie made which would properly set up a realistic Camulod.

Heck, any of Jack Whyte's books in the Camulod chronicles would be amazing!

[Chrisse]

Life, The Universe and Everything

By far the best book in the Hitchhiker's Series, or at least the one that would most easily lend itself to be filmed. But we'll probably never see this as it seems that they're not gonna make a sequel to the 2005 Hitchhiker's movie, least not what I've heard.

But what I wouldn't give to see the Krikkit War Robots walk across the Lock Asteroid holding the Wikkit Key.

Artemis Fowl

Last I heard this movie was in progress but I haven't heard anything about release dates, or even casting. I just like the movies very 'family-genre' approach to the Childrens Book genre, not boring older readers and not patronizing the children. Could be good if well done.

I'll probably come up with more later.

[Chris Knight]

Originally Posted by starryeyes

The Mist - a short story by King. My favourite of his short stories and one that just creeped me out the first time I read it. I had read a couple of years ago that Frank Darabout was once attached to this project. I haven't heard anything about it in awhile. While Darabout did justice with other King projects, I think a Steven Spielberg would do a better job. As far as cast, I'd have to think about that one, perhaps by re-reading it again.
time.

The whole time I was reading this story, I was thinking "this would be an awesome movie". Great suspense.

[raptors661]

Rainbow Six would make an excellent movie, if not done by Uwe Boll

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by raptors661

Rainbow Six would make an excellent movie, if not done by Uwe Boll

He's going to put you in a ring and punch your lights out for saying that.

Personally, I would like to see Tom Clancy's Without Remorse and Executive Decision done into movies.

[trevanian]

Originally Posted by tazer floyd

Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

I know there were rumors years ago about this getting made, by Morgan Freeman's production company (I think) and David Fincher, but so far nothing has happened. I would just love to see this on the big screen. The set of the interior of Rama would be beautiful to see on a huge screen (imagine it in IMAX!).

I actually had a meeting with Freeman's company about this late in 2000, when I was still on staff at Cinefex magazine, cuz I was so interested in this that I wanted to document the film's production (making of book type thing) on my own, being a huge SE7EN devotee and having been blown away by RAMA as a 12 year old when the book was first published. At that point, they were still involved with a computer company (was it INTEL?) and it looked like it might go forward as a 150mil film, but they were trying to pump up the part of Jimmy (the guy in the hang glider) so that he'd be more dynamic and in conflict with the commander (I think they wanted something like the Freeman/Pitt dynamic in SE7EN, just a guess though.)

A couple years went by and I read that Fincher wanted to do the whole thing cg to get really good zero-gee, and just mocap the actor's faces onto cg bodies, which sounded way too FINAL FANTASY for my tastes. The fact it didn't go ahead makes me think it will eventually die and wind up being made with terrible production values for SciFiChannel. Shame if it goes that way.

For me, I'd put NO BUGLES NO DRUMS, a vietnam novel, way up there.

But the real special one is a Trevanian novel called SUMMER OF KATYA, the only property I ever tried to option. Keira Knightley would be absolutely PERFECT PERFECT PERFECT for Katya.

[mighty mint]

I would like to see The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum put to film. And mean the books to film not the travesties out there paradingunder the title of the books. Read the books...they ROCK! the movies share very little with the books themselves.

[Cannibalskunk]

I'd love to see film versions of William Gibson's sci-fi/cyberpunk Cyberspace trilogy, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive made into movies. I honestly think a lot could be made out of them with today's technology, and they'd be big hits with all the sex, violence and action in them.

I also really liked Gibson's Pattern Recognition, and feel that it would make a great movie as well. Would definately be more grounded than his Cyberspace novels, but extremely compelling storytelling.

I'd also be interested to see Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted turned into a movie, if only because it's so demented. The chapter containing Saint No-Guts' pool accident as a kid almost made me hurl on the bus when I read it. I've never had a book affect me physically like that, I still can't decide if that makes it good writing or horribly, horribly wrong. I'd probably have to leave the theater for that part of the movie, lol.

Do we have to limit this to prose? I can think of a couple graphic novels I'd love to see turned into movies.

Craig Thompson's excellent OGNs would make great films. Goodbye, Chunky Rice would make a powerful animated freature. And Blankets, the best comic work from 2004 imo, would make a fantastic adult drama in the right hands.

Brian Michal Bendis' early crime comic work is blatently cinematic, and there's been talk about film versions of Torso, Jinx and it's sequel Goldfish for years. I'm still waiting anxiously. Especially for Torso. Facinating true crime story about Eliott Ness the US's first serial killer.

A little off the beaten path, but how about a movie based on The Daily Show's America: The Book. I mean, hell, if they can make a fictionalized version of Fast Food Nation, why not a text book featuring nude Supreme Court Justices?

[Dave McFly]

A couple of years ago right arround the time of 9/11 I read this book by the always awesome Michael Crichton called Airframe about sabotage and conspiracy at a company that makes well airframes for airliners. It has one of the executives in the company doing the investigating a disaster involving having the roof rip off of a new jumbo jet during a test flight. Lots of the typical Crichton technojargon ala Jurassic Park. I would love to see this book adapted.

[Dogg]

All of the Lincoln Rhyme series of novels that I have read so far would make good movies (action /suspense). For those that don't know or remember, Lincoln Rhyme is the main character from The Bone Collector (Denzel Washington). There is a whole series of books about this character by Jeffery Deaver.

[MagicHat]

i am a secret girly-novel addict...love the beach reads, and have really been looking forward to the movie adaptation of "can you keep a secret?" that is supposed to be starring kate hudson.

haven't heard much about it since the announcement was made about a year ago that she had signed on...hope it still gets done.

[From a Buick 8]

Originally Posted by Dave McFly

A couple of years ago right arround the time of 9/11 I read this book by the always awesome Michael Crichton called Airframe about sabotage and conspiracy at a company that makes well airframes for airliners. It has one of the executives in the company doing the investigating a disaster involving having the roof rip off of a new jumbo jet during a test flight. Lots of the typical Crichton technojargon ala Jurassic Park. I would love to see this book adapted.

I thought i read at one time that Jodie Foster was interested in this book as a movie. In fact when i stsrted to first hear about flight plan i thought that was what she was doing.

[scarlettlil]

Drowning Ruth is a novel I would love see become a movie if the right people did it. It is a story that could translate beautifully onto the screen if done just right.