Books to be Movies

[Agayek]

The Codex Alera.

Think Lord of the Rings with Pokemon. Then multiply the battle scale by at least 5. The last battle in the book consists of an army of millions assaulting a fortress while the main character and the big bad duke it out while standing on a giant the size of Mount Everest. Which is also trying to kill both of them. Tell me that's not awesome!

Gonna have to second this one.

God I love those books.

 

[Agayek]

I'm not sure what you're referring to since I've only read the first three, but yeah, I'd like to see a Dresden movie. It would have to be handled with care, though. The books walk a fine line of noir badassery and a comical self-awareness of Dresden being an openly-practicing wizard in a skeptical world. "Do you do birthdays?", and all that.

I believe it was made into a short-lived TV series by the way, it came up on Netflix for me once. I haven't checked the show out yet because I don't want to spoil the books, and also because I'm skeptical that it was made for SyFy and only lasted one season. I do like the actor they got to play Dresden, though.

The TV series is actually surprisingly decent. It's not great by any means, and it suffers from a fairly solid lack of understanding of the material Butcher uses, but if you go in recognizing that it's not trying to tell the same story as the books, it stands up pretty well. There's not much of a connecting storyline the way the books have and it's closer in tone/style to the first three books in the series, but it's still pretty solid.

Also, you'll know the scene he's talking about when you get there. Dead Beat is book 7 in the series and some necromancers show up. I'm not going to spoil it because it's fucking awesome, and you will definitely know it when you see it. Just keep reading.

 

[The Sanctifier]

It could be interesting to see how Bernard Cornwall's Grail quest Series plays out as a trilogy. It has a very realistic and gritty portrayal of the Hundred Years War and quite a compelling storyline. The director would have to make sure to pay a lot of attention to fine detail, since the author describes just about most aspects of medieval warfare, particularly the use of the bow, since the main character is an English Archer.

 

[Kyrian007]

Hey I quite liked the Hitchhikers Guide movie. OK, so arguably it was one of the weaker versions, but still very watchable.

Also that series started on the radio, before being adapted as a books, an LP Record, cassette, TV Series, Game, Towel, Movie etc etc.

The other fun thing about Hitchhiker's Guide is that no 2 versions are the same, they all have major or minor variations

I would argue that it was the weakest... not to say I hated everything about it. I loved the casting, thought it was perfect. For me though all the other incarnations were outstanding... and the movie was just a little too much Disney and not enough Adams. But I DO like how all the versions had their own variations, it kept it interesting. But the movie (for me anyway) was an example how straying from the source material CAN be bad as well as good. It seems to me sometimes fanboys have a tendancy to ignore how change can be good. And Hitchhikers is a great proving point about how wrong that is.

 

[Megalodon]

I wouldn't mind seeing something like the Horus Heresy or Guant's ghosts turned into a movie...as long is it didn't turn out like the up coming World War Z (Which from the trailers I have seen looks like utter crap).

Or that CGI Ultramarine thing from a couple of years ago, that was pointlessly awful.

Surely you've heard of Ender's Game? It's one of the most famous works of science fiction, about child soldiers learning to lead massive fleets. It has all sorts of action, ranging from unarmed hand-to-hand to large-scale Star Wars-esque space battles.

Speaker for the Dead is one of the sequels to Ender's Game. I haven't seen Tinker Tailor, so I can't do a perfect comparison, but I know that Tinker Tailor was powered by extraordinary actors and a tense setting, and only needed the relatively small budget of 21 million dollars. Speaker for the Dead would need a much larger budget for the science fiction elements, many of the characters are aliens (and wouldn't benefit from an acting juggernaut like Gary Oldman playing them), and the primary conflict is the inability to communicate. As much as I'd love to be proven wrong, I'm certain it wouldn't work as a film.

Plus, as a sequel to Ender's Game, Speaker would be a massive drop in action which would likely outrage audiences. Ender's Game can stand alone, but once you've read Speaker for the Dead you need to finish the saga. But Speaker for the Dead is much less accessible than Ender's Game, and I can imagine a fan uproar when people are "fooled" into seeing it after enjoying Ender. It would be like if Peter Jackson marketed a new movie as an intense Lord of the Rings sequel, but the whole thing was Samwise playing politics in the Shire.

Fair enough, I have indeed heard of Ender's Game, but was unaware it had sequels. You are dead right about Tinker Tailor(which I would highly recommend), it was pretty much carried by the cast, and you make good points why that effect would struggle to transfer to the SciFi setting. Hell, that sort of slow, charcyer piece is hard enough to pull off in a modern setting, without crazy eleemts (Zero Dark Thirty, that film was bloody boring).

 

[Willinium]

So just got done reading the Black Company books by Glen Cook and while I would like to see it as a movie I just cant imagine how they would do it. Time skipping back and forward dozens of perspectives and the effects good lord the cost would be monstrous.

 

[Aggy213]

Terry Goodkind's sword of truth series. I know it was already made into a very badly adapted tv show that had nothing to do with the first book besides the characters names. But I believe it could be adapted into very good films if they followed the books.