What Fantasy Stories would Work as a Live Action or Animated Adaptation?

[Saint of M]

Mostly speaking in a Western market, but there has to be some we like to see done right on the big or small screen. So here are my ten. Tell me how well you think they could work and give your own lists if you want.

1. Slayers:

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Action comedy, high fantasy, and a spell that can reduce a city used for comedic effect. Its a good chance to poke fun of some of the fantasy elements.

2. Rat Queens: Its funny. Its almost like a Dungeouns and Dragons session with Seth Rogan as the DM and take four funniest women in the industry as the party members consisting of a hipster dwarven warrior, a sassy wizzard/sorceress, a aithiest cleric of a Cthule esk worshiping family (who still has powers, part of the joke), and a hyperactive halfling rouge that is largly on a diet of candy and drugs. They drink hard, swear hard, party hard, and fight hard. Seriously, the first few chapters are about them and the other guilds going on quests in penitence for taking a drunken brawl into the streets and acting like Raider Fans/Soccer hooligans. If they do this, they need to have Flogging Molly or Dropkick Murphies in the background of that alone.

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3. Drizzit Due Under: Seriously WHY HASN'T THIS? Guy from an evil empire of decidence and evil decides to be a rebel and leave it, has glorious adventures duel wielding scimitars, fight orcs, summon a big cat.

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4. Gotrek and Feelix: One is a poet turned warrior from a middle class family who while drunk declares he will record the epic death of his traveling companion. The other is the Unlickiest Slayer: A Dwarf who out to find a foe that will grant it an worthy death in battle. The Problem the hyper violent berzerker is too damn good, and despite demons, trolls, giants, dragons, vampires, and a whole slew of other evils out there, he hasn't found one that can kill him. As long as the Skaven are a good mix of pants wetting funny and pants wetting scary, orcs and goblins likewise, and Warriors of Chaos look like they belong on a Heavy Metal Album, this should be a fun romp.

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5. Orphan
I don't know how I did this, but I managed to get my Mom hooked on this one, and it took me and my Dad along time to win her over to Harry potter. Then again she is the same woman that loves the Hellboy Movies, thought I was watching a "Girl" anime when I had Samurai X playing, and thought the fight between the Reds and Blues vs Tex near the end of the 8th season of Red vs Blue was adorable.

Anyways, take a rouge spell caster, his apprentice, and girl following said wizard around and acting as support (plus and adorable living god magic wolf puppy) go on an adventure to get a set of artifacts togeather to turn a giant dragon named Bloody August back into his big sister figure. Can be funny, can be action pack, and never boring. Also the dub is better, bite me.

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6. The Elder Scrolls: Make it a live action TV Show, change the cast of charecters every two or three seasons to make it follow the story line of the games, and add in all the potential side quests. Make it gorgeous, give it an awsome cast and even better music, and have fun. Also we wouldn't have all the bugs.

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7. Legend of Dragoon: I don't care if it would be crappy, but this was a fun JRPG back on the PS1 erra, and its a shame it didn't get a sequal. Any ways, 7 charecters get gems witht he souls of dragons in them and and they turn into winged powerranger esk knights and try to stop the end of the world over 4 disks. It had an interesting combat system where each attack was a combo and if you timed it just right you could do more damage and continue the attack. Trust me, it was fun and even today it looks pretty good.

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8. A Deccent FInal Fantasy TV show, maybe even animated:
Is it too much to ask for? It can't be all King's and an hours worth of fight scenes from Advent Children when it comes to the good ones. Seriously, pick one of the games. Go all the way to the first three or four and you get the most leeway to change the story to your liking.

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9. The Bard's Tail: Notice a theme in all my pics so far? Well the bard is a series of art from a web comic artist Fredrik Andersson back when elfwood was a thing, and the guy who gave us the source for the meme "I said Slay the Dragon no Lay the Dragon). In this case the Bard of an adventuring group is a world class casanova, unfortunaty all the women folk he has managed to hook up with has been a Naga, a Minotour, a Werewolf, scopion centaur, Cenaur, and a fricken dragon, and has kids with all of them. Hiliarity ensues.

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10. A Legend of Zelda Live Action Movie or TV show, or an animated movie or show: Nuff Said.

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[Hawki]

There's far too many to list, so looking at what you've got here:

-Final Fantasy/Legend of Zelda: These fall in the same boat for me in the sense that I don't see the point of an adaptation, especially when the LoZ games aren't that condusive to cinematic storytelling (e.g. the dungeons). However, if you wanted to make a LoZ or FF film that tells its own story, then, sure. Both settings are morphic enough to allow this.

-Gortrek and Felix: I guess? I think the problem is that the kind of fantasy Warhammer belongs to is a bit sold out at this point. On the other hand, apart from Trollslayer, my understanding is that each installment in the series tells a single, self-contained story, so that could be ripe for storytelling.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

As long as that Gotrek and Felix adaptation heavily features Thanquol I'm in.

Although of course the film adaptation is never going to live up to the book.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The title is about what would work, which is rather different and, IMHO, more interesting than what someone would like to see.

What about, say, Gotrek and Felix (I've read all the books by King, and two of the books they got long to write...he tried) makes it a good choice to adapt? IMHO, much of the strength of those books (and anything by King, really), is the worldbuilding, which usually comes in the form of the main character thinking about the situation for several pages.

 

[Saint of M]

D&D and Warhammer are easy enough to fix. Have a handful of chsrecters with diverse skillsets that bounce off eachother sych as with the cast of Avengers and go from there. That is essentialy orphen and slauyllyers ina nut shell

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

D&D and Warhammer are easy enough to fix. Have a handful of chsrecters with diverse skillsets that bounce off eachother sych as with the cast of Avengers and go from there. That is essentialy orphen and slauyllyers ina nut shell

I'm more into 40k than Fantasy, but isn't it all grimdark? Wouldn't a Warhammer adaptation just be Game of Thrones with more rape and torture?

 

[Trunkage]

Malazan books. It has a bunch of political intrigue, rogue units, massive monsters. The down side is that there isn't necessarily characters that are sustained consistently across the series. Characters and even whole armies are in one book, and not picked up until much later. The leaders in the Chain of Dogs are seen again for many books until they show up with the Empress about 5 books later. The anatagoniat in the first book is sporadically comes up over future books. But the whole world is pretty interesting

 

[Saint of M]

D&D and Warhammer are easy enough to fix. Have a handful of chsrecters with diverse skillsets that bounce off eachother sych as with the cast of Avengers and go from there. That is essentialy orphen and slauyllyers ina nut shell

I'm more into 40k than Fantasy, but isn't it all grimdark? Wouldn't a Warhammer adaptation just be Game of Thrones with more rape and torture?

To the upteenth level, which is why orcs and Goblins and Skaven are the Comic Releif Armies (with a giant Slingshot for shooting goblins through the air and a monster hamsterwheel as seige weapons for the respoective armies).

Or space Orks! The Red One's Go Faster! I made a gun that teliports the golin folk intoyour armor and he panics accordingly. More Dakka!

Or my Favorite

Just focus on a smaller scale, say a space hulk or a kill team, or film version of Vermintide. Heck A Grot movie.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

D&D and Warhammer are easy enough to fix. Have a handful of chsrecters with diverse skillsets that bounce off eachother sych as with the cast of Avengers and go from there. That is essentialy orphen and slauyllyers ina nut shell

I'm more into 40k than Fantasy, but isn't it all grimdark? Wouldn't a Warhammer adaptation just be Game of Thrones with more rape and torture?

To the upteenth level, which is why orcs and Goblins and Skaven are the Comic Releif Armies (with a giant Slingshot for shooting goblins through the air and a monster hamsterwheel as seige weapons for the respoective armies).

Or space Orks! The Red One's Go Faster! I made a gun that teliports the golin folk intoyour armor and he panics accordingly. More Dakka!

Or my Favorite

Just focus on a smaller scale, say a space hulk or a kill team, or film version of Vermintide. Heck A Grot movie.

But isn't that a waste of the premise? In a world where genetically enhanced werewolf space viking wielding magical ice swords fighting robotic Egyptian space zombies, are we really going to concentrate on the 5 goblins fighting 3 guys named Jeff?
Like in 40k, if you're not at the absolute extreme edge, you're not in the right IP

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

1. Devil Survivor. The second one got an animated series but the first didn't, despite having a tighter story and better characters IMO.

2. The Sicilian, my favorite of the Mario Puzo books, for live-action. Some might not take kindly to a new actor being young Michael Corleone, but he's not in it too much. Failing that, film the last one, Omerta.

3. An anime based on the Animorphs books, because looking back it had enough body horror, regular horror, and gore to make Katsuhiro Otomo* blush and the live-action series it got couldn't do it justice with such a limited budget.

*- The creator of Akira.

 

[Squilookle]

Live action or animation, on big OR small screen?

Why not just say 'as an adaptation' if you're going to include the whole scope anyway?

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

3. An anime based on the Animorphs books, because looking back it had enough body horror, regular horror, and gore to make Katsuhiro Otomo* blush and the live-action series it got couldn't do it justice with such a limited budget.

*- The creator of Akira.

Agreed that Animorphs needs a good revisiting. With all the "teenagers have to save the world" YA dystopia stuff that got popular not too long ago, I'm surprised no-one got round to doing Animorphs. Or Everworld, KA Applegate's other series that I liked.

On a similar note, I'd like to see someone do something with Garth Nix's Abhorsen series. Probably have to be animation, given how effect heavy it would be in live action

 

[Saint of M]

3. An anime based on the Animorphs books, because looking back it had enough body horror, regular horror, and gore to make Katsuhiro Otomo* blush and the live-action series it got couldn't do it justice with such a limited budget.

*- The creator of Akira.

Agreed that Animorphs needs a good revisiting. With all the "teenagers have to save the world" YA dystopia stuff that got popular not too long ago, I'm surprised no-one got round to doing Animorphs. Or Everworld, KA Applegate's other series that I liked.

On a similar note, I'd like to see someone do something with Garth Nix's Abhorsen series. Probably have to be animation, given how effect heavy it would be in live action

It was popular enough to get a tv show and a line of transformers, and Goosbumps is back with a vengance so why not.

Wonder if David Tennet can be in it?

 

[twistedmic]

Malazan books. It has a bunch of political intrigue, rogue units, massive monsters. The down side is that there isn't necessarily characters that are sustained consistently across the series. Characters and even whole armies are in one book, and not picked up until much later. The leaders in the Chain of Dogs are seen again for many books until they show up with the Empress about 5 books later. The anatagoniat in the first book is sporadically comes up over future books. But the whole world is pretty interesting

I agree, the Malazan world is so wide, rich and deep that you can make nearly as many Malazan different shows (each with a different genere/feel/tone) as there are/were Law & Order, CSI and NCIS versions all put together.
You can do an entire seasons long series based on the citizens of Darujhistan, Malaz city or the Wickans.
But I will say that animation is the only way to capture Malazan Book of the Fallen on screen and do it justice. The CGI needed to properly create the cities, Warrens, battles and nonhuman races would be prohibitively expensive, probably rivaling a big-budget Hollywood movie.

 

[CaitSeith]

So, am I the only one who recalls Final Fantasy Unlimited?

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

3. An anime based on the Animorphs books, because looking back it had enough body horror, regular horror, and gore to make Katsuhiro Otomo* blush and the live-action series it got couldn't do it justice with such a limited budget.

*- The creator of Akira.

Agreed that Animorphs needs a good revisiting. With all the "teenagers have to save the world" YA dystopia stuff that got popular not too long ago, I'm surprised no-one got round to doing Animorphs. Or Everworld, KA Applegate's other series that I liked.

On a similar note, I'd like to see someone do something with Garth Nix's Abhorsen series. Probably have to be animation, given how effect heavy it would be in live action

It was popular enough to get a tv show and a line of transformers, and Goosbumps is back with a vengance so why not.

Wonder if David Tennet can be in it?

I think my only question would be whether you update it for modern times or deliberately leave it in its early 90s setting. We've got to move on from the 80s nostalgia sooner or later, right?

 

[Hawki]

General note - Malazan is bad, and your taste is bad.

So, am I the only one who recalls Final Fantasy Unlimited?

Nup. But if you did watch FFU, then you have my sympathy.

 

[Cicada 5]

1) Wonder Woman - It deals with various mythology and folklore and people have been asking for more WW content for a while.

2) Shadowpact - An obscure DC book about magic. Has some very entertaining characters and could work well for animation.

3) The Percy Jackson Universe books - Being focused on child characters can have a lot of appeal and a lot of the stuff is suited for animation.

 

[Kyrian007]

I hate to be negative, but not everyone's niche favorite. The ones that would be successful... are the ones everybody's heard of. I've seen it over and over again as Hollywood scrambles to find the rights to stories because they are all out of original ideas. Examples:

HBO gets the license for A Song of Ice and Fire. Several other outlets start rooting around for fantasy to adapt... and fail to even start or hang after a season or 2. Twilight makes 400 million at the box office. Studios start rooting around for the several less popular similar series to adapt... and True Blood does OK-ish, otherwise no other huge successes. Child battle royales never manage to cash in on the success of The Hunger Games. Nobody manages a massive shared world franchise after Marvel nails it with the MCU...

This goes on and on. Unless someone has licensed the actual "next big thing" the imitations or niche appeal similar works... just don't do well. So back to the original question, what would be some good adapted fantasy? Lord of the Rings... works. Worked, it was a massive success. A Song of Ice and Fire... popular well-known books, and an adaptation success. That's the level of notoriety something has to have to manage success. So for things that haven't been made yet... Maybe Elder Scrolls (video game, historically terrible adaptations though.) Maybe Wheel of Time (but I doubt it.) Maybe Eddings' Belgariad (comfortable and familiar as the story structure is setting its appeal as broad as possible, I still don't see it on that level as being enough for a successful adaptation.) I'm not sure fantasy has anything left with enough appeal.

Remember, studios adapting things for films or tv shows DON'T WANT to make something with niche appeal. They don't want to make cult classics with a small, but very loyal fanbase. They don't want some of the money... they want ALL of the money. There's few fantasy series left that have that brand recognition that guarantees a studio a good ROI, as much as I'd want to see more fantasy adaptations... I just doubt we'll get them.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Or space Orks! The Red One's Go Faster! I made a gun that teliports the golin folk intoyour armor and he panics accordingly. More Dakka!

I'm now envisioning an animated adaptation of Deff Skwadron. An hour and a half of ultraviolent, hilarious and utterly chaotic Orky nonsense sounds like a fun time.