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by **scratch123** » Fri Jul 29, 2011 1:36 pm UTC

I was trying to think of books that would make good movies that haven't been done yet but I couldn't come up with any. Maybe you guys can think of some.

by **AvatarIII** » Fri Jul 29, 2011 1:50 pm UTC

prepare fo this thread being filled with just about every good book ever.

some i have thought would be good
The Prefect - Alastair Reynolds, a Hard SF cop movie dealing with AIs and the plethora of orbital habitats that is their juristiction

Behold the Man - Michael Moorcock, this was apparently going to be a movie in the 70s but financing fell through and it never got made, it's possibly a bit controversial now, but it is the tale of a young polish jew man raised christian in the UK in the aftermath of WW2, who becomes a religious cynic, unlucky in love and life, finds a way to go back in time to witness the crucifiction of christ,

Spoiler:

Diamond Dogs (novella) - Alastair Reynolds, this novella was pretty much inspired by "Cube" (and is almost explicitly stated) a man discovers an alien artifact, a tower with rooms inside, each room contains increasingly difficult puzzles or traps, he invites a bunch of people to help him decipher it, once the puzzles and traps become humanly impossible to solve, they use advanced medical technology to augment themselves to survive the traps and be fast and intelligent enough to solve the puzzles, until ultimately they resemble "Diamond Dogs".

by **ShootTheChicken** » Fri Jul 29, 2011 3:57 pm UTC

The Hyperion/Endymion series by Dan Simmons could be really good I think, and apparently it's in the works. I am extremely worried that it'll get fucked up though.

by **Nat** » Fri Jul 29, 2011 5:58 pm UTC

The wheel of time, though the only way to do that would be to make it into one of those neverending soap operas.

by **Adam H** » Fri Jul 29, 2011 7:02 pm UTC

I second the nomination for an epic never ending Wheel of Time soap opera. It would pale in comparison to the books, but it would be good enough to watch!

Next, The Once and Future King, one of my favorites. It would probably be best if it was made into a quadrilogy. Yes, there are a ton of Arthur movies, but these would be the best

I was going to say Ender's Game but apparently it's already in the works. So then I'll say Speaker for the Dead!

Can I say Dune? Does the existing movie actually count as a movie?

by **no-genius** » Sun Jul 31, 2011 9:39 pm UTC

Adam H wrote:Can I say Dune? Does the existing movie actually count as a movie?

You're new to tautology club, aren't you?

Infinite Jest is obviously unfilmable, but I'd like to see Blood Sister: One Tough Nun, which is a movie directed by the deceased father of a main character. The synopsis in the endnote that lists all his 'entertainments': "Parody of revenge/recidivism action genre, a formerly delinquent nun's failure to reform a juvenile delinquent leads to a rampage of recidivist revenge." There's a fairly detailed description of a character watching it, and I think it would make a good Tarrantino film.

Also, I'd like a proper hitchhikers movie.

by **|Erasmus|** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:28 am UTC

My friend recently said he thought it would be awesome if Iain Banks' Player of Games, and Use of Weapons were made into movies. I agreed with him.

by **AvatarIII** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 9:44 am UTC

|Erasmus| wrote:My friend recently said he thought it would be awesome if Iain Banks' Player of Games, and Use of Weapons were made into movies. I agreed with him.

isn't the plot of UOW kind of important that you not recognise one of the characters? so i don't think it would translate well to screen to be honest. haven't read player of games though.

as for Hyperion/Endymion i think the movie version has vanaished, last i heard was the guy that did the Day The Eath Stood Still remake was directing, and that Simmons had writen an adaptation treatment of the books in which the whole trilogy followed Raul and Aenea, but i don't think it's happening anymore, shame because it could make a lot of money if done right,

by **modularblues** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:21 am UTC

Doug Coupland's stories might make interesting philosophical social-commentary quasi-horror type of movies. Like 33% Supersize Me + 67% Donnie Darko.

by **mercutio_stencil** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 5:15 am UTC

Neuromancer, easily. Really, I'd just like to see it get out of development hell for once. Actually, the new series of Gibson novels would make for really interesting movies as well, but I wouldn't count of them actually translating well

by **AvatarIII** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 8:13 am UTC

mercutio_stencil wrote:Neuromancer, easily. Really, I'd just like to see it get out of development hell for once.

i believe this is in active development from the director of Cube/Cypher/Splice

by **Evengeduld** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 8:08 am UTC

The Banned and the Banished series would make one hell of a good movie series

If you like fantasy type movies it is.

by **themoneyspider** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 11:55 am UTC

I think the Temeraire books have already been optioned...they'd be a good one for Harry Potter fans I think (although they are a bit swashbuckly).

by **Poopenheimer** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:43 pm UTC

THE EDGE CHRONICLES.

That is all.

by **Ggrogg** » Sat Aug 13, 2011 9:41 am UTC

Most of the David Gemmell novels would make good movies, perhaps even great movies. Might have a hard time casting a few characters, most notably Druss. You just don't have too many good actors that have large enough bodies/frames to play Druss and are old enough. And if you didn't portray him right you'd have a LOT of pissed off fans. Only person I can think of off the top of my head would maybe be Brendan Gleeson. On the other hand as we saw in Captain America it's becoming more of a possibility to adjust the size of an actor but I don't think you'd want to do that for an entire movie.
Gemmell's other famous characters would be a lot easier to cast. Someone like Eric Bana or Zachary Quinto would work just fine for Waylander or most of his other characters like Skilgannon the Damned.

On a side note, I tend to picture how I would do the movie trailers for books that I think would make a good movie. Here's how I would do a trailer for Waylander: You'd just start off by hearing his voice "They say you always remember the face of the first man you kill, but you forget the 10th. Well, for me, that wasn't the case. I remember all 19 of their faces." Then we'd see a brief version of his family being killed and then switch to him sitting with Dardalion and Dardalion being like "And so you became Waylander the Slayer to get your revenge." "Yes, until that path lead to me killing a king and starting a war." And then you'd go into the more generic trailer, something along the lines of "To save a country they must find a symbol to rally behind" (spoken by a narrator or a character) showing a few action shots and a shot of the armor of Bronze and then go on to explain/show that he's being hunted by the brotherhood or darkness and that the war is being fought/lost at the same time. You'd have plenty of chances to show some action in the trailer but I think the most important part would be having that opening to show us who Waylander really is and why he became that way. That's my thoughts on the subject!

by **mosc** » Mon Aug 15, 2011 9:29 pm UTC

Honor Harrington series would translate to your average sci-fi movie fairly easily. Most of it's written pretty close to a screenplay to begin with. Everyone likes lighthearted action packed sci-fi so I'm sure it would do well. Particularly if you cast someone with sex appeal in the lead role. Sorry if that wasn't the most intellectually stimulating of answers but I find that more intellectually challenging works don't translate well to film.

by **Czhorat** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 4:28 pm UTC

I don't see the value in having a beloved book made into a movie. A book with good descriptive prose comes alive to me in my mind, and the silver screen never quite matches my expectations.

What specifically would one expect to get from a film of Neuromancer that one couldn't get from the books? Is it even possible for a movie to maintain the complexity of a major work like the Hyperion cycle?

by **wannabe** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 6:16 pm UTC

Looking forward The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie coming. I know this is already in the works(so maybe not totally on topic), but I hope the first movie is good and makes money so the next two can be justified. The second, and especially the third are where it all comes together. Would love to see what Hollywood does with some of the touchy issues in the book. I saw the Swedish versions and they were pretty good, but can't wait for the Hollywood version.

by **Kewangji** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 7:39 pm UTC

wannabe wrote:Looking forward The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie coming. I know this is already in the works(so maybe not totally on topic), but I hope the first movie is good and makes money so the next two can be justified. The second, and especially the third are where it all comes together. Would love to see what Hollywood does with some of the touchy issues in the book. I saw the Swedish versions and they were pretty good, but can't wait for the Hollywood version.

This post depresses me so much. I don't think Hollywood could do it well if you gave them fifty tries.

by **AvatarIII** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:52 am UTC

Kewangji wrote:
wannabe wrote:Looking forward The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie coming. I know this is already in the works(so maybe not totally on topic), but I hope the first movie is good and makes money so the next two can be justified. The second, and especially the third are where it all comes together. Would love to see what Hollywood does with some of the touchy issues in the book. I saw the Swedish versions and they were pretty good, but can't wait for the Hollywood version.

This post depresses me so much. I don't think Hollywood could do it well if you gave them fifty tries.

it's not "Hollywood", it's David Fincher,

by **wannabe** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 3:51 pm UTC

Kewangji wrote:
wannabe wrote:Looking forward The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie coming. I know this is already in the works(so maybe not totally on topic), but I hope the first movie is good and makes money so the next two can be justified. The second, and especially the third are where it all comes together. Would love to see what Hollywood does with some of the touchy issues in the book. I saw the Swedish versions and they were pretty good, but can't wait for the Hollywood version.

This post depresses me so much. I don't think Hollywood could do it well if you gave them fifty tries.

Oh, come on...While "Hollywood" is responsible for lots of crap, it is also a collection of many, many talented, hard working people....not to mention access to capital. Like it or not, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Marlon Brando, and probably at least 7 of your top ten movies ever(granted this one is speculation) all are part of/came from Hollywood. In this case it is David Fincher, Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, plus a host of talented others, and...ready...MGM and their hundred million dollars.

by **PatrickRsGhost** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:54 am UTC

no-genius wrote:
Adam H wrote:Also, I'd like a proper hitchhikers movie.

I think the best way to do the Hitchhiker's books would have to be to do an entire TV series. I know it's been done before, but perhaps with more up-to-date technology. The problem I had with the newest movie was that it seemed to use bits and pieces from all of the books, and it kept jumping back and forth from the Guide to the story.

If I were directing or producing a series based on the books, I would start each episode with an excerpt from the Guide, regarding what the characters were to encounter in that episode, or else do it at the end. One way I can see doing it is since Ford Prefect is one of the editors of the Guide, he could be making an entry about any alien races or planets they visited, or update existing entries based on his and his friends' experiences, and that entry would be played during the end credits of each episode.

A few months ago my mom and I were talking about the Harry Potter series, and I had said that I think it would have been better as a TV series, with each book being a season, and each chapter an hour-long episode. Would have allowed for more stuff from the books to have been put in.

The same could easily be said for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and The Hobbit (Or There And Back Again).

I know it's been made into an animated movie produced by Chuck Jones, but I'd love to see The Phantom Tollbooth made into a live-action movie, with some CGI effects. Instead of the main character turning into a cartoon, he remains live-action, and the Kingdom of Wisdom could be half-CGI, half live-action.

Although I've never read it (will one of these days), House of Leaves might make for a good series of movies, or TV series.

by **AvatarIII** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 11:12 am UTC

Czhorat wrote:I don't see the value in having a beloved book made into a movie. A book with good descriptive prose comes alive to me in my mind, and the silver screen never quite matches my expectations.

What specifically would one expect to get from a film of Neuromancer that one couldn't get from the books? Is it even possible for a movie to maintain the complexity of a major work like the Hyperion cycle?

Personally I like the idea of my favourite books being made into movies because a lot more people watch a lot more movies than they read books, and I like the idea of people enjoying stories that I have enjoyed,

by **moonmonster** » Sat Sep 10, 2011 7:47 pm UTC

Frank Herbert wrote a really interesting book called The Jesus Incident, which touches on a lot of the same themes Dune covers but in a style that's a lot better suited to being a movie. It's also very weird. It's got an AI with godlike powers, a planet full of sentient kelp, cloning and the social consequences thereof, and a super hostile alien world called Pandora (near to 30 years before Avatar, a true trendsetter!). It's one of my favorite books.

by **Aiea** » Tue Oct 04, 2011 8:25 am UTC

As often as I go back and re-read Tamora Pierce books, I'd love to see her books made into movies. Though I'd be half afraid of that ruining the books and being awful.

by **SummerGlauFan** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 3:14 am UTC

S.M. Sterling's Lords of Creation books would make great movies; they're set in an alternate universe where both Venus and Mars are life-bearing worlds (terraformed by aliens millions of years ago as part of an experiment). Instead of an arms race, the Cold War period was an enormous Space Race as the U.S., Russia, and their allies try to outdo each other on settling and researching the planets.

The Monster Hunter International series would make a great movie (or movie trilogy). They are funny, epic, and don't take themselves too seriously.

by **Obby** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 7:34 pm UTC

PatrickRsGhost wrote:Although I've never read it (will one of these days), House of Leaves might make for a good series of movies, or TV series.

Good luck with that. I loved the book, but I honestly don't think that this can be made in to a coherent movie or TV series and still retain the same atmosphere and feel of the book. If you're just after a really fucked-up premise then I guess it can be done, but most of how I felt about House of Leaves came from reading about how the characters felt, what they were thinking, how they reacted to the shit that went down, etc. And those things are very hard to translate from this book, I think, just because of how the information is presented in the book.

by **Yakk** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 8:24 pm UTC

Charles Stross' "Laundry" novels, about the Lovecraftian creatures living at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set and their geopolitical security and espionage implications, in a procedural spy comic horror.

Simply because it would be easy to market.

by **mercutio_stencil** » Sun Oct 30, 2011 10:05 pm UTC

PatrickRsGhost wrote:
no-genius wrote:
Adam H wrote:Also, I'd like a proper hitchhikers movie.

I think the best way to do the Hitchhiker's books would have to be to do an entire TV series. I know it's been done before, but perhaps with more up-to-date technology. The problem I had with the newest movie was that it seemed to use bits and pieces from all of the books, and it kept jumping back and forth from the Guide to the story.

If I were directing or producing a series based on the books, I would start each episode with an excerpt from the Guide, regarding what the characters were to encounter in that episode, or else do it at the end. One way I can see doing it is since Ford Prefect is one of the editors of the Guide, he could be making an entry about any alien races or planets they visited, or update existing entries based on his and his friends' experiences, and that entry would be played during the end credits of each episode.

I think the most important thing to remember with the Hitchhikers series is that there is no internal consistency in the universe. The plot of the Radio show had very little to do with the plot of the book, which had very little to do with the miniseries. All of them were the works of Douglas Adams alone, and they were still are all over the place.

I've heard it said that a lot of the major changes in the movie were actually penned by Adams, and that just as all the previous incarnations of the Guide had been different from the forms that preceded them, so too would the movie bear little relation to the books, radio show or miniseries.

I'm also throwing anything by Neil Stephenson into the ring of things which should be movies. I just finished Zodiac and while I didn't like the book all that much, it would make for a great thriller.

by **marcel** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:23 am UTC

I was thinking that Shades of Grey would make an interesting movie. I would specifically love to see what a good cinematographer can do wih colour effects when making that movie.

by **ruleeet** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:12 pm UTC

I'd like to see Saramago's "Gospel from Jesus" but i'm more than sure that it'll cause even more uproar than the book

by **AvatarIII** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 7:05 pm UTC

How about Behold the Man, probably would be pretty controversial, but apparently it was going to be a movie in the 70s but it fell through.

by **JesseScottOwen** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:12 am UTC

Redo "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". But this time, make it awesome.

by **Aceo** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:16 pm UTC

The Mind Game - Hector MacDonald

Not sure if they could fit the full thing in a film though (and still keep most of the content).

by **Ipsum** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:33 am UTC

Dr. Identity, if only to watch the insane choreography. Too bad it'll get an R rating, though, even after heavy censorship.

by **Proginoskes** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:37 am UTC

Childhood's End, by Arthur C Clarke

by **hurtlocker99** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 8:13 pm UTC

"The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" would be the one book I'd love to see in the cinema. It's a wonderful book about the Armenian Genocide and a part of history that is almost forgotten. Great book!!

by **TamH70** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 8:28 am UTC

This is cheeky, and I apologise in advance.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

by **wingedocelot** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 12:39 pm UTC

I haven't read everything, so this may have already been proposed, but I'd like to see the Robin Hobb books as a movie or tv show. Mainly I like the idea of watching a telepathic wolf! Although, then again I'm usually disappointed with adaptions (*i.e. 'Legend of the Seeker').

by **Black Dynamite** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 5:29 am UTC

It's very sad that as I look at my small book shelf most of them have already been made into movies.
Except for the Dresden Files, but they attempted a TV series with it. I wouldn't want them to make movies of it.
When hollywood completely ruined the Golden Compass I think a good bit of my inner child turned cynical. I would not want them to make the other two books into movies, even if they fixed the Golden Compass.
My non fiction books would make boring movies.
The rest have already been made into movies.

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