HBO are currently adapting Foundation so that's a start

Can we ask for adaptations that don't suck? I enjoyed Battlefield Earth and think if someone reasonable got a hold of it, they'd chuck the correct half of the source material and we'd have a good political thriller on our hands.

I'd like to see a film adaptation of Diablo, in the vein of the novels - other stories in the world of Sanctuary. I don't know how well it'd work but the idea may have merit.

Allan Steele's Coyote trilogy is a television series waiting to happen, AMC or HBO. Especially the first book/season wouldn't need a ton of sci-fi production value, as most of it takes place in a virgin planet's wilderness. CG animals (particularly the boids) are a must, but it's not a constant thing.

I look forward to Rendezvous with Rama, which I think is in production with Morgan Freeman involved. And surely there's a Pern series in our future, not that I'm terribly excited about that.

I'd like more sword-and-sorcery stuff. There's plenty of those Robert Asprin books (Thieves' World and MYTH Inc) and of course Elric. I just watched Desolation of Smaug and liked it quite a bit more than Hobbit, and didn't remember hardly anything from the books. So I could watch a "Silmarillion" adaptation that borrowed little from the book. Who would know? Who has finished it apart from Christopher Lee and Stephen Colbert?

I'd love to see another go at Master & Commander, this time starting out properly with Aubrey and Maturin meeting, then getting a better ship, then getting involved in spying and dueling and whatnot. (Instead of squashing three middle books into one movie.)

I did not know that and am now intrigued.

Last edited by Boter (2015-02-16 21:12:59)

Most of what I'd like to see adapted could have been adapted at any point. You could easily do The Belgariad on a 1980's BBC budget, for example. It would look cheap, but it would work. If nothing else it would be forced to focus on the characters.

What I'd like to see are more historical/war films. The kind they stopped making in the 70's. A remake of Midway, for example. Or just a good American Revolution film. Actually, what I'd love to see is a film about Taffy 3's heroics in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The bulk of the Japanese surface fleet, including the Yamato, was driven off by 6 escort carriers and 7 destroyers and escorts. The Japanese assumed they were facing the main US fleet, acting accordingly, and with suicidal torpedo runs the US managed to send them fleeing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar

If you adapted Revelation as it is described (as opposed to how it should be interpreted) it would be one hell of an acid trip.  Multi-headed dragons, beasts, and all other manner of weird creatures.  Billions of people dying and lots of other apocalyptic madness.  It would be very strange i think.

As for other bible stories, the prophet Ezekiel (i think?) has a pretty epic story with huge battle victories etc.

As for books:

Virtual Reality is really starting to become mature now.  Perhaps someone would try to adapt Snow Crash, or Neromancer.  I know that the 2010 book Ready Player One is being adapted as a movie and that's about virtual reality (ridiculously awesome book BTW).  I also hear that's they're doing another adaption of Ben-Hur. 

I would also love love love to see another Stephen Hunter adaption.  Shooter was an adaption of Hunter's first book Point of Impact.  I really think they should adapt I, Sniper which is a later book in the same series.

George Roy Hill did a noble but unsatisfying adaptation of Slaughterhouse Five in the 70s. There's that and a couple other Vonnegut works I'd like to see done by someone competent. (There's a KV doc that's been in the works forever and is on the way as well.)

Bump for funsies.

Looks like Snowcrash is going to be an Amazon series produced by Attack The Block's / The Adam and Joe Show's Joe Cornish.

Deus Ex. A lot of potential there (although, as Ghost In The Shell proved, it's possible to totally screw these things up; hopefully Blade Runner 2049 will explore some of this territory better).

But the more important question is: who should do it? Existing video game movies leave much to be desired (even Duncan Jones blew his shot).

I desperately need to see Philip K. Dick's Ubik adapted the way he intended.

To set up why it would be so cool without spoiling too much: in the book's first act, a group of psychic "precogs" who work for the Runciter Corporation are caught in a bomb blast that was set up by a rival company. Initially, it appears that Runciter, their boss, died while everyone else made it out alive. But then Runciter's face starts showing up on coins, strange messages start appearing, and reality starts coming unglued. The precogs start to realize: Runciter is in fact the only one left alive, and they were all killed in the bomb blast.

You're familiar with Plato's idea of forms, right? He theorized that for every imperfect object or concept that exists in physical form, there is a perfect, immaterial Ideal somewhere off in the heavens. For instance, there's one perfect, ideal Chair from which all earthly chairs take their form; one perfect ideal of Justice from which earthly justice flows; a perfect Fruit from which all our imperfect fruit comes, etc.

Well, as death starts to catch up with the precogs, the forms of their world start reverting around them. Cars become horses and buggies. Newspapers begin to be printed in Old English. Televisions go from color to black and white, then become radios, etc. Only a mysterious substance called Ubik, which comes in a spray can, can undo this reversion, though why and how are unknown.

Dick's vision for the film was that, as reality reverts, the movie itself begins to degenerate. The film stock gets cheaper and cheaper, the sound starts to distort, the colors jerk into black and white. Eventually, we would be watching a silent film straight from the 20s, until even that starts to revert and the projector begins to eat the movie.

It's such a fucking cool idea for a cinematic translation of the novel, and with how many movies have been made from Dick's books I'm honestly baffled that no one has tried it yet.

Distracted thought: "there must be better A/B demonstrations of crappy grading."