Novels Reworked for the Silver Screen

[Maxwell Jennison]

I nearly died when I heard that the movie version of "Motherless Brooklyn" is slated to come out in theaters later this year. The novel, by Jonathan Letham, is one of my favorites (not my absolute favorite, nor my favorite of Lethams, but a good candidate for a movie IMO). And better yet, the film seems to be a personal project of Edward Norton, who is directing, writing the screenplay, and playing the lead role (which I think he's perfect for). This got me to thinking about what other books would be prime candidates for movie adaptations. So, I have a question for all of you (and I'm sorry if this has been addressed before, but I don't believe it's been discussed since I joined).

What novel would you like to see adapted for the Silver Screen, and who would you see playing the lead role?

 

[laznlor]

Oh I'm so excited. Lethem is one of my favorites, and I think Ed Norton doing it will be great. I got so sucked into that book, I almost started with the tourettic outbursts.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

I'm really looking forward to Sin City & the Watchmen movies which should be coming out later this year. From the small amount of production/casting info I've read about, I'm quite hopeful!

I would love to see a movie written in Terry Prachett's discworld, but I'm not sure if you could keep the comedy element in there.
Maybe a small mini-series covering the first couple of books to give people some idea of how it could work?

Also would love to see the "Young Legionnary" by Douglas Hill series of books adapted for the silver screen

 

[cleasterwood]

The Mummy or Ramses the Da--ned by Anne Rice! Ramses would be played by the Rock and Julie would be played by some cute blond whose name I can't think of at the moment.
My only problem with Novels reworked for movies is that often times they end up as horrible versions of the book. Too much gets changed and the script writers don't do the original justice at all. That's the one thing I would have a hard time with should my story get published and later become a movie. I'd have to oversee what the script writers were doing and make certain they didn't go too far off course in their re-writing. I'd probably want to write the danged thing myself and most likely insist on it. I mean if you can write a novel, you can write a script if you study the formula enough.

 

[laznlor]

What about the new version of Hitchhiker's Guide thats coming out in the summer? I have only seen a really short announcement of it, but it looks like they took the bird guide and are making it the regular guide. I guess that means they can only make the first couple of sequels before nothing makes sense.