The Best Movie Never Made

[bearcat22]

Alfred Bester's novel "The Stars My Destination" is probably the greatest action adventure novel in SF.
There is no practical reason it could not be made into a movie.
It is overdue.
What can we fans do to make this happen?

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

Step 1: buy a camera....

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

Seriously, making your own films is becoming easier and easier. My family and our cousins have more than one planned already--we already have a fifty-page screenplay by me and my sister--and as long as you get enough enthusiastic people (probably the trickiest bit), most technical difficulties are quite soluble with the ever-remarkable YouTube.

 

[BAYLOR]

Alfred Bester's novel "The Stars My Destination" is probably the greatest action adventure novel in SF.
There is no practical reason it could not be made into a movie.
It is overdue.
What can we fans do to make this happen?

It's been optioned a few times over the years and so has The Demolished Man

How about Harlan Ellison's I Robot ? He wrote a screenplay and everything and it never gotten to be a film. Id love to have seen that become a films.

 

[BAYLOR]

Seriously, making your own films is becoming easier and easier. My family and our cousins have more than one planned already--we already have a fifty-page screenplay by me and my sister--and as long as you get enough enthusiastic people (probably the trickiest bit), most technical difficulties are quite soluble with the ever-remarkable YouTube.

Making a film( a good , well aced, we'll produced film ) is a bit harder then that.

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

Making a film( a good , well aced, we'll produced film ) is a bit harder then that.

I didn't say it was easy, just not as completely out of the question as it used to be. Shows like Primer were done on a budget of $7,000, and while I can't say I particularly like that film, it's quite well-known, and even extraordinarily popular. Good films can be made with limited resources. The film we're working on is an entirely personal thing, but even with our limited resources we're able to make it of a better quality than I would have thought possible.

I agree it's ambitious. Just no longer impossible.

 

[bearcat22]

Making a film( a good , well aced, we'll produced film ) is a bit harder then that.

 

[Al Jackson]

Alfred Bester's novel "The Stars My Destination" is probably the greatest action adventure novel in SF.
There is no practical reason it could not be made into a movie.
It is overdue.
What can we fans do to make this happen?

It sure is one of the best space operas never touched on film or TV.
It would take only a little updating and some rejiggering.
I has a long history of being optioned , there are supposedly at least 7 screenplays written from it, one being by Alfred Bester himself.
I don't think most people know that Bester wrote radio scripts and TV teleplays in the 40s and 50s , I am curious about this screenplay.
There is a strange story that some millionaire bought the option , in the 80s?, wrote his own screen play, then hired a professional screen writer
who discovered the guys , not a professional actor, wanted to play Gully Foyle ! Nothing ever came of it.
I even talked to George R R Martin , a big Bester fan, at a World Con once, about it , hoping to put a bug in his ear, he would like to see it, but can't say I had any success there.
I also know that back in the early 80s that Ridley Scott was interesting in it, but nothing came of that.
It is really frustrating to see a film like Ad Astra or Interstellar spend 100 or more million dollars when there is a better story sitting on the shelf that could be done... however it would take someone with the right mind set. Right now I think Denis Villeneuve would be the ideal director he has a real grasp of world building and narrative flow that seems to come from reading modern science fiction.

 

[Al Jackson]

It's been optioned a few times over the years and so has The Demolished Man

How about Harlan Ellison's I Robot ? He wrote a screenplay and everything and it never gotten to be a film. Id love to have seen that become a films.

The Ellison screenplay for I Robot was published as a book , it is very good indeed, it is a long enough that it would make a fine , say, 10 or 12 part series on cable … if Apple TV is doing Foundation don't see why someone else can't don't this.

 

[Foxbat]

Julian May's Saga Of The Exiles. A multi-movie franchise with plesiosaurs, alien knights with a variety of mental powers, time travel, love, hate, war and the creation of the Mediterranean sea as a massive cliffhanger moment. And then you get to do all the prequels. What's not to like

 

[Ursa major]

and the creation of the Mediterranean sea as a massive cliffhanger moment

Spoiler

It turns out that it was created, as any competent travel agent would tell you....