What's a sci-fi or fantasy book or series that you want to see adapted as a movie/television series?

I didn’t read this series when I was a kid, but I finally got around to reading Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber.

Given it’s an older series, I wasn’t sure how much I’d like it (some of those older series age horribly), but it was actually REALLY good still, and the few minor things that’d aged too much wouldn’t be hard to update for a modern audience.

But the concept of Amber is fantastic, Corwin’s behavior and arc perfect, and I think a TV series could do it justice nowadays. Man, some CGI artists could do some beautiful work depicting a hellride through shadow.

I also would really, really love to see Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern adapted…but there’s a few parts that have aged pretty badly, so it’d need careful handling of things like Lessa and F’lar’s relationship and such. And maybe, you know, keep Jaxom the hell away from Corana.

But I think the whole idea of threadfall, and Impressing dragons, could be done beautifully on the screen. I think a run from Dragonflight to All The Weyrs of Pern (including the Harper Hall Trilogy) could be done. (Then leave the later books out, they don’t really add much, lol.)

The series would need a top-notch composer scoring it, though. I’d vote for Natalie Holt. She did wonderfully with Loki, and it’d be a nice touch having a woman score the series that’d have the Harper Hall Trilogy included in it.

Jackthelad, (edited )

I just finished the Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, and that would work great as a gangster/martial arts show.

TeenieBopper,

I can’t believe I had to scroll this far to see The Green Bone Saga mentioned. Get the choreographers from Into the Badlands to work on this show. Shit, with half decent make up Daniel Wu could probably play Kaul Hilo.

257m,

Just started it but Deathworlders would be very cool.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t heard of that series. Who is the author?

257m,

Phillip R. Johnson aka HamboneHFY. Its a free novel.

TheKingBombOmbKiller,

Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe would be fantastic. The last thing I remember hearing was that he was working on a script for a Mistborn movie. I would’ve preferred a TV-show, but he feels it would work better as a movie, and I trust his judgement.

finestnothing,

I both want and don’t want the stormlight archives books adapted to movies. On one hand, the books are amazing. On the other hand movie/tv adaptations usually go badly and it would require a lot of special effects that I think would come out badly

Mrcheesle,

I honestly believe that if they adapted the story as an animated series similar to Arcane it would work really well. I don’t think I can image a live action representation of the various races and spren looking good without a massive budget, but with the right animation studio it could be gorgeous.

Vertelleus,
@Vertelleus@sh.itjust.works avatar

Warhammer 40k - Horus Heresy, live action, to the books. Then Eisenhorn eventually.

buzziebee,

eventually

I’d absolutely love to see the whole heresy play out on the screen, but it would be hundreds or thousands of hours to show it all lol. I’ve been reading through it at a pretty good pace and after a year in only about halfway through lol.

Looking forward to seeing what Cavill does with 40k. I heard they only got the rights to 40k though, not 30k or fantasy, so it’s possible someone else gets those rights.

bionicjoey,

I’ve long wanted Terry Pratchett’s Discworld to be made into a series. I used to think it wouldn’t be possible because of how much the humour relies on the narrator, but after seeing the (IMO successful) Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events, I think it is possible.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I think it’s possible, but that none of the attempts so far to do so have had the type of success I’d like to see.

Some of the BBC for-television adaptations have been ok. And some series haven’t.

Transcendant,

I’m pretty sure there have been a few books adapted, nowhere near enough though! More, more please.

en.wikipedia.org/…/Category:Discworld_films_and_t…

lazylion_ca,

I’d like to do a series that takes place after the books where Vimes son goes to the Assasins academy and befriends a fellow student who doesnt realize he is a born wizard. I envision five seasons with each season taking up about 3 to 5 years in story. This allows the actors to age gracefully and gives time for quality writing instead of rushing to get a season out before someone gets pregnant or starts balding.

Each season would follow them through their late teens and 20s as they live and thrive in Anhk-Morport. First season would be them at the academy. Second would be them in the Watch. Third would have them part ways as young Sam advances in the Watch while the other starts working covertly for the Patrician.

It’d generally be villain of the week with some over-arching storylines, showing them solving the same mystery from different perspectives, while mostly having each others back even when its not obvious.

Eventually it would culminate in young Sam taking over the watch from Carrot, while his friend finally faces the music and joins UU.

I’d like to throw Carrot and Angua’s daughter in there too, but that might get in the way of one of the potential storylines. Also I don’t want it to be a Harry Potter clone.

redditron_2000_4,

Good Omens showed how well his work can translate to the screen. Just focusing on Ankh Morpork and Vimes could be a great series.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

My entry into Discworld was Guards! Guards! and I’d love to see a really good rendition of that. I know a lot of people loves Vimes, and I do too, but I also love Carrot and his werewolf girlfriend and I’d like to see Carrot being Carrot.

I think Susan’s story as the grand-daughter of Death could be great, too.

I know Neil Gaiman has a great deal on his plate shepherding his own works onto the screen, but I wish he magically had a bit of extra time and energy to do something (besides Good Omens) of Pratchett’s.

teejay,

The Kingkiller Chronicle

TheLowestStone,
@TheLowestStone@lemmy.world avatar

I’m in but only if Rothfuss finishes it first.

teejay,

Agreed. And only if the movie or show is not produced by Netflix.

TheLowestStone,
@TheLowestStone@lemmy.world avatar

Good call.

Usernameblankface, (edited )
@Usernameblankface@lemmy.world avatar

I read some Halo books that seemed like they’d make for great TV.

TheLowestStone,
@TheLowestStone@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a shame that instead of any of that we got the garbage Paramount+ version.

rikudou,
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

Witcher without all the Netflix bullshit. Like, give it to someone who loves the IP, not someone who wants to push some agenda.

I’ve loved the book series for close to 20 years, it deserves a LOTR or GoT level movie/series.

redballooon,

Ok I’ll bite. What’s Netflix’s agenda with the Witcher? Hmm?

rikudou, (edited )
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

Not Netflix’s, the director’s.

Edit: No need to “bite”, if you want to argue with someone online, I’m afraid you’ll have to find your fix somewhere else.

Transcendant,

I reckon you’ve been downvoted for the agenda comment, but you’re absolutely right about it being bullshit. They fucking ruined it. Imo it’s less about ‘agenda’ and more about the arrogance of the directing team.

Literally all they had to do was replicate the stories for the screen, but they couldn’t resist putting ‘their stamp on it’. What a missed open goal.

rikudou,
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

Don’t really care, if people can’t see that the director is pushing her agenda into the thing and kinda forgets about actually adapting the source material, it’s their problem, not mine.

The Witcher books talk about a lot of issues that are relevant today (like racism, the price of being neutral, colonialism and many more), I personally also love the medieval politics bit (you can see that Sapkowski really loves history in those parts) and I think it deserves a proper adaptation, not this hacked together bullshit that just likes to push every modern agenda in there.

You (the general you) can dislike my opinion as much as you want, that’s really up to you, but IMO one of those things lines pretending it works with societal issues, while the other one truly presents them as such.

Transcendant,

I’ve never read the books, huge fan of the game series. I love reading, but what’s put me off is Sapkowski’s reputation for being an arsehole. I dunno, I’ve always been a bit resistant to consuming media if I don’t like the creator.

Like, I can enjoy Michael Jackson songs, but if I discovered him today with all the baggage attached I might never have formed an attachment to his music. Think I’ll see if I can find any Witcher books in the library and then if I don’t enjoy, I’ve not wasted any money.

rikudou,
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

Well, he is an arsehole a bit, but not on the level I’d consider turning away from his books. I probably wouldn’t want to be friends with him, but he’s not such a big arsehole that I would lose sleep over supporting him financially. I truly recommend the books, though I’ve heard that the English translations leave a lot to be desired.

vodkasolution,

The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks!

Transcendant,

We had a Shannara series! Despite the creative license taken with some characters / the lore (Manu Bennett is an awesome actor but Allanon, the tall rangey ancient wizard? Really?), I was gutted that it got cancelled.

vodkasolution,

I never heard of it!

Transcendant,

Only got two seasons unfortunately. Maybe if they didn’t do a Witcher and were more faithful to the lore it would’ve picked up all the OG fans: epguides.com/ShannaraChronicles/

redballooon, (edited )

Is something Shannara not on prime? I was excited to see it there, but the acting and world building was so poor I didn’t get through season 1.

athos77,
IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Huh–crossing my fingers then! It’ll be interesting to see if it actually gets into development.

I was thinking about casting Corwin, and after the finale of Loki, I kinda think Tom Hiddleston would do a great Corwin. I think he could portray Corwin’s arc of fighting for the throne at first just so his brother wouldn’t get it, to someone who doesn’t even want the throne wonderfully. He’d also do great as one of Corwin’s brothers.

But I’d also kinda like to see some newcomer knock it out of the park too.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

Stephen Colbert strikes me as someone who knows how to respect the source material.

athos77,

Given his love for fannish things, he's one of the few people I'd trust with the adaptation.

Nastybutler,

Stephen Colbert, yay! Robert Kirkman, ugh.

Alatarius,

“The Sword of Truth” series by Terry Goodmind. But better than they did before, like, actually follow the books.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Are you sure about that? Wizard’s First Rule was great, and they slowly (then quickly) started to unravel.

Richard being a white savior showing the mud people how to make tile roofs seems like it’d be nigh-unfilmable/unwatchable if it were rendered book-accurately cuz boy is it chock-full of veiled racism!

VaultBoyNewVegas,

Disagree. There’s far too many rapes and weird sex shit in those. There’s the whole BDSM torture in the first book, the MC is a product of rape, the second book has some form of demon beastiality ritual. The way kalan loses her virginity (thinks it’s her bf evil brother and she is really not into it at all and her bf is offended at her because she thought she was being rapes be his brother)

Then there’s big bad conqueror who forces a woman to suck his dick while in a meeting, then there’s kalans sister who’s a queen who gets literally thrown into a pit with a dozen men who proceed to rape her to the point that she’s permanently traumatized.

phanto,

Old Man’s War! Pretty green people fighting aliens! What’s not to like?

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I’m honestly surprised none of Scalzi’s works have ended up movies or television series or anything.

But yeah, Old Man’s War would be awesome. It’s such a fun concept.

Dagwood222,

There was supposed to be a ‘Redshirts’ movie, but it never happened.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

That seems common–books are optioned, then the project never gets out of the ground. Then the options are sold again for X number of years, and rinse and repeat.

Dagwood222,

May be urban legend, but the story is that ‘Stranger In A Strange Land,’ by Robert Heinlein has been optioned more than any other book, and earned the writer more from options than from book sales. It came out in 1961, and was last optioned by SyFy network in 2016. David Bowie tried to make it, and ended up taking elements of it in ‘The Man Who Fell To earth.’

IonAddis, (edited )
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Stranger in a Strange Land was popular enough and written late enough in Heinlein’s career that I’d be somewhat surprised if movie options truly earned him more than book sales (I mean, “stranger in a strange land” and “grok” both entered common parlance)–then again, it’s possible Heinlein got a shit contract for that book, or there were some heavy-hitters optioning the movie for tons of money even if it never got made. He was savvy enough too that he might have jacked up the cost of optioning the book a lot if it was getting a lot of Hollywood nibbles. So maybe it’s not urban legend.

I bet some sci-fi author out there knows if it’s true or not.

daqqad,

To be fair the first book is so much better than the rest that I think it should be a movie, not a show.

TheInsane42,
@TheInsane42@lemmy.world avatar

I’d love to see the Foundation and the Robot series of Asimov.

As single movie, Asimov’s End of Eternity would be great.

Grimy,

Foundation is currently being adapted. They have changed quite a bit and it’s a bit clumsy at times but Trantor, Cleon and Demerzel are very well done.

They wrapped up season 2 a few months ago.

TheInsane42,
@TheInsane42@lemmy.world avatar

Never knew they made a serie of it… Gotta watch it. Hitch Hickers Guide to the Galaxy was nice. (both the original as the remake)

Dagwood222,

Joe Abercrombie’s ‘First Law.’

elphez,

Best Served Cold is in the early stages of being turned into a film with Rebecca Ferguson currently signed to lead. Abercrombie is joint writing the script, I believe.

Dagwood222,

Best Served Cold

Took me a minute to remember the plot. I hope they can do it justice.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ on Netflix. Not quite as cynical as Abercrombie, it has lots of swordplay, betrayals, and brave/stupid/honorable enemy.

elphez,

Thanks for the tip! I’ll check it out for sure.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

The Quantum Thief trilogy. Mainly because part of it takes place in Oubliette, a city whose buildings, plazas and monuments are carried across the surface of Mars by giant robots. That ought to be quite a spectacle.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I have to reread that series. I loved it, but it’s not easy to digest in one sitting.

I kinda think it’d do better as a high-concept anime, like the original Ghost in the Shell anime. I think some of the concepts/cultures would be easier to render in animated form than live action.

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