Novel Adaptations
 

Just something I've been thinking about....

With all of the shitty movies that Hollywood pours out, along with the insane remake fever going on with the horror genre....

Why the hell don't they look to more fiction novel adaptations for movies? I'm an avid reader and I LOVE horror fiction. I've read hundreds of horror novels and there are so many that go unnoticed that it makes me sick! Lots of these books need to be made into movies, but how do they get the attention that they need? I'm tired of shit and remakes! Does anyone else read? I can think of many novels that would make great horror movies. Just in the last year I've read plenty of them. Deep in the Darkness by Michael Laimo, The House that Jack Built by Graham Masterton, The Hour Before Dark by Douglas Clegg....there are tons more! Anyone else agree? Good Suggestions for others?

Doesn't anyone else here read? You're missing out on hundreds of great horror novels!

Yes and most of us go to Horror, But Not Movies - Books

OK...but there's hardly ever any posts in that section. Also, even though this is related to books, it's really about movies.

There was a couple of books I read along time before I joined, that I'm surprised haven't been turned into film:

Unfortuneately, I can't remember all the authors name's:

Manstopper: A truck containing attack dogs crashes near a village and wreck havoc on the community; it's upto the trainer of the dogs and the local sheriff to stop them. by Douglas Borton

Beware of the Dog: A mysterious dog appears and gets taken in by a young family, people start getting killed, but because the dog protects the children of the family, blame is put on the other local dogs. It turns out that the dog is really a hellhound.

Blood: A modern vampire story. The military have produced vampires from a chemical, used for soldiers who came back from the first Iraq war.

I always thought The Mist by Stephen King would make a great, fun film, and was a little surprised it wasn't adapted for the screen sooner. But its coming soon now, and its one I am really looking forward to.

Clive Barker has several stories that would be great for the screen I think, and we are getting The Midnight Meat Train soon (another I am really looking forward to). I think it would be so much better if his talent was maybe directed toward adapting another of his stories for the screen, instead of a remake of Hellraiser.

But yes, I can think of many novels, and many short stories that could be great horror films. Like with remakes though, more than likely they would just screw them up.

I would love to see Swan Song by Robert McCammon turned into a mini series, or a peter jackson style 3 hour epic.

I would love to see anything written by Lovecraft done WELL in a movie...

There you go....Swan Song may possibly be my favorite novel of all time. And yes, I have also read The Stand which was very good, but I preferred Swan Song. That novel could easily be broken up to make 2 films, since the second section of the book takes place a number of years after the first.

As far as horror goes, though, another good one for a film would be Ghosts by Noel Hynd...

The stand has already been made into a film.

Midnight meat train is going to be great. A Barker classic.

One of the reasons there aren't a lot of novel adaptations is because the typical scriptreaders and script buyers at the major film studios aren't too bright. Combine this with the unfathomable intellect of the studio execs and we end up with shite like spy kids and dude where's my car and wild, wild west etc.

Believe it or not, a surprising number of movies are actually based on books:
Shooter, Bridge to terabithia, fight club, hell, even Mimic was based on a short story.

There are of course gaping huge loopholes in my theory.:D

Now there are a ton of problems in Hollywood, but this is not one of them. The readers tend to be some of the brightest people in Hollywood. But as you pointed out, they are SCRIPTreaders and SCRIPTbuyers...their job isn't to acquire rights to novels, but to read and buy scripts.

Adapting a novel or story to a script requires the acquisition of rights...which costs money.

Producers will buy the rights when they see a story as marketable. And the producers I know are pretty damn smart as well, but they also tend to be rather cynical about what the market will bear.

That said, I'd love to adapt Iain Bank's The Wasp Factory Micheal Louis Calvillo's I Will Rise and Edward Bunker's Education of a Felon for the screen.

brian keene's the rising and city of the dead. . . they would RULE

I'm a big fan of John Skipp and Craig Spector....I think The Bridge could be HORRIFYING if done correctly, and The Scream is another great splatterpunk book....
Midnight by Dean Koontz would be a good movie.....
I would like to see "In the Hills, the Cities" as a Clive Barker masters of Horror short, it's really a powerful little story.....
Also, the Thief of Always is one of my favorite Barker stories, even though it's kind of a dark children's tale.
I agree with Swan Song, that's a really great book as well, with a lot of fairytale ring to it.

i suspect its also the pre-marketing that either a big best-selling novel or a previous film automatically brings. if you are remaking Halloween you don't have to worry about creating the Halloween brand or figuring out how to create a market buzz. . . same thing if you make a version of Harry Potter. but, picking some -even really cool- novel that has a relatively small readership is a bigger challenge

The Rising is in pre-production right now. I imagine if it does OK, then they would go ahead and make City of the Dead also. Those were two of my favorites.

My problem with screen adaptations of novels is that, in my opinion, they just don't get the story right when they make the movie. And by all means that doesn't mean that is true for everybody, they could be spot on in some peoples minds. But not many people all perseve the book in the same way. I have not once seen a movie based off of a novel that was exactly how I pictured it while I was reading the book. So more often than not, after seeing the movie I get dissapointed at how badly they botched it. Especially since almost everytime knowing that I prolly will be dissapointed, I still get excited hoping that they movie will be awesome, and I am always let down. Which just plain sucks.

So in my opinion, I don't think that they should make adaptations of novels. Just leave them they way they are, they're better as a book.

I wanna see Teratologist get made into a movie.

I would LOVE to see David Wellington's zombie trilogy (Monster Island, Monster Nation, and Monster Planet) turned into a movie or three.

You have to bear in mind that a movie is usually going to be 2 hours long at most, there's no way to get an entire novel down to 2 hours without losing a lot of the source material unless you turn it into a mini-series e.g. Stephen King's: The Stand (and even then, there's still a hell of a lot in the book that isn't in the adaptation)

I think for the most part they do a good job of deciding what to keep and what to lose from a novel, and it helps that the author usually has some input in the decision making/writing the screenplay which keeps the story alive

You also have to remember that books and movies, being such completely different mediums, have different requirements from the 'end user', all you really need to enjoy a movie is eyes, ears and an interest in the topic, to enjoy a book you need an imagination, the story has to play out in your mind, and how you imagine something and how others picture it will never really be the same, so there will always be some disappointment

I feel that as long as you can accept the huge differences between a novel and a movie, and think of the movie as an 'outline' to the full story you can still enjoy both, i'll often buy a book after seeing a movie because i know it will be so much better, even if the end results don't bear much resemblance to each other

A couple of novels i'd like to see made into movies:

-Midnight by Dean Koontz, i agree with Miss O on that, it would make a great movie, as would Fear Nothing, and Seize the Night, both by the same author

-The Wyrm, Stephen Laws
-Ghost Train - Stephen Laws

One of my favorite horror authors, one who helped formulate the genre as much as Poe & Lovecraft is Algernon Blackwood. Very few of his stories have been adapted to any other medium. They have done some of his stories on TV shows, such as The Doll- a story which served as the prototype for all movies about dolls that come to life and do horrible things. It's possible his style is too subtle for today's audience- they would have made great 60s era films like Corman's Poe adaptations. However, it would be cool if somebody would adapt some of his stories.

LOL...that would make some movie....I doubt it will ever happen.

Wouldn't mind seeing The Death of Superman or The Dark Knight Returns in live action.