Discussion: Fantasy Books Adapted Into Films

Once I finish the 10-part 10,000 page Malazan series by Steven Erikson, I'm teeing this series up as book one has been stored on my Kindle for over 5 years.

Hugo - heard great things

 

It really is. It's a series that's quite confident in its world, and it is quite a beautiful one. And as a Fantasy series, I feel it's pretty unique, enough that I think it would make for a good series to adapt. I've only read up the first two books so far, but they've been a blast.

 

I think you missed the TV adaptation of Terry Brook's Shannara series on MTV. If that was intention blocking on your part, I apologize.

 

The "His Dark Materials" series will be getting more sequels (books), the author announced.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38978023

 

I just saw this earlier today. I loved His Dark Materials, so I'm looking forward to returning to that (those) world(s).

 

The Silver Chair has finally found a director. Joe Johnston, director of Captain America TFA.

http://variety.com/2017/film/news/narnia-revival-silver-chair-director-joe-johnston-1202399920/


While not a fantasy series, I just noticed that Henry VIII is a popular source for adaptation. Starz is currently doing a series called "The White Princess"; a prequel to their "White Queen" series. There are a whole slew of movies about him. Shakespeare did a play about him. The dude is really popular, and I haven't investigated seriously into determining why.

 

Over at Tor, both "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan and "The Black Company" by Glen Cook are actively being developed as movies or TV shows.

And we should probably note that the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film was (loosely) based on a novel by Tim Powers.

EDIT: Of relevance: http://www.tor.com/2017/04/26/upcom...content=na-readblog-blogpost&utm_campaign=tor

 

I just started a new TV fantasy novel adaptation, the Chinese series Ice Fantasy, which is available on Netflix here in the US.

 

I'd like to talk about Oz.

The recent show Emerald City was just cancelled after it's first season. Disney's Once Upon A Time incorporated and adapted elements of the Wizard of Oz into the show. While the show has been on the decline for some time, people really responded positively during the earlier seasons. The success of OUAT on the small screen is presumably one of the reason Disney never moved forward with a sequel to 2013's Oz the Great And Powerful on the big screen. Like most of Disney's live action, non-Star Wars, MCU, and remakes of their animated movies, Oz didn't meet expectations at the BO. Things like Oz, Tron Legacy, Prince of Persia, John Carter, Tomorrowland, The Lone Ranger, Pirates of the Caribbean, BFG, etc, are expected to make $700+ million at the BO. While Oz did close to $500 million and Disney did announce a sequel, plans have stalled out on this series.

Then you have things like the very popular and still running musical, Wicked. The Syfy series Tin Man. The 1939 movie which made Oz a cultural icon. And a whole host of other adaptations.


There seems to be MANY, long and hard fought copyright fights over the depictions presented in the 1939 movie. Things like the Wicked Witch's shade of green (which is not in the book), the red slippers (which are silver in the book), how the emerald city looks, and other things.There are no fights over the books to my knowledge. As they are in the public domain. However, with the 1939 being so iconic, emulating the look at that film is what most live action adaptations run into trouble with. As well as trademarks for merchandise and memorialbilia.

Given how so many adaptions of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz turn out poorly. Why bother?

 

Just as a point of clarification, Emerald City wasn't "cancelled"; it just wasn't renewed.

Although originally conceived as an ongoing multi-season series, it was revived and retooled into a one-off "limited series" with a defined beginning, middle, and end... and was advertised and broadcast as such.

They did build a "backdoor continuation story" into the narrative as a "fail-safe", but the chances of getting a second story arc with the characters and the world were pretty slim to begin with.

 

Glad to see you guys mention Emerald City, I actually thought it was pretty good.

 

And this is where I brag that "The Brotherhood of the Wheel" by R.S. Belcher has recently been optioned for TV.

Mind you, there's no guarantee that this will make it to the screen--an option is only an option--but it's still exciting.

 

Very cool. Can you say anything about who picked up the option?

 

ITV Studios America
http://www.roanoke.com/arts_and_ent...cle_3d6100a6-5638-5372-8152-9a68c57ad25e.html

 

A thousand times, yes! The first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, could stand on its own if it had to, but it would be so much better if done as a proper trilogy. And since much of the second novel is just premonitions and portents of some of the events of the third book, any movie or TV series could focus on the events that were just mentioned in passing (ie. the events that happened at Icewall, or what happened to Gilthanas and Silvara).

The original three novels were based on a series of twelve AD&D game modules set on the game world of Krynn, each one focusing on a different dragon. I have these modules, and one of the bonuses is that they contain sheet music for some of the songs in the novels. I play the organ, so I transcribed a couple of them: The Song of Goldmoon and Est Sularus.

These songs are wonderful. I would really love to hear them done proper justice by a full symphony orchestra, and have them sung by vocalists/choirs who would really infuse them with the emotion they deserve.


Another choice I have is, sadly, one that will never happen. Robert Silverberg's novel Lord Valentine's Castle absolutely deserves to be turned into a TV series (a movie just wouldn't do it justice; there's simply too much happening in the novel to distill down to two hours).

People have been asking about this for over 30 years, and at first there were obvious reasons why it hadn't been done: To get some of the aliens right would have required technology that didn't exist in the 1980s.

But now, Silverberg has said that he would insist on being part of the production team, to approve or veto certain aspects of any adaptation. It's important to him that the alien characters are treated respectfully as people instead of as generic "monsters", and also that the relationships and themes of the story are preserved as he intended them.

I can't really blame him for this. The novel is amazing, breathtaking, marvelous, and more positive adjectives than I can think of at the moment. It would be such a shame to give it less than it deserves, and unfortunately, less is probably what it would get.

 

Hmm, I didn't know ITV had an American studio, I thought they were just in the UK.

As for fantasy book adaptations, one of my old favorites that I don't think most people realize is an adaptation is The NeverEnding story. I was surprised to see that there is no mention of the book on the Blu-Ray box's credits when I was looking at them yesterday. Aren't they usually required to acknowledge the source material in the credits of an adaptation?
The second one does say "based on themes from the novel by Michael Ende".

 

This isn't a book, but the manga/anime fantasy series One Piece is getting a Hollywood live action adaptation by Marty Adelstein (executive producer on Prison Break). Adelstein says that he expects the show to be "one of the most expensive shows ever done in television".

 

Ende was not pleased with the first movie and asked for his name to be taken out of the credits. Comics writer Alan Moore has done the same thing quite often, even with the re-release of his "Miracleman" comics (though there not so much because he was displeased with the adaptation, as there was none, but because he had found out that the company he had written these comics for did not have the rights for Miracleman at the time).

Anyway, reportedly Ende liked the second movie better.

It might interest you that one of the other great works of Michael Ende, "Jim Knopf & Lukas der Lokomotivführer", is being adapted as a movie to be released in Germany next year. It is a book Ende wrote long before The Neverending Story", and it's more of a children's story with a lighter tone than the relatively mature and dark "Neverending Story".

The story begins on the island of Lummerland, a very small island with two mountains and four citizens, Lukas the train engineer (with his sentient locomotive Emma), Frau Waas who runs the grocery store, Herr Ärmel the photographer, and the regent King Alfons the Quarter-to-Twelfth (so named because he was born at a quarter to twelve). Until one day the postman brings a parcel on his boat adressed to a Frau Mahlzahn with an adress on Lummerland. Since they can't find Frau Mahlzahn, the other citizens open the parcel to find a dark-skinned infant, who Frau Waas adopts and names Jim Knopf. The actual story sets in about twelve years later when Jim and Lukas depart Lummerland with Emma, a journey that brings them to China (or rather a fictionalized version of China for a German children's book from the 1950s) and beyond, and they meet such creatures as the apparent giant Herr Tur-Tur (who only appears like a giant from far away, but is normal-size when your actually next to him) and the half-dragon Nepomuk (his mother was a hippo) who's banished from the city of the dragons, and they of course eventually find Frau Mahlzahn.
There's also a sequel, "Jim Knopf & die Wilde 13", where they meet the titular pirates, the mermaid Sursulapitschi, use magnets to turn Emma into a flying perpetumobile, and uncover the secret behind Jim's true origin.

Aside from the original book, the most famous iteration of Jim Knopf was a four-part series with marionettes by the Augsburger Puppenkiste in 1961, or rather the colored remake from 1977. Here's a clip where Jim and Lukas meet Tur-Tur:


The new movie uses a lot of the visuals from the classic puppet series, as many Germans grew up with that particular version, and also uses cues from the classic song from that series "Eine Insel mit zwei Bergen":


I don't know, though, whether an English-language release is even planned.

And then, there's another movie adaptation of one of Ende's great works, "Momo", from the 1980s. It follows the orphan Momo and her struggle against the Grey Men, who want to steal time from all other people. Ende was heavily involved in this adaptation, because he was so unhappy with the way "The Neverending Story" turned out. He even has a cameo in this film.

 

Those sound interesting, so I might have to check them out after NeverEnding Story, if I like and want to read more Ende.
EDIT: Ouch, maybe not Jim Button. The only way to get the first one on Amazon is through the Marketplace and they only have 4 used copies, and the cheapest is $99.62US.