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.

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,
@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.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer,

Abhorsen / Old Kingdom series.

I don’t like reading but I breezed through the first three books. I think all the dark, necromancy type stuff would be generally well received. The gates of the afterlife also sound really cool to be put in a visual form.

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, it’s a really distinct take on necromancers. The visual look of everything, the rules of the world–all really well designed.

It’d be a great YA movie or series.

Tarquinn2049,

Yeah, I was looking for this one. It also always struck me as a good option for VR games once that is a bit more entrenched with the general public.

SheDiceToday,

I think it would be good, but the whole ‘mental’ aspect of the magic would be impossible to convey well.

pan_troglodytes,

the wandering inn. absolutely no way a movie would do it justice though

IonAddis,
@IonAddis@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not familiar with LitRPG (assuming google didn’t lead me wrong on this title).

Do you think it’d work as an actual game at all?

pan_troglodytes,

its sort of litrpg - less “numbers go up” than most. no idea if a game could be created from it. I dont think we have reached the right tech base to emulate a System yet

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.

llamapocalypse,

The Lies of Locke Lamora would make a fantastic show/movie if done well, and I feel like the vast majority of it is pretty screen-friendly. Basically just some minor cgi for the scorpion-hawk and Falselight and you’re good.

XTL, (edited )

Hyperion cantos. Ilium/Olympos. Lovecraft’s dream cycle.

On one hand it’s a risk that there would just be some terrible version that ruins all public things connected with the name, but on the other hand there could be something fantastic.

I guess sandman is already off the list. Haven’t seen the results though.

Another big risk in adaptations is that, like Peter Jackson’s Lott, it will make it very unlikely that someone else would come up and do it better after a big enough attempt.

Transcendant,

Hyperion cantos

Also my top choice. One of the best scifi series I’ve ever read, I enjoy reading very much but it’s rare that a book gives me such an emotional response. Apart from this it’s only been ‘The Kite Runner’… not scifi, a very very VERY sad, moving book about a boy in Afghanistan.

eu,

I'll come clean and say I haven't read Sandman (yet) but I thought the show was really damn good. I've seen a lot of readers and critics praising it too. It's definitely worth cheking out.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

When you do, don’t judge the series by the first volume. DC told Gaiman they wanted a horror series. It was only after that they loosened the reins and let him take the story where he wanted it to go.

XTL,

It does take some time to get going and a few stories are pretty dense. But it’s also a good re-read, especially after reading some notes about the things you missed the first time around. There’s a crazy amount of detail and characters.

The artwork is also legendary, of course.

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,

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.

Vaggumon,

A real adaptation of the Foundation Series. Not the abomination we are getting from Apple.

eu,

I love the books and would like to see a 1:1 adaptation so I have no interest in the Apple show, but I've been told the show is good if you pretend the books do not exist.

redballooon,

I loved the books, and I loved season one on Apple TV. But then it lost me. I didn’t recognize any storyline anymore

Marin_Rider,

season 1 I thought was S tier, really good. Season 2 was horrible

Transcendant,

I didn’t watch it until second season was out, I just didn’t see how they could possibly do it justice… look at how Altered Carbon floundered, I expected (and was proven right) the same problems.

People need to attach to characters and plot. It’s very hard to do that when the characters (or actor in the case of AC) change every chapter, and the plot arches over 10s of 1000s of years!

I have to say once I was able to let go of preconceptions based on the books and just enjoy it for what it is, I really enjoyed Foundation series.

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.

CarbonIceDragon,
@CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social avatar

I feel like the Destroyermen series would fit a tv show format pretty well.

nezbyte,

Demon Cycle series by Peter V. Brett. They had a film adaptation in the works a few years ago, but it fell through.

Hyggyldy,

This is what I said but I’d want them to rework it some. Largely for far less rape.

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.

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.

Vaggumon,

I’d absolutely love a faithful adaptation of SnowCrash by Neil Stephonson to a TV series, don’t think a movie would be doable, unless they did a trilogy or something.

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.

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