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I originally did this topic back in 2013 but since then, I’ve read many books I’d also love to see adapted, preferrably in a world in which book-to-movie adaptations are actually super faithful to the source material and people who look just like I imagined the characters are cast. Wait, what do you mean there’s no such world? Damn, now I have to endure another freaky adaptation of The Mortal Insturments (I had high hopes because I quite like most of the cast – and then I saw this picture of Isabelle in her ‘classy white dress’).
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Parasol Protectorate & The Custard Protocol by Gail Carriger
If I had to choose between all of the novels and series I name here, this adaptation would be the one I’d most desperately want to see. The two series have everything to become the most brilliant and hilarious TV series ever in existence: the style is delightful and funny, the characters are a treat, it’s set in the steampunk Victorian era, and we’ve got super-, preter-, and metanaturals, sexy times, lots and lots of banter, tea, parasols, awful hats, weird gadgets, kerfuffle, constant danger to the characters’ lives, mysteries, secret societies, bloody history, … you name it!
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Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
Yes, I’m well aware there’s already a movie. Yes, this movie is … not great. But let’s be honest, it was obvious it would flop, although it is very close to the novel. And that’s exactly the problem. While the books do become darker and darker, the first one’s just your regular high school drama with a supernatural twist. Enjoyable but nothing special. The story would probably work best as a series, but Steffi and I have a brilliant proposition for a movie reboot: mash up the first two books into one movie. So lets take the beginning of the first book, skip everything unimportant until they end up at the ski resort, and then combine all the important bits from both books like character establishments, mysteries and action scenes. Et voilà: a much darker, grittier, and cooler movie. Plus, there would be Adrian.
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The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Speaking of novels whose movie adaptation I want to reboot … at least Vampire Academy wasn’t even close to being as bad as this fiasco. I love PJ’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I do with all my heart. I think it’s one of the best adaptations out there. So how could this happen?! I really liked the first, wasn’t all too fond of the second, and downright hated the last one. I really wish this/these movie/s would have been made back in the days after The Lord of the Rings. They would have been much more enjoyable with the old techniques and less green screen Middle-earth. What would have been even better: making just a single movie. After all, the whole project’s called The Hobbit. I think Legolas had more screentime in the last one than Bilbo – and Alfrid more than all dwarfs (minus Thorin, Kilí and Filí) combined.
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Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
I wanted to include this one in the last post, but since it is already a work in progress, I didn’t. Two years later, nothing much has happened except for the script being finished. There’s still no news on when the movie will be cast, filmed, let alone distributed. And yet, this is possibly the project I’m most excited for. Jellicoe Road was one of my favourite reads in 2013 and Melina wrote the script herself. Just bring on the Summertime Sadness, which will forever be my theme song for this beautiful melancholic Australian summer.
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The Wrath & the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh
There are just not enough stunning exotic, spirited, romantic, magical Arabian tales on screens in the Western world. Or at least I seldom come across them. And even more seldom I come across ones that are not completely whitewashed, so how about sticking to the source material for once? I’d love to see this. No, I need this. I’d probably turn into a puddle of feels, but it’ll be worth it.
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The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line / Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas & Jennifer Graham
There’s just no such thing as enough Veronica Mars. I’ve only read the first one so far but it’s so canon that they wouldn’t even have to write a script. Just film a couple of episodes per book and I’m a happy girl.
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Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
I’ve got no idea how to turn this into a functioning movie. I think it’s not even possible. I just know that I’d love it (in a world in which … well, you know the drill).
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The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan
HOW IS THIS NOT A THING YET?! There aren’t even any proper fan vids on Youtube and there’s so little fan art! This series would make an awesome TV series of one to two seasons, depending on the number of episodes. All you’d need to do is cramming everything into a much shorter period of time, start with an older Sonea and cast the hottest guy imaginable as Akkarin. Because basically, all I want from this is drooling and fangirling over Akkarin.
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East by Edith Pattou
I really really enjoyed East. Since everyone loves a good fairytale, this novel based on a Norwegian folk tale called “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” would make such a sweet fairytale film. It’s a little bit like Beauty and the Beast plus trolls – and wind roses and mapmakers, superstition and prophecy, weaving, sewing and magical dresses, a castle inside a mountain, a light that should not have been lit, and a long and rocky journey to a palace in an icy barren land east of the sun and west of the moon. I’d much rather watch this than a sequel to Frozen. Don’t we all know that sequels to Disney movies
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The Lumatere Chronicles by Melina Marchetta
Because I want ALL THE FEELS! It’s in a way similar to A Song of Ice and Fire: although it’s high fantasy, the fantasy element has retreated to the background while the actual topics adressed are reflecting current affairs – asylum policy, resettlement, religion, genocide, despotism, and a couple of other things. Plus, the series has amazing layered characters and the girls totally rule!
Oh man, I completely agree about The Hobbit. How could Peter Jackson do so amazingly well with LOTR and then bomb so completely on The Hobbit? (Maybe because he turned a short children’s book into three movies? Or could it be that everything looked fake?)
I didn’t know Jellicoe Road was (maybe?) in the works. I only read it this year, but I fell in love on page one. I hope the project pans out. The Wrath and the Dawn and East would be great movies as well. I love the Lumatere Chronicles so much that I’d be afraid of movies runining them, but how amazing would it be if they pulled it off?! Same goes for Code Name Verity – that could be a great movie with the right director.
Yeah, I don’t even know how this was possible. Such a huge, huge disappointment. The only good thing that came from it was the awesome experience of attending the Hobbit 3 World Premiere in London. Camping out on Leicester Square at the end of November with hundreds of other fans and then standing in first line at the premiere was really truly amazing.
I loved Jellicoe Road to pieces! I read it in one sitting because I just couldn’t put it down. I was completely enthralled.
Well, that’s the thing with adaptations. Most of the time, they end up a mess. I think the only adaptation I really loved in recent years is If I Stay (and, of course Game of Thrones, although by now it is more or less something entirely different. Still my favourite show). I really wish they would stick closer to the source material. After all, there’s a reason these books are popular.
Whaaaaat? That’s amazing! How did you end up going to the Premiere? Wow. I’m just going to stop and daydream about that for a few minutes. I love being in a crowd of pepole who are all really, really excited about the same thing I’m really, really excited about.
Everyting Melina Marchetta writes is magical. I end up with the biggest book hangovers every time. I can’t wait for her adult book. I don’t even care what it’s about, as long as she writes it.
Oh, I haven’t seen If I Stay, I should watch it. I can’t really think of any other movies that stuck close to the books. LOTR had a lot of deviations, but I still love it. Actually I did like Catching Fire more than the book. We’ll see about Mockingjay Part 2. (I hated that book.) It is kind of funny how directors go “hey, let’s take out all the parts that made people love these books.”
Looooong story (as short as possible): One of my friends went to NZ for a work and travel thing and planned to attend the premiere there but then it got pushed back to December and she was heartbroken. There were rumours the World Premiere would be in London so she said she would go. Shortly before it was announced, we talked about it and I said I would accompany her – two days later, we started planning. It was an amazing weekend with lots and lots of waiting but at least it didn’t rain. We were right across the press so we saw every actor and I think I got about eight autographs. We didn’t watch the movie, though. It was still just amazing. We were under the first 100 of a couple of thousands to be let into the pens. True dedication 😉
So true, although I still have to read all of her other YA contemporaries.
I wrote my Bachelor thesis on the Hunger Games, so I couldn’t bear watching 3.1 so far. I’m so surfeited. Catching Fire was fine. I just don’t really care about the films – or the books. I enjoyed reading the first book but then it got downhill from there. I also don’t like the third one at all. But they made for an absolutely brilliant topic of analysis. I really took the books apart.
Ich habe den 3. Hobbit gar nicht mehr angeschaut, weil ich schon vom 2. so enttäuscht war (und teilweise auch vom 1.). Ich kann kaum in Worte fassen, was mich an an den Filmen alles gestört hat, während ich die HdR-Filme trotz aller Schwächen und teils unmotivierten Änderungen heiß und innig liebe.
“East” muss ich mir mal merken. Das Märchen mag ich nämlich sehr gern, aber gerade habe ich eine fürchterliche Interpretation davon (“Ice” von Sarah Beth Durst) gelesen. Da würde ich mich über eine, die besser gelungen ist, sehr freuen.
Ich will auch gar nicht damit anfangen, sonst höre ich nicht mehr auf. Wirklich was verpasst hast du nicht. Im Großen und Ganzen besteht der 3. nur aus unpersönlichen Schlachtszenen, bescheuerten erzwungenen “romantischen” Szenen, bescheuerten pseudowitzigen Szenen und vom Buch sehr stark abweichende und total furchtbare Todes- naja, Szenen kann man fast schon nicht sagen, so lieblos wie das teilweise hingeklatscht war. Klar haben die HdR-Filme auch ihre Schwächen und weichen teilweise sehr stark von den Büchern ab, aber irgendwie stört mich das gar nicht (mehr). Die haben einfach etwas Magisches und geben die Atmosphäre total toll wieder. So sollte Middle-earth eben aussehen. Echt und nicht am Computer generiert.
Ice habe ich noch nicht gelesen, East fand ich aber wirklich schön. Da ich das Märchen vorher aber gar nicht kannte, hatte ich auch gar keine Erwartungen. Hoffentlich gefällt es dir dann auch.
WOW. Who cares about the movie, I can’t even imagine how wonderful that must have been. There are so many good actors in that movie! (Which really meakes you wonder how it turned out so badly.) I hope you took lots of pictures. Not that you’ll ever forget that experience, I bet.
Ohh, I’m jealous. I wish I hadn’t read them already so I still could, haha.
YES, I agree, completely downhill. She had so much potential and then, I don’t know, fame? deadlines? got to her head. I bet that was a really interesting thesis. Despite being insanely long, German paper topics are so much more interesting than American ones. I wrote a Hausarbeit comparing the theme of love in Harry Potter and Krabat, and it was a lot of fun. Although, I guess I did write my final paper for high school English about Tolkien, so maybe I’m just forgetting.
I didn’t take any at all. I brought my big DSLR with me because I then continued onward to Edinburgh, Dublin, and Galway and I really didn’t want to take that with me into the crazy crowd. In the end, it was probably the best choice since it was kind of an either pictures or autographs situation that involved a lot of pushing. I didn’t even want to take out my phone because I was afraid I’d lose it.
I still think she just should have ended the last book when Katniss shot a certain person and another died laughing. That would have been such a powerful wtf ending.
It was a sociological analysis although I wrote in English literature, but my prof really loved it. I had already written a term paper about a related topic and she encouraged me to write my BA thesis on something similar. It was so much fun writing this thing although I had to write the 60 pages more or less in a week to keep the deadline. I was just so lazy, I couldn’t bring myself to start early.