This is possibly the most common answer out there, but I would pay to see a miniseries adaptation of “Blood Meridian” or at the very least a three-and-half feature film based on the book more than literally any other film project I could imagine. Done right, it would be a masterpiece of “Apocalypse Now”- level magnitude.
I think a “One Hundred Years of Solitude” adaption would be very cool, but it would be more difficult to pull it off. It would need to rely heavily upon surreal special effects to express the book’s more abstract elements.
Next would be a “Maus” animated miniseries. A short and somber “Catcher in the Rye” adaptation could also be pretty sweet.
My last suggestion for now would be a docudrama history TV series based on “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.” In short, a far more book-accurate story than the Brad Pitt adaptation. (even though it’s one of my guilty pleasures).
So what do any of you folks want to see adapted?
by Radiant-Specialist76
7 Comments
I think Robert Asprin’s Myth series could make a great comic anime.
Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto would be a great dramatic series.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen likewise.
I think most of the books I recommend on book subs would make good adaptations – A few
Contemporary TV – Death in Bloodhound Red – the debut novel in a 5-6 book series (ended when the author passed) would make a terrific dramady. Unusual profession of the MC, the characters, the setting, the humor and suspense. Only tough side would be training the bloodhounds.
Historical TV – Barbara Hambly’s “Benjamin January” series. The first book was “A Free Man of Color”, the MC is a black man living in pre-Civil War New Orleans.
An anthology series of some of the better new Sherlock Holmes stories, but set in the appropriate period, like the series from the 80s-90s
Dianne Day’s “Fremont Jones” series, the MC is an independent woman living at the turn of the 19th/20th century, who moves from the East to San Francisco.
The problem with historical is the cost – setting, costumes, all those horses!
Movies or limited series – Again, I recommend the young Sherlock Holmes book Hidden Fires: A Holmes Before Baker Street Adventure (great plot twists, book was a page turner) and The Cellar (Minette Walters – other books have this title – very, very creepy, but again, a page turner.
My own choice (The Chronoplane Wars series by Crawford Kilian) is a bit odd, because I think the author did himself a disservice by writing the books in the wrong order. The last book, the one with the big twist and reveal, was written first, and could use some expansion and polish compared to the other two. Redoing them as a streaming series could finally do the concept justice.
And there’s an image from the last book that honestly seems so cinematic: a crowd of people is moving through a subway station, and among the ads on the wall is a big poster with a picture of a ruined, lifeless Earth (an actual photo, from the future) and the words “What are you doing about Doomsday?”
There’s a fantastic under-the-radar book that absolutely reads like a movie (in a good way)! I can’t believe it hasn’t been snatched up for one already.
[She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23361199-she-rides-shotgun?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_9)
Action/thriller/crime/family/violence/humor/noir – it has it all and it’s a blast to read.
The Lock Artist
I feel like Ted Chiang’s short stories in Exhalation have the potential to be adopted into episodes of a show, Black Mirror Style. Or even expanded into a full blown movie like how Arrival was.
I would really love it if Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series was adapted to be a TV show. Some would argue that it already had been. Whatever monstrosity that show is, it is not based on that series.
Imagine a game of telephone (you know, where one person whispers into the ear of another who passes that message down to another until the message is no longer recognizable) a hundred people long and they were being whispered the books. I couldn’t bear watching past the first season. It’s bad.