Twitch-O-Meter: The Unfilmable Novel And The Directors Who Should Try Anyway

Reader Comments

1. Opus 08/14/2007 @ 12:36pm

   Wasn’t Chris Cunningham going to do “Neuromancer” at one point?

2. Swarez 08/14/2007 @ 12:40pm

   The Icelandic theatre company Vesturport are producing a stage version of Metamorphosis that are premering next month. They have produced it overseas with great success.

3. pdli_5 08/14/2007 @ 12:55pm

   I’d like to see someone try Neal Stephenson’s ‘Snowcrash’. One of the best cyber-punk novels I’ve ever read. Maybe a collab between the folks from ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ (real-world stuff) and Zack Snyder (on-line bits)?

   TOTALLY dreaming.

   And yes, Opus. Cunningham was supposed to do it, but back out somewhere between budget, time and lack a of Aphex Twin involvement.

4. pdli_5 08/14/2007 @ 12:59pm

   Another would be Stephenson’s ‘Cryptonomicon’, but as a SciFi channel series, Unsure about a director. Maybe the folks from ‘Band of Brothers’ for the WWII bits.

5. hmmm 08/14/2007 @ 1:43pm

   Hmmm, interesting choices.
   How about Elric of Melnibone by Rob Zombie. I think he could sustain the agony, the pain and violence. And I am confident that one could challenge Zombie to pull off an epic.
   The boring choice would be of cause PJ.

6. Todd Brown 08/14/2007 @ 1:48pm

   Right there with you on Stephenson and I actually don’t think Snow Crash would be that hard if they could figure out a way to represent the word-virus.  Crypto would be a bear, though.  I’d rather seen it done on HBO than SciFi, though.  No chance you could do it in feature length ... the Baroque Cycle could work as a series as well ...

7. Kurt Halfyard 08/14/2007 @ 1:49pm

   I’d love to see a movie version of SNOWCRASH and I’d love to see Vincenzo Natali and Terry Gilliam (Natali - Cyberspace; Gilliam - Dystopic real-life) co-direct it.  Heck Natali made a doc of Tideland, so it’s not a complete stretch.  Give ‘er a $60 Million - cast Ellen Page and Tadanobu Asano in the lead roles and I’m in heaven.

8. Kurt Halfyard 08/14/2007 @ 1:53pm

   Another unfilmable book - Confederacy of Dunces, someone tried to make a Wil Farrel vehicle out of it a while ago though until the project crashed and burned.

   And would someone please adapt one of Guy Gavriel Kay’s Stand-alone novels?  Preferrably Tigana or A Song for Arbonne.  Better yet, an HBO series out of The Sarantine Mosaic, you could re-use all the ROME props and sets.

9. John D. Moore 08/14/2007 @ 2:24pm

   I believe “A Confederacy of Dunces” has been in development hell longer than I’ve been alive.

10. Opus 08/14/2007 @ 3:28pm

    Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always thought that Pen-Ek Ratanaruang could do justice to a Murakami novel.  “Last Life In The Universe” has always felt Murakami-esque to me: Ratanaruang’s got the themes of alienation and melancholy down pat, as well as the light surrealism and absurdism.

11. commotion 08/14/2007 @ 3:31pm

    How about The Third Policeman, by David Lynch?

12. Collin Armstrong 08/14/2007 @ 4:41pm

    I think David Gordon Green was slated to direct “Confederacy” at one point.  Kind of thought it would happen with him at the helm.

    How about Alfred Bester’s “The Stars My Destination” - it’d be easy to do it as a revenge thriller in sci-fi clothing, but to really get at Gully’s personal metamorphosis would be a challenge.  I think John Carpenter has called directing an adaptation of this a dream project.

13. Shrike 08/14/2007 @ 5:15pm

    Have to agree about Neuromancer, it’s an awesome novel, and so influential that it deserves a movie. Not sure I’d like Kiriya to direct though. I’d love to see Danny Boyle take it on. Or perhaps Neill Marshall.

    Really, there are lots of Cyber-punk novels that need to be filmed. A favourite of mine is When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger. Which has serious issues when translating to the silver-screen since the characters use mind-altering implants that let them more or less “become” other characters. It’s insanely well written, and the setting (which is future Arabia) just adds to the awesomeness.

    But my number one unfilmable novel would be Hyperion and the subsequent sequel. Not unfilmable due to narrative complexity (although the time travel could seriously screw things up), but sheer amount of things in there. So many characters, so many settings, so many events. At one time Scorcese and DiCaprio expressed their interest, and it could have been one of the greatest scifi-movies ever. But nothing happened. I’ve always wanted it to be an HBO-series.

14. Peter K. 08/14/2007 @ 7:04pm

    I’d love to see a Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World adaptation myself.

15. jail 08/14/2007 @ 7:43pm

    Two books that I would love to see filmed are Naked Lunch and Our Lady of the Flowers, but both are probably impossible. I like Cronenberg’s take on Naked Lunch but it’s obviously not a literal translation. The only director I can think of to do Naked Lunch is the obvious choice Lynch, but I doubt that he would even consider it. Perhaps Jodorowsky? That would be pretty sweet actually and he would have the balls too. As for Our Lady, I’m thinking the Dardennes, but I don’t know if they would be able to capture the humour. Plus, as a film, I think it would be totally against the Dardennes’ cinematic objective.

16. Tuan Jim 08/14/2007 @ 7:58pm

    Anything by Stephenson would have to be mini-series length to approach even vaguely his avg. depth, and heaven help the poor fool who tries to do anything approaching originality on Scifi (not even getting into the limitations of basic cable)—I’d stick with HBO or Showtime.

    As far as actually unfilmable:  ....I’d love to see a properly done “The Man Who Was Thursday” by Chesterton—current effects could probably handle the surreality of some scenes in a better fashion.  Definitely a project I’d want handled by someone like Gilliam.

17. guizhang 08/14/2007 @ 11:42pm

    gravity’s rainbow by pynchon would probably be unfilmable

18. Caterpillar 08/15/2007 @ 3:05am

    ELRIC OF MELNIBONE is in the works with the guy who made AMERICAN PIE and the upcoming GOLDEN COMPASS set to direct.

19. hokum 08/15/2007 @ 5:49am

    Stars My Destination is my favourite book, ever. Would love to see an adaptation but I fear they would make a horrible mess of it. Ron Perlman might make a good Gully Foyle, though.

    Someone needs to tackle Iain M. Banks Culture series. Consider Phlebas animated by Gonzo, please.

20. hmmm 08/15/2007 @ 7:40am

    Oh, thanks for the info Caterpillar. I am not quite sure if I should be happy or start worrying. The Golden Compass has I nice look, but the motion, the dynamic seem a bit wooden and static.
    But now I hope for a box office smash hit, so he can get the budget for an R rated epic.

21. Caterpillar 08/15/2007 @ 9:40am

    I read something about a planned adaptation of THE STARS MY DESTINATION but haven’t heard anything in quite a while so probably nothing came of it. That has the potential to be something really special but right off the bat I can’t think of any director I’d completely trust with it.

    As for all the guys bringing up cyberpunk books… Sorry, folks, it’s too late. 15 years too late, at least. See, unlike a classic like THE STARS MY DESTINATION all the cyberpunk fiction of the 80ies and early 90ies is now horribly, embarrassingly dated. And the parts that aren’t dated have become reality. And all the rest has been picked clean and ripped off by countless comic books, cheesy B movies (including the MATRIX flicks) and a truckload of anime. Faithful adaptations of NEUROMANCER and SNOWCRASH would get laughed right out of the multiplexes.

    By the way, speaking of unfilmable: LORD OF LIGHT by Roger Zelazny. A movie would have to be structured completely differently from the book and I just don’t see it being possible. Another one that I think is impossible to do is Clive Barker’s IMAJICA. Not only is it insanely epic in scope and would require a budget of several million dollars even with all the advances in special effects but there’s also the fact that parts of it are all-out weird very NC-17 porn and the porn sequences are essential to the plot so you can’t just go and cut them out.

22. pdli_5 08/15/2007 @ 10:05am

    Another unfilmable for me would be Charles Williams’ ‘Descent Into Hell’, Darren Aronofsky directing. What do you think, Todd?

23. Todd Brown 08/15/2007 @ 11:12am

    Cheeky man, you know I’d love to see wome Williams adapted.

24. Kurt Halfyard 08/15/2007 @ 11:57am

    I think a proper adaptation of Snow Crash is possible, you might have to push out the technology somewhat, the dystopic future/satire.  I’ve always wanted to see that pizza delivery committed to celluliod.
    If someone were to give it the Robocop style satire it deserves, I’d be quite content!

    Also, ambitious directors should be pointed in the direction of Alistair Reynolds massive-scale sci-fi.  I’d love to see a trilogy made out of Revelation Space or Chasm City.  Chasm City is in fact quite cinematic in structure, but could never be contained in anything less than 10-12 hours of runtime.

25. Joey Fernandez 08/15/2007 @ 5:50pm

    Ooo, I just read Stars My Destination and I loved it.  I read the summary on the back though and it kind of ruined it for me a bit.

    I’ve also read Gateway by Frederik Pohl and Man Plus, I think Gateway would make a terrific film, and I want to direct it, lol.

26. Simon Abrams 08/15/2007 @ 6:36pm

    Of the Murakami I’ve read, I’ve seen a somewhat bewildering but fascinating stage adaptation of a three or four stories from THE ELEPHANT VANISHES. I don’t know if any of his films are unfilmable though.

    I think Shinya Tsukamoto could do wonders with Hard Boiled Wonderland or maybe Kiyoshi Kurosawa (I’d even go out on a limb and say Takashi Shimizu because of the surreal sense of foreboding that MAREBITO had in spades). I also think Tsukamoto is the man Neil Gaiman is looking for when he says he’s looking for someone to really do what Jackson did with LOTR for his SANDMAN. Tsukamoto’s HAZE and NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE both show his talent with dreams.

27. Tuan Jim 08/15/2007 @ 7:17pm

    Damn.  I was going to mention Williams as well, but I don’t consider him unfilmable.  I guess “Descent into Hell” might be the most difficult to put on film coherently, but I would love to see any of his stuff done well—even starting from the more conventional “War in Heaven”.  Aronofsky is definitely the kind of person I would picture doing it though.

28. Simon Abrams 08/15/2007 @ 8:24pm

    Oh and so as not to seem like I swiped the idea from him, I first thought of Tsukamoto for SANDMAN only after the incomparable Grady Hendrix suggested the idea to me. My reasons are however my own.

29. Joey Fernandez 08/16/2007 @ 11:53pm

    What about Forever War?

30. DJensen 08/21/2007 @ 12:57am

    The ‘sequel’ to SNOW CRASH, THE DIAMOND AGE, should be pretty unfilmable too. If for no other reason than it spans the adolescence of the titular Young Lady. Having the main character age from (what was it?) 4 to 12 would be quite hard to fake, and condensing her education to a few weeks or months wouldn’t make sense. And for the most part, when Nell is the focus she’s doing math or learning basic programming concepts. The set requirements would also boggle: Atlantis/Shanghai, the 12 Castles of the Primer, the Celestial Kingdom, the Coastal Republic, the Drummer’s oceanic orgy chamber…

    And yet, SciFi is turning it into a 6 part miniseries.

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