Two famous ones are Catcher In The Rye and A Confederacy Of Dunces. As far as I know anyway. That's the first two that spring to mind. Both have a history of various people trying to acquire rights, planning getting so far, then falling apart. I don't go along with the idea that every novel is suited to movie adaptation. I'm more in the Alan Moore camp that certain stories suit certain mediums.
Please, there is one masterpiece novel that can be filmed, should be filmed, should be filmed by Del Toro, yet has not been filmed - "At The Mountains Of Madness" by HP Lovecraft. It MUST be done by GDT (or at a pinch John Carpenter), and to encompass the mind-blowing scale of the story's latter half it has to be in 48 fps 3D. If they can name a feature on Pluto after Cthulhu, they can surely film the most visually imaginative sci fi horror tale of the past century.
I would have loved to see Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle'. It has a very clear narrative and I'm surprised it hasn't been adapted to the big or small screen.
It's not unfilmable, but I would nominate C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces as the best novel never filmed. It probably could be filmed, it just hasn't, sadly. As for unfilmable, I'd have to go with Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Great books, but they're convoluted as hell, and I just can't see anyone translating the narrative to the screen. Also, as several other commenters have pointed out, A Confederacy of Dunces. And we're all still waiting for Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.
No mention in the video of "A Confederacy of Dunces". The last time I heard anything about an attempt at a film version, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney were mentioned. They had obtained an option or something.
You know, that's a story that really could be filmed. However, expecting the general public to catch the nuance of 1960s New Orleans is impossible. It COULD be done, but it won't be done well.
I know a couple of Murakami books have been made into films, but I get the feeling that novels like A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and 1Q84, if they were made into movies, would either be masterpieces or, well, excrement.
I know this video is old but for anybody watching that might be mounting a first attempt at Gravity's Rainbow it is imperative that you do NOT skip the first section of the book. If you're feeling lost there are plenty of guides, many of which are free (the Pynchon reading community on blogs, etc. is huge). Easily the least adaptable book I've ever read. And also the best!
It's not as if the rest of the book is some sort of breeze compared to that first section either. The first section is marginally more dense and esoteric, but that's about it. If you feel the need to skip it, you might as well skip the whole book, you weren't going to enjoy the rest of it much either.
Pynchon actually wants the novel to be seen in the mind's eye as if it were a film too. There are many scenes that actually have script notes like, 'medium shot' written as part of the text. Some of the set pieces are lifted from old black and white caper movies, like the chase through the tunnels containing the V 2 factories, the dog fight/pie fight in the sky and Slothrop on his mission to find the buried dope and they would make for fantastic cinema. The fact a book that pays so many references to the movies could never be filmed is Pynchon's joke.
The Last Battle hasn't been skipped over. So far we have had The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Next would be The Silver Chair and then The Last Battle rounds things off. Yes The Magician's Nephew and Horse and The Boy haven't been touched but the five films they seem to be going for are the main narrative for Narnia.
I'm surprised to not see The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov in the comments. One of my all time favourites, blending dark satire with philosophy and an underlying critique of Stalinism. Polanski almost did an adaptation. Baz Luhrmann is apparently in the process of adapting it which makes me die inside. I don't think it could ever be properly adapted because of how unusual the novel is. Funnily enough given Mark's observations about Terry Gilliam being the answer to everything, he is probably the only director I would have faith in to make a good adaptation!
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini would be a fabulous movie. It needs editing but it's a fantastic story - humorous, inspiring, melodramatic, sexual, violent, spiritual, classical yet very contemporary.
The fact that the BBC had to skip The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre (because they couldn't muster the budget to film it in Hong Kong) and instead went straight onto Smiley's People still makes me wonder what that could have been like. However, they did at least have the artistic integrity not to try to transpose the action too much, like they did with the Hong Kong scenes in Tinker Tailor being put in Portugal (which just about works). Therefore the novel is virgin filmic territory; somebody do it justice, please! And NO OLDMAN. Thank you.
Grotesque, yes, but what incredible images. Men unable to stop less their blood-saturated overalls freeze solid. There was something very surreal about the book. I am not sure if you are familiar with Spanish director Luis Bunuel but he would have been able to make a film of the book.
Bunuel is my second favorite director after Kubrick...but sometime Bunuel nudges him out. Yes, he'd be the only director who could possibly film this book, going beyond the grotesque surface to the surreal viscera. Bunuel is never shy to show social injustices and how people are degraded and debased---sometimes it is from an outer source and sometimes it is from the character's own shortsighted limitations. Bunuel had a couple projects that sadly were never realized. He wanted to film Johnny Got His Gun and Lord of the Flies. He liked when the social niceties were stripped away and the reality beneath the facade was reavealed as in his masterpiece The Exterminating Angel. As you might tell I am a huge fan of Bunuel. Sadly no one has really folowed in his footsteps and the word "surreal" is tossed around very casually to what is just munedanely weird or strange. L'age d'or is number on my list of all-time favorite films. It is still as potent as the scorpion's tail at the beginning of the film. Glad to encounter another fan. We are trapped in a Michael Bay world.
Steven Campbell Well there's that and the fact that J.D Salinger has stated in letters to his son he feels the same way about movies as Holden and asked his son to not sell the rights after his death. Don't believe me, google it.
Carpenter's film is about a book that turns you insane, it's not based on a specific Lovecraft story but it takes Lovecraftian horror conventions and makes a new story. I also am aware of Stuart Gordon's films like Re-Animator (which is awesome) and From Beyond.
"A Confederacy of Dunces" is another famous "cursed " Hollywood novel adaptation that has had names like Belushi and Farrell attached to it at times, but has never gone into full production.
I wrote this before seeing your post: No mention in the video of "A Confederacy of Dunces". The last time I heard anything about an attempt at a film version, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney were mentioned. They had obtained an option or something.
This book is unbelievable, and I am a lifelong denizen of New Orleans. I need this movie in my life! I can only read the same book so many times (forever).
I'd like to see Christopher Nolan make The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton. If anyone can pull off a plot twist that relies so heavily on it's reader misreading or forgetting a key word in the title and a climactic betrayal of imaginative and emotional investment from the audience, it'll be Nolan.
Any of Haruki Murakami's books really... although they could possibly do Sputnik Sweetheart, but I think the feel of "extraordinary in the ordinary" and all the interesting characters and concepts would be lost.
It really saddens me that there's so much great sci-fi literature out there but when sci-fi films are made they either adapt trash or take a plot from another genre and set it in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE... Would love to see some adaptations of Iain M Banks, Stephen Baxter, Neal Stephenson or Larry Niven.
Also, you can't skip the first section of Gravity's Rainbow. The first line ties up with the ending. And is a killer. Not to mention the fantastic scene setting and atmos building.
Waverley: Sir Walter Scott, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: James Hogg. Not the most read novels, but both groundbreaking in their fields and deserving of adaptations.
Not so much can't be filmed, but more amazed they haven't been yet. Asimov's massive Robot/Empire/Foundation saga (the Will Smith film doesn't count). In an age where we love interconnected multistranded franchises like the Marvel cinematic universe and obscene levels of world building as shown in the Middle Earth pictures, isn't it about time somebody attempted this 200andsomething book epic?
I'd like to see a film adaptation of Chuck Palahuik's Novel, Survivor. I think it's a really interesting book.....Could be directed by James Gunn or maybe Lynne Ramsey even. I also think Slaughterhouse 5 could be adapted again.....Might be a Terry Gilliam job, or Alfonso Cuaron or Darren Aronofsky. :)
they should make blood meridian properly on a low budget as an independant. even if a studio did take it on it would be a 15 at the most and would be rubbish. may aswel let someone make it properly on the horror/indie circuit and do a real job on it
Alistair Maclean's best book never made it to the big screen (HMS Ulyses), it couldn't be made until Saving Private Ryan changed the landscape and now it's mostly forgotten... (This comment is fashionably late)
"The Blue Star" is a wonderful fantasy novel and deserves to be filmed. "The Left Hand of Darkness" is one of the best Sci Fi novels and deserves to be filmed.
Dear Mark, was it you who said Alex Garland's The Coma was a film waiting to happen. I loved the eerie little novella and have been waiting for it to appear.
I’m curious to see what a ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Multiplex’ film would’ve been like. I’m guessing something akin to ‘Adaptation’ mixed with the TV show ‘The Critic’. It would’ve either been terrific or total pants, no middle ground.
Dan Brown's 'masterpieces' are unfilmable because they were also clearly unwritable, too. To paraphrase Bill Bailey: 'Dan Brown doesn't write, he randomly arranges words into millions of dollars'.
Some of the obvious ones have been named, so here is my list.1. Absalom! Absalom! 2. Paradise Lost 3. Guard Of Honor, James Gould Cozzens' Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece about three days of crisis at a huge Army Air Force base in Florida at the height of World War Two. 4. The Leavenworth Case Anna Katherine Green The first great detective novel written by a woman. Anthony Hopkins would be perfect as the wily Inspector Ebenezer Gryce.5. Fathers And Sons 6. Invisible Man ( Ralph Ellison.) 7. The Galton Case 8. The Ambassadors 9. The Man Who Was Thursday.10.,Nostromo 11. The Eighth Day 12. Mans Fate. 13. American Tabloid 14. Nostromo 15. The Just And The Unjust Cozzens again. The best, most realistic, novel about a murder trial ever written.16.The Moviegoer 17. Sentimental Education 18. The Rise Of Silas Lapham 19. Appointment in Samarra.20 Till we Have Faces.
I'm very late to this discussion, but my favourite book to film adaptation was Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, even though the film did terribly at the box office. It was funny, touching, charming and very quirky. They could only film it though by cutting out the magical realist parts, and magical realism would also make filming Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Sexing the Cherry pretty much impossible. A director might have more luck filming Ben Okri's The Famished Road :) The best novel I can think of for adaptation though is The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which I think would be chilling, witty and thrilling in the right hands. The Handmaid's Tale needed a series rather than a film so that the world Atwood created could be fleshed out properly, although I understand her annoyance as the things Offred is able to do politically in the series become more and more unrealistic. Hopefully they might leave her sequel alone! The adaptation of Alias Grace was better because it wasn't allowed to get out of control, and I liked seeing Atwood's cameo.
The wild boys by William Burroughs. Luca Guadagnino directs! James Ellroy’s American tabloid and cold six thousand would make an incredible pair of mini series’!
To be fair to hitchhiker's it was adapted faithfully, at least as faithfully as the books were to the radio plays anyway. What is unfilmable are the sequels because even if you could adapt the books plots to fit with the developments made in the film, the resultant works would be so obliquely faithful as to be unfaithful to his style, perhaps if Eoin Colfer wrote the screenplay?
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is amazing
I imagine it's a light hearted rom-com
I can't believe this video didn't include "A Confederacy of Dunces". One of the most notoriously unfilmable yet popular novels I know of.
Two famous ones are Catcher In The Rye and A Confederacy Of Dunces. As far as I know anyway. That's the first two that spring to mind. Both have a history of various people trying to acquire rights, planning getting so far, then falling apart.
I don't go along with the idea that every novel is suited to movie adaptation. I'm more in the Alan Moore camp that certain stories suit certain mediums.
Weaveworld by Clive Barker. The most cinematic book I've ever read.
Ubik by Philip K. Dick. My favorite novel of his. There has been rumors for years of a movie happening, but it seems to be all smoke and no fire.
You can read Dick's script for the film of Ubik. It's been published.
Funnily enough, I was thinking of Terry Gilliam to direct The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.
Please, there is one masterpiece novel that can be filmed, should be filmed, should be filmed by Del Toro, yet has not been filmed - "At The Mountains Of Madness" by HP Lovecraft. It MUST be done by GDT (or at a pinch John Carpenter), and to encompass the mind-blowing scale of the story's latter half it has to be in 48 fps 3D. If they can name a feature on Pluto after Cthulhu, they can surely film the most visually imaginative sci fi horror tale of the past century.
The Very Hungry Caterpiller
Infinite Jest, anyone?
+Johnny MacMillan impossible. i feel like you'd have to use narration straight out of the book, like they did in Inherent Vice
...maybe a mini series
House of Leaves is both begging for a film and impossible to adapt.
I would have loved to see Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle'. It has a very clear narrative and I'm surprised it hasn't been adapted to the big or small screen.
Pale Fire and Blood Meridian
ɷ I Havee Watchedddd Thissss Movie Leakedddd Version Here : - t.co/RlKbv1hghK
It's not unfilmable, but I would nominate C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces as the best novel never filmed. It probably could be filmed, it just hasn't, sadly.
As for unfilmable, I'd have to go with Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Great books, but they're convoluted as hell, and I just can't see anyone translating the narrative to the screen.
Also, as several other commenters have pointed out, A Confederacy of Dunces. And we're all still waiting for Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.
No mention in the video of "A Confederacy of Dunces". The last time I heard anything about an attempt at a film version, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney were mentioned. They had obtained an option or something.
You know, that's a story that really could be filmed. However, expecting the general public to catch the nuance of 1960s New Orleans is impossible. It COULD be done, but it won't be done well.
All of Iain M. Banks Culture Novels - luckily there is a new one coming at the end of the year :D I am looking forward to that more than any movie.
The Master and the Margarita.🌹
My favourite book. There have been adaptations, but not major or mainstream
“His Dark Materials Trilogy” well... actually it did. And it’s great.
DUNE, 3 versions, one one has come close to doing it justice.
The Third Policeman by Flan O'Brien.
I AGREE 1000%..... IT WOULD BE SOME CRAZY SHOW!!!
I agree that TTP would make a great movie. When I was first reading it back in 1997, I thought it would be a perfect fit for ... Terry Gilliam.
p1mmolloybom Yes. I wonder if he ever considered it?
I know a couple of Murakami books have been made into films, but I get the feeling that novels like A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and 1Q84, if they were made into movies, would either be masterpieces or, well, excrement.
I know this video is old but for anybody watching that might be mounting a first attempt at Gravity's Rainbow it is imperative that you do NOT skip the first section of the book. If you're feeling lost there are plenty of guides, many of which are free (the Pynchon reading community on blogs, etc. is huge). Easily the least adaptable book I've ever read. And also the best!
It's not as if the rest of the book is some sort of breeze compared to that first section either. The first section is marginally more dense and esoteric, but that's about it. If you feel the need to skip it, you might as well skip the whole book, you weren't going to enjoy the rest of it much either.
Pynchon actually wants the novel to be seen in the mind's eye as if it were a film too. There are many scenes that actually have script notes like, 'medium shot' written as part of the text. Some of the set pieces are lifted from old black and white caper movies, like the chase through the tunnels containing the V 2 factories, the dog fight/pie fight in the sky and Slothrop on his mission to find the buried dope and they would make for fantastic cinema. The fact a book that pays so many references to the movies could never be filmed is Pynchon's joke.
Foucault's Pendulum or anything by Eco. Strange there hasn't been more adaptations of his books, given the Name of the Rose was such a great success.
Apparently Eco disliked the adaptation of Name of the Rose enough to turn down Kubrick wanting to film FP
'The Dice Man'.......timeless....and full of potential.
The Last Battle hasn't been skipped over. So far we have had The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Next would be The Silver Chair and then The Last Battle rounds things off. Yes The Magician's Nephew and Horse and The Boy haven't been touched but the five films they seem to be going for are the main narrative for Narnia.
I'm surprised to not see The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov in the comments. One of my all time favourites, blending dark satire with philosophy and an underlying critique of Stalinism. Polanski almost did an adaptation. Baz Luhrmann is apparently in the process of adapting it which makes me die inside. I don't think it could ever be properly adapted because of how unusual the novel is. Funnily enough given Mark's observations about Terry Gilliam being the answer to everything, he is probably the only director I would have faith in to make a good adaptation!
The Chronicles Of Ancient Darkness series by Michelle Paver.
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini would be a fabulous movie. It needs editing but it's a fantastic story - humorous, inspiring, melodramatic, sexual, violent, spiritual, classical yet very contemporary.
The Wasp Factory!
The fact that the BBC had to skip The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre (because they couldn't muster the budget to film it in Hong Kong) and instead went straight onto Smiley's People still makes me wonder what that could have been like. However, they did at least have the artistic integrity not to try to transpose the action too much, like they did with the Hong Kong scenes in Tinker Tailor being put in Portugal (which just about works). Therefore the novel is virgin filmic territory; somebody do it justice, please! And NO OLDMAN. Thank you.
Upton's Sinclaire's The Jungle. It would be too grotesque to be filmed.
Grotesque, yes, but what incredible images. Men unable to stop less their blood-saturated overalls freeze solid. There was something very surreal about the book. I am not sure if you are familiar with Spanish director Luis Bunuel but he would have been able to make a film of the book.
Bunuel is my second favorite director after Kubrick...but sometime Bunuel nudges him out. Yes, he'd be the only director who could possibly film this book, going beyond the grotesque surface to the surreal viscera. Bunuel is never shy to show social injustices and how people are degraded and debased---sometimes it is from an outer source and sometimes it is from the character's own shortsighted limitations. Bunuel had a couple projects that sadly were never realized. He wanted to film Johnny Got His Gun and Lord of the Flies. He liked when the social niceties were stripped away and the reality beneath the facade was reavealed as in his masterpiece The Exterminating Angel. As you might tell I am a huge fan of Bunuel. Sadly no one has really folowed in his footsteps and the word "surreal" is tossed around very casually to what is just munedanely weird or strange. L'age d'or is number on my list of all-time favorite films. It is still as potent as the scorpion's tail at the beginning of the film. Glad to encounter another fan. We are trapped in a Michael Bay world.
If American Psycho could be made into a movie. I think Catcher In The Rye could be.
Steven Campbell Well there's that and the fact that J.D Salinger has stated in letters to his son he feels the same way about movies as Holden and asked his son to not sell the rights after his death. Don't believe me, google it.
That movie was inspired by the book, to put it generously.
Carpenter's film is about a book that turns you insane, it's not based on a specific Lovecraft story but it takes Lovecraftian horror conventions and makes a new story. I also am aware of Stuart Gordon's films like Re-Animator (which is awesome) and From Beyond.
Loved the Dan Brown comments at the end.
"A Confederacy of Dunces" is another famous "cursed " Hollywood novel adaptation that has had names like Belushi and Farrell attached to it at times, but has never gone into full production.
Crime and punishment, voyage au bout de la nuit, notes from the underground, the diamond age, neoromancer, henry millars books
Mike drop finish. I miss Kermode Uncut!
A Confederacy of Dunces (and I'm a Brit, gifted a copy by an American friend)
I wrote this before seeing your post:
No mention in the video of "A Confederacy of Dunces". The last time I heard anything about an attempt at a film version, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney were mentioned. They had obtained an option or something.
This book is unbelievable, and I am a lifelong denizen of New Orleans. I need this movie in my life! I can only read the same book so many times (forever).
Fatherland by Rpbert Harris, the 1994 TV movie was decent, but its fully deserving of a big screen adaptation
Igby Goes Down is the closet thing we'll ever get to a movie based on Catcher in the Rye
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino.
Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War", widely regarded as the best sci fi novel ever written. It would make a great Trilogy for say Ridley Scott?
I'd add DeLillo's Underworld on this list, although I do think it could make a decent miniseries.
I'd like to see Christopher Nolan make The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton. If anyone can pull off a plot twist that relies so heavily on it's reader misreading or forgetting a key word in the title and a climactic betrayal of imaginative and emotional investment from the audience, it'll be Nolan.
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Possibly the best sci-fi book ever written, just wouldn't work on the big screen
I would put that line about hating the movies in the trailer. It's like the book is challenging filmmakers to do it
Foucaults Pendulum. Kubricks masterpiece he never made
I'm with one of the responses in this blog. Not all books need to be filmed. Hey, books were invented long before the screen, try reading them!
The Ian M. Banks sci fi novels are unfilmable.
Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock.....I would love to see anyone touch that.
Lord Valentines Castle by Robert Silverberg.
Any of Haruki Murakami's books really... although they could possibly do Sputnik Sweetheart, but I think the feel of "extraordinary in the ordinary" and all the interesting characters and concepts would be lost.
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
It really saddens me that there's so much great sci-fi literature out there but when sci-fi films are made they either adapt trash or take a plot from another genre and set it in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE... Would love to see some adaptations of Iain M Banks, Stephen Baxter, Neal Stephenson or Larry Niven.
Also, you can't skip the first section of Gravity's Rainbow. The first line ties up with the ending. And is a killer. Not to mention the fantastic scene setting and atmos building.
The Star of the Sea by Joseph O Connor. It would make a great film.
Waverley: Sir Walter Scott, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: James Hogg. Not the most read novels, but both groundbreaking in their fields and deserving of adaptations.
Not so much can't be filmed, but more amazed they haven't been yet. Asimov's massive Robot/Empire/Foundation saga (the Will Smith film doesn't count). In an age where we love interconnected multistranded franchises like the Marvel cinematic universe and obscene levels of world building as shown in the Middle Earth pictures, isn't it about time somebody attempted this 200andsomething book epic?
'Death is a Lonely Business' - Ray Bradbury
Absolutely it's Snow Crash
One hundred years of solitude.gabriel garcia marquez
Neuromancer - William Gibson
On the Road. Because its more about how its said and the spirit that comes across from the stream of consciousness.
I'd like to see a film adaptation of Chuck Palahuik's Novel, Survivor. I think it's a really interesting book.....Could be directed by James Gunn or maybe Lynne Ramsey even.
I also think Slaughterhouse 5 could be adapted again.....Might be a Terry Gilliam job, or Alfonso Cuaron or Darren Aronofsky.
:)
100 years of solitud would be heard to do
I figured Blood Meridian would be the obvious
Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow Of The Wind. A journey of wonders and eerie enchantment. When I get there I will buy the rights myself ;)
I miss kermode uncut
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. I hope Guillermo del Toro gets to work on it.
I don't think The Man Who Was Thursday has ever been filmed. That would be a rather weird film.
adapting don delilo's novels would be a great challenge
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison would be impossible, although it had been adapted for Broadway.
Did the recent Invisible Man film meet the mark?
they should make blood meridian properly on a low budget as an independant. even if a studio did take it on it would be a 15 at the most and would be rubbish. may aswel let someone make it properly on the horror/indie circuit and do a real job on it
That would be great :)
I was thinking of doing it as an HBO miniseries with a similar format.
I miss this
I think In the Miso Soup would make a great film. It would also make some people throw up. These two things are not always mutually exclusive.
I'd super like to see Sandman by Gaiman turned into a series or films.
My childhood will never recover from that. I hope you're happy...
If late-era Orson Welles was still around, he could probably give House of Leaves a go.
Alistair Maclean's best book never made it to the big screen (HMS Ulyses), it couldn't be made until Saving Private Ryan changed the landscape and now it's mostly forgotten...
(This comment is fashionably late)
I'm amazed that Don Quixote has never been filmed.
THE WASP FACTORY!!!!
"The Blue Star" is a wonderful fantasy novel and deserves to be filmed. "The Left Hand of Darkness" is one of the best Sci Fi novels and deserves to be filmed.
I'd love to see an Asimov film. I, Robot was decent but it was very loosely based on Asimov's work, I'd love a Foundation film
I would be delighted to see the story in Chapter 1 in The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex adapted into a short film.
Perdido Street Station by China Meiville
Dear Mark, was it you who said Alex Garland's The Coma was a film waiting to happen. I loved the eerie little novella and have been waiting for it to appear.
"Another Fine Myth" by Robert Asprin. How I would love to see this made into a movie.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
I’m curious to see what a ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Multiplex’ film would’ve been like. I’m guessing something akin to ‘Adaptation’ mixed with the TV show ‘The Critic’. It would’ve either been terrific or total pants, no middle ground.
Dan Brown's 'masterpieces' are unfilmable because they were also clearly unwritable, too. To paraphrase Bill Bailey: 'Dan Brown doesn't write, he randomly arranges words into millions of dollars'.
The Maias by Portuguese writer Eça de Queiroz. Some tv productions have been done, but a movie version would be very interesting to watch.
No 'Confederacy of Dunces'.....
Still waiting on that one...
Some of the obvious ones have been named, so here is my list.1. Absalom! Absalom! 2. Paradise Lost 3. Guard Of Honor, James Gould Cozzens' Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece about three days of crisis at a huge Army Air Force base in Florida at the height of World War Two. 4. The Leavenworth Case Anna Katherine Green The first great detective novel written by a woman. Anthony Hopkins would be perfect as the wily Inspector Ebenezer Gryce.5. Fathers And Sons 6. Invisible Man ( Ralph Ellison.) 7. The Galton Case 8. The Ambassadors 9. The Man Who Was Thursday.10.,Nostromo 11. The Eighth Day 12. Mans Fate. 13. American Tabloid 14. Nostromo 15. The Just And The Unjust Cozzens again. The best, most realistic, novel about a murder trial ever written.16.The Moviegoer 17. Sentimental Education 18. The Rise Of Silas Lapham 19. Appointment in Samarra.20 Till we Have Faces.
I'm very late to this discussion, but my favourite book to film adaptation was Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, even though the film did terribly at the box office. It was funny, touching, charming and very quirky. They could only film it though by cutting out the magical realist parts, and magical realism would also make filming Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Sexing the Cherry pretty much impossible. A director might have more luck filming Ben Okri's The Famished Road :) The best novel I can think of for adaptation though is The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which I think would be chilling, witty and thrilling in the right hands. The Handmaid's Tale needed a series rather than a film so that the world Atwood created could be fleshed out properly, although I understand her annoyance as the things Offred is able to do politically in the series become more and more unrealistic. Hopefully they might leave her sequel alone! The adaptation of Alias Grace was better because it wasn't allowed to get out of control, and I liked seeing Atwood's cameo.
Is there a film based on zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance?
Kafkas metamorphis or the old man and the Sea and perhaps Slaughterhouse 5? :)
The Golden notebook. Definitely unfilmable.
What about The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant?
The wild boys by William Burroughs. Luca Guadagnino directs! James Ellroy’s American tabloid and cold six thousand would make an incredible pair of mini series’!
To be fair to hitchhiker's it was adapted faithfully, at least as faithfully as the books were to the radio plays anyway. What is unfilmable are the sequels because even if you could adapt the books plots to fit with the developments made in the film, the resultant works would be so obliquely faithful as to be unfaithful to his style, perhaps if Eoin Colfer wrote the screenplay?
Igby Goes Down starring fantastic Kieran Culkin is basically modern-day Catcher in the Rye