Paul Swan’s post reminded me: Some years ago great excitement ensued when Tor US received a query from Blue Train Entertainment about the film rights to Gridlinked. This excitement increased when, after a bit of research, I found out that they had been involved in producing the Jackie Chan movie The Tuxedo along with a couple of other production companies including Dreamworks. Nothing came of this, however.
Frankly, I would love one of my books to be bought by Hollywood, especially if that involved me trousering some silly money. It would also raise my profile and probably lead to more book sales. However, I think it was Terry Pratchett who said that such a sale virtually guarantees the book won’t be seen on the screen. Many thousands have been bought, but how many get turned into a films? Usually all we see are remakes of 60s SF series, something new where when a book is written it’s usually after the film, or stuff produced filmed from books by authors who have made the transition to sainthood and ‘literature’ by shuffling off their mortal coil.
The big problem with this book to film thing is, of course, that books are big. They’ve got a lot of stuff in them and large amounts of it get sacrificed so the rest can be packed into two hours of screen time. Also, a lot of the concepts put across in the narrative of a book are difficult to translate to the screen, especially in that limited time. Really, film directors are better off taking up a short story and running with that. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, anyone? When a book is turned into a film it can succeed artistically (though not necessarily financially – like Dune), but it often isn’t the same beast any more.
Much better, I think, when a book is taken on by a TV production company. First it stands a lot better chance of getting filmed, and if made into a series there’s room for the book to sprawl itself out (Hence the excellent Dune & Children of Dune mini-series’ being true to their source). So this is why I’d like to see the Cormac books made into a series of five seasons with about twelve episodes each. Not too much to ask is it? Anyone out there buying?
(Snort!)