Best Book Ever: Movie Wishlist!
So last week on Best Book Ever, we talked about book-to-movie adaptations, and we all made some really hard choices to pick our favorites. This week, we're looking at the other end of that issue... books that we'd love to see made into movies! In fantasy land, where money is no limit and you can make sure that your favorite sub-plots and characters are included, I wanted to know everyone's movie wishlists. Here's our choices!
I would dearly love to see GRACELING by Kristin Cashore made into a movie. It has everything I could possibly want in a Hollywood blockbuster. Katsa is one of my favorite kick-ass heroines, and I’d love to see her up there on the big screen shooting bulls-eyes in the dark, wrestling mountain lions with her bare hands, and defeating entire squadrons of soldiers by herself. The story is set in a bunch of different locations, from lush palaces to deep forests to the frostbite-inducing top of a mountain pass, but each setting is dramatic and sweeping and wonderfully cinematic. (I’d especially like to see a recreation of Prince Po’s Lienid kingdom on film.) The story is twisty and turny and suspenseful, and there’s a ridiculously scary villain, which always makes things more fun. And then there’s the matter of Prince Po, who is—in my humble opinion—the swooniest boy ever to grace young adult fiction. (No pun intended.) If Hollywood would like to show me his face projected twenty feet high, I am not going to complain about that. (Please, Hollywood? Pretty please?) Alison Cherry, debut author of Red (2013, Delacorte Press)
The book I want to see turned into a movie? Well, I was going to say ENDER'S GAME--but I went over to imdb and saw that they have finally, finally, started filming this--it stars Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin, and the kid from Hugo. Awesome. The movie peoples are also filming Rosoff's HOW I LIVE NOW, right at this very moment. Yes.
Where the heck is Nix's SABRIEL? Seems like someone should have done this book by now. It would make a brilliant dark fantasy film. Especially if it was old-school animated. And JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL? Where did that movie go?
My ultimate pick? THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA--I love, love, love this Gentlemen Bastards stuff. And thieves and disguises and elaborate ruses make for great cinema. Warner Brothers bought the rights. James McAvoy would make a perfect Locke. So where is it, darn it all?
April Tucholke, debut author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (2013, Dial/Penguin)
Oh, this one is EASY! Believe it or not, I've often fantasized about producing an adaptation of Jane Eyre. You're probably thinking, "But, Melissa, there are already eleventy dozen film versions of JE." To which I would reply (quite loudly and with a twitchy eye), "Right, but none of them are true to the book!!!" Either Jane is too pretty, or Edward is too young and/or handsome, or (in the Masterpiece Theater version) they roll around in bed together after the Big Secret is revealed...something Jane would never EVER do. This book deserves the ultimate pitch-perfect adaptation, and if I ever become JK Rowling rich, rest assured that I'll rock that remake like a hurricane! Feel free to send donations my way. ;) Melissa Landers, debut author of Alienated (2014, Disney Hyperion)
I'd love to see Kristin Cashore's GRACELING on screen, all the way! I just finished up BITTERBLUE, and after learning even more about horrific King Leck was, I really want to see Katsa shoot that arrow through his nasty, black, shriveled heart. And seeing Po in the flesh wouldn't injury my eyes much either... Mindy McGinnis, debut author of Not A Drop To Drink (2013, Katherine Tegen)
Other than Fair Coin, of course, the book I would most like see as a movie is the one I will probably never get: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. See, it's the second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and my favorite of the series, but due to the poor performance of the film adaptation of the first book, The Golden Compass, it's unlikely to ever be made. Plus, Dakota Blue is now way too old to reprise her role as Lyra Belacqua, so it seems that airship has sailed. This is extra frustrating because visually, the first film was a perfect translation of Pullman's alternate world, so I know The Subtle Knife would look good--we would just need a better, more nuanced script than Compass got. A shame, because the knife is such a great and visually-striking plot device, slicing doorways in the air into parallel universes, and Will Parry is a sympathetic, actiony sort of protagonist. I feel so cheated that I'll never get to see that wonderful book on the screen. I guess maybe I'll look into the BBC Radio dramatizations instead... E.C. Myers, debut author of Fair Coin (2012, Prometheus Books)
Holly Black's Curseworkers series has the makings of an amazing group of movies (or an HBO mini-series!). Mafias, magic, family secrets, forbidden love, and, at the center of it all, a narrator, Cassel, who just wants to be a good person--even though circumstances and loyalty are making constant, devious demands on him.
The books are so cinematic -- from the opening scene where Cassel wakes up on the roof of his dorm with no idea how he got there, to the ending (which I won't spoil!) these books would translate so well to film!
Tiffany Schmidt, debut author of Send Me a Sign (2012, Walker-Bloomsbury)
As for us...
My first choice is Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, which is one of my absolute favorite books and full of great scenes that I'd love to see on the screen. Oh, there was a movie adaptation, but it was terrible. Within the first five minutes, I had tons of problems with the choices the movie made. So I would totally ask for a do-over. I would shoot the whole thing in Chicago -- the book is very rooted in my windy city, and seeing scenes that were set at places I know and love be filmed in entirely different, wrong locations just hurt. And I'd cast Adrien Brody as Henry, no questions asked. But if I have to pick a book that's never been given the film treatment before, I would go with Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity. I've already read the book a couple of times, have a dog-eared and post-it-marked hard copy, and love it dearly. It's not a story that lends itself too well to the screen, because of (spoilers spoilers spoilers!) but I would convince someone, anyone, to make it work. The world needs more movies about awesome women doing awesome things, fearlessly. And then I'd sit in the audience the whole time and weep.
- Sarah
