The Iliad. Not a "take" or an "adaptation" or a "re-imagining". Just play it straight as it is, cut out some of the monologues and replace the "throwing spears at each other" parts with swordfights.
I want to see the gods descend from Olympus to fight on the battlefield.
Old Man's War by John Scalzi was made for this, I swear. His latest books also read a lot like movie scripts are contained therein.
Charles Stross' Laundry series has a ton of potential too, if less Chtullu is required, I wouldn't mind a Merchant Princes series either.
I heard rumours about Forever War being optioned at some point, but nothing came of it.
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and some guy who's name is harder to remember.
An inventor uploads a schematic to the Internet for a cheap, easy-to-assemble device that lets anyone (or almost anyone) "step" into parallel earths. A nearly infinite stretch of untamed wilderness sees people abandoning the polluted, crowded, government-run Old Earth in search of new opportunities. The catch: No iron or iron alloys can "step" across, sending these new earths back to the bronze age.
Also: Zeppelins that are also reincarnated Buddhists that are also the first true machine intelligence; robot cats; libertarian communes; sapient nonhuman primates; sapient nonhuman non-primates; radioactive ziggurats; space programs to parallel moons; and grumpy survival chicks.
Dragonriders of Pern, by Anne McCaffrey. Currently doing my umpteenth read-through completely accidentally. I wanted to read one of the books then got sucked in. I'm nine books in and read several of them in one sitting, despite having read them all plenty of times.
And while I'm on the subject, I don't think I've ever seen anyone taking about Pern online but I see mentions of Isaac Asimov every few weeks. They're of a similar age and Pern is equally good as Isaac's work, if not better. Grumble grumble...
I would love a true to the book series of World War Z. I’m not even sure anyone involved with that movie read the book. It should be a 3 season HBO series with an episode for each persons vignette. Intros and outros of each episode has the recurring reporter meeting the person and starting his recording as they launch into their narrative of what happened. If you need more episodes, just write additional vignettes. Season 1 is the events that lead up to the outbreak, season 2 is the war itself, season 3 is the aftermath. I’m pretty sure this is what Max Brooks was writing towards. It could be amazing.
Old Man's War
Tom Godwin's The Survivors, it's pretty short so they could do their thing where they always mess with the story and it wouldn't have much effect.
Asimov's Robots stories, particularly those with Powell and Donovan, US Robots, etc could be the basis for a cool series, ideally retro-futuristic...
A well-done Brothers Karamazov could put your Downton Abbeys and Bridgertons to shame.
Maybe call it "Three Brothers..."
You ask as if that was a good thing. Like an honor for a book. But I way too often find myself defending books with "It's nothing like the movie. Don't juge it by the awful movie."
Especially fantasy adaptions are regularly awful and damaging for the books.
Examples: The Dark Tower, Eragon, Percy Jackson, The Giver, Inkheart.
Netflix's Persuasion, The Beach to name a couple of non fantasy as well.So I'd rather they leave the books alone and make original stories into movies.
Infinite Jest. Just for the sheer impossibility of any attempt to do so :-)
One of my favorite books is called Inherit the Stars.
Mankind is starting to reach out into the solar system, but finds a man on the moon entombed in a space suit, and he's been dead for 50,000 years.
It'd make a pretty good movie, 2 hours tops.
It does one of my favorite things, by strongly blending two genres: mystery, and sci-fi. A sci-fi show, movie, or book that's purely sci-fi is rarely good. Same goes for fantasy. Season 1 of Game of Thrones is good because it's primarily a mystery/drama story in a fantasy setting. A New Hope is great because it's a western, coming-of-age story in a sci-fi setting. Rebel Moon is garbage (for many reasons) because it's pure sci-fi schlock with no nuance.
Not a book, but a true story from WW2:
5 May 1945 Troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Lieut. John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr., a number of Wehrmacht soldiers led by Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl, SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, and recently freed French prisoners of war defended Castle Itter against an attacking force from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division until relief from the American 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division of XXI Corps arrived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter?wprov=sfla1
A good version of “Riverworld” by Philip Jose Farmer would be awesome. “Borne” or “The Strange Bird” by Jeff Vandermeer. “Dance, Dance, Dance” by Murakmi. The Maddaddam Trilogy by Atwood.
As a deep cut, “The Woman in the Dunes” by Kobo Abe. Totally surreal.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is my favourite book and would be highly relevant today given its political themes about colonialism, and AI.
Lord of Light, high sci Fi mashed with epic Indian mythology and eastern philosophy.
Something from Iain M. Banks The Culture. The best books, like Excession would probably be hard to adapt due to the protagonists being mostly ships, but others like Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games could probably make great films or miniseries (and Use of Weapons would probably be great as the later).
Probably excessively expensive in the CGI department if done well, but one can dream.
Dresden files not popular among these parts or how come nobody's mentioned it yet?
It has technically already been adapted, but it was a stupid procedural cop show with a twist rather than what it should be. If you want a more formulaic thing, just copy Amazon's Reacher.
Plus, since it's an urban fantasy, it should be cheaper to make than most other fantasy/sci-fi shows, I think.
Would love to see (and probably be disappointed by) a Revelation Space adaptation.
Snow Crash.
The Devil in the White City - would love to see the Chicago Worlds Fair brought to life in all it's splendor, and to be directly contrasted with the horror that was HH Holmes murder castle. The book brought that history to life so vividly, and I feel like mini series with great casting would do incredibly well.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - mysteries and whodunnits are popular again (thank god) and this one has such an interesting premise. When I first read it I was convinced it would be a great video game. But a movie would also be a hit.
Something Wicked this way Comes - not sure if this has ever been adapted, but I've never seen it. The book is so atmospheric and has such a rich cast of characters. We haven't had a movie that really celebrates the moodiness of autumn in a while.
The bone comic book series by Jeff Smith completely deserves a movie or show or something. The series is like Tolkien + Disney +metaphysics and is aimed at a younger audience but has enough deep ideas to keep adults actively interested. It has a rich history of the 90s-00s comic book era as well as some history in acholastic book fairs as well as some early internet meme culture contribution. It was solely owned by one dude who eventually got some help from someone who added color to the series that really made it a next level up. If anyone decides to read it from my comment here, check out the omnibus version and if you can find a 20th anniversary version, that has some nice history and behind the scenes type stuff included. There was a Netflix series that was in the works for like a year or so until Netflix decided to cancel it, so it already has some kind of an interest that I hope keeps building up and eventually makes someone do something about this forgotten gem. Here's a explainer video about bone Bone comic series explainer video
Remove most of the muscle porn from it, which wouldn't be hard since the main characters are all essentially superheroes, and the entirety of The Deathworlders, the canon parts of Salvage, The Xiu Chang Saga, and Humans Dont Make Good Pets.
The Jenkinsverse has a ton of potential there.
ETA: also a documentary narrated by David Attenborough, based on Alice in Sunderland.
Dan Simmons, Hyperion... Or Carrion Comfort.
I'd love to see some modern tries at Dashiel Hammet's work too.
I've been listening to Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds thanks to a recommendation I saw here on Lemmy. This is one that I'd like to see a movie or series adaptation.
The Bobiverse would be a fun series I think as well.
I mentioned Daemon and FreedomTM by Daniel Suarez in another thread recently. I've often thought they'd make good Techno Thrillers. They got optioned once but I think it expired.
I think part of the problem is that the second book is a conclusion to the first. One falls flat without the other. So I think they'd be best suited to a single mini-series of 6 or 8 hour long episodes. And studios want franchises.
I bought it because I needed something to read on a flight, the cover looked cool for Black Sun Rising, and it blew me away.
The Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian - yes, I know there's been a movie (Master & Commander with Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany) but the series is much richer and deeper than any single movie could be.
Also, Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series. Concentrate on the Fitz storyline, maybe give the Liveship series a miss.
I'd like to see Ian McDonald's River of Gods or The Dervish House made into a 10ep series. They're both fantastic cyberpunk books and would make excellent TV.
Also, absolute long shot here but I'd love to see Iain Banks' The Culture series adapted for premium streaming with a Foundation series budget.
Elf Quest
Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. I was expecting a trashy slasher with some queer elements and an autistic protagonist, what I got was a good supernatural thriller with some queer elements and a very believable autistic protagonist - I would genuinely recommend it.
The writing is the weakest part, it feels very kind of pedestrian, like "here's some words explaining what's happening" rather than being artistic or beautiful or evocative but it's good enough for the story and characters to come through, and they're great. So remove the writing quality from the equation and it could be absolutely excellent
There's a book called Robopocalypse where an AI gains sentience and then takes control of basically all robotics/anything connected to the internet to take over the world and I'd love to see that as a mini series.
The Gap Cycle series
LOL IDK how you would do the first book or even touch on that part of the books (because it makes them very very hard to suggest let alone reread) but once you got to the singularity bomb at the science space station deep in a dense asteroid field.... I wanna see that part. The emotions that the story creates in the characters is pretty primal and believable. Its an interesting story how each of the main characters goes through the same level of violation but in different ways
The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee.
There already has been a movie (L.A. Confidential), which is one of my favourite movies of all time. But to get it on the screen required a lot of rewriting to fit a complex weave of plots that intersect and takes 10 years to resolve. It was brilliantly done for what it was, but it left a LOT on the floor.
I would love love love to see an HBO or similar series that is as true to the novel by James Ellroy as it could possibly be.
For a movie: Sailing to Byzantium
For a tv series: Bones of the Earth or Replay
The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik.
Children of time, but as a scifi miniseries.
Magic Kingdom of Landover
Otherland.
Not a book exactly, but East of West would make for some great narrative and world building.
Occult and esoteric books in general, such as "The Kybalion" (Hermeticism), "The Book of the Dead" (Egyptian), "Liber AL vel Legis" (by Aleister Crowley, Thelema), as well as grimoires (such as the "Book of Saint Cyprian"). While there are tons of movies and TV Series that directly adapts biblical stories, I feel that there are so few (if there's any) cinematographic works adapting esoteric, occult, pagan books (from belief systems such as Gnosticism, Wicca, Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, Luciferianism, Thelema, Goëtia, and so on). I even tried to ask AIs to list movies and TV series adapting such books, and every single listed movie (such as The Matrix) is not a direct adaptation. They don't even mention these books (in best cases, The Matrix merely alludes to hermetic principles such as "the Universe is Mental" (i.e. the scene between Neo and the kid that says that "the spoon doesn't exist").
I would love a faithful adaptation of Worm, but I don't think it could ever do the series justice.
The Girl from Earths End By Tara Dairman
It's like Harry Potter if you replace magic with botany, and JK Rowling's shittiest values with the opposite of that.
Also fair warning it will make you cry
Transmetropolitan
Discworld work make an incredible series of movies. I think D&D Honor Amongst Theives proves that modern comedy fantasies can work great in a movie format.
My other choice would be House of the Scorpion.
Damsel.
When I heard about the Netflix movie I initially thought it was an adaptation of the book...
At this point, I want a movie adaptation just out of spite to see how much better it would be than the complete trash that netflix thought would make a good original story. I do highly recommend the book, too.
Slightly off topic, but the latest episode of the What Went Wrong podcast is about the adaptation of American Psycho from novel to film and I'm quite enjoying it.
The Grand Tour novels from Ben Bova. All about mankinds spread into the solar system. There are some anachronisms here and there that would need to be ironed out, and plenty of continuity errors to fix, but overall a very exciting series of stories.
V. E. Schwab - the Invisible Life of Adie LaRue would be amazing. Classic cursed immortal living through the ages, but without vampires!
Honor Harrington might be good on a big screen in the present political climate. (Female lead plus a cat)
The myth adventures might be right for a different flavor of comedy.
Repairman Jack. But reserve the supernatural stuff at the end of the seasons. I just want to watch his "repairs"
The Megastructure Compendium as an Anthology about life around these massive feats of engineering.
House of blades / travelers gate series by will wight.
Surprisingly cool YA / RPG ish without being gamey and too cringe.
Would be a very cool show if not done on CB
The Hike by Drew Magary
Low Town and its sequels, especially She Who Waits. They're by Daniel Polansky and not my typical reads but dang were they good.
Random Acts Of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack.
From comic books, Bitch Planet and Archer And Armstrong.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series by Fritz Leiber
The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks.
He is a little fucking nuts but the book is fun.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. Could be a fun mini series to adapt. The video game never grabbed me though.
Fritz Leiber's short story "A Pail of Air".
This story portrays the effects of the most terrifying natural calamity I have ever encountered in fiction: Earth being ejected from the solar system. In any other disaster there's still hope because even though humanity might die out, life on Earth would eventually recover. Not so in this case. Without the Sun we're fucked. Even the air freezes (hence the title).
Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove
"Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates" by Tom Robbins. I always thought Phillip Seymour Hoffman would be the perfect protagonist.
A book called The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll.
Karsa Orlong would say: Witness.
Mountain Man: 10 Books by Keith C. Blackmore. Basically, the Zombie Apocalypse happens and a Dude tries to survive alone, physically, mentally and emotionally while also trying to go on supply runs, running into Zombies and generally trying to stay alive while coping with everything. I think it would be good to have some other zombie-related Series that isn't The Walking Dead.
Expeditionary Force: 18 Books by Craig Alanson. Earth and Humanity are attacked by Hamster Aliens, another alien Race, Lizards, who attack the hamsters saving Earth in the process and then recruiting Humanity into a war on a galactic scale but the Hamsters aren't the real enemy of Humanity. I'm only at the end of the 5th Audiobook but they are great and I would really wish Skippy is voiced by the Audiobook Narrator R.C. Bray in a TV adaption.
Kyralia series: Been a while since I read it but a fantastic series related to magic By Trudi Canavan, I think there are just not enough good Magic-related Shows.
Tales of the Otori: A 5-Book Series by Lian Hearn is set in a fictional feudal Japan. The Main story follows a Boy, Takeo, through his life to avenge his adoptive father and escape the legacy of his biological father. Probably the only series in which I had to put down the book at one point and just had to process what was happening.
I would love to see a sword of truth series, but not done as an action thriller with shallow characters, because that’s just not what it is, damnit.
The entire 2001: A Space Odyssey series should be a TV show.
Blood Meridian
I don't think this is impossible to adapt. I don't even think it needs a huge budget. If you could nail the cinematography; be comfortable with long sections w/o dialogue; and resist the urge to re-work the pacing you could have something. Think Barry Lindon(1975) but as an ultra-violent Western.
The Cohen bros. proved that McCarthy can be adapted in this way. Think of the opening scene of "No Country For Old Men"(2007).
