h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why has no-one had the courage to serialise Mr Asimov's great 'Foundation and Empire' series? It could kick 'Star Trek' right out of the universe.

Fox has bought an option to turn the series into movies. This made the news about a month ago.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000627/9/abtej.html

Having seen the mess that's been made of adapting a lot of books for screen (large or small), I don't hold out much hope for this one. Look at the mess they made of 'The Bicentennial Man', and that's just a short story. How they hope to do justice to a whole series of books is beyond me! Still, there are exceptions. 'King Rat' by James Clavell was turned into a film that was pretty close to the book, as was Watership Down, although that had to be animation, and the 'Lord of the Rings' animation. Pity they only had enough money to do half of that - and they stopped it at a weird place. 'The Name of the Rose' was another good adaptation - not 100% true to the book, but still good. There's never been a 'good' adaptation of 'The Man in the Iron Mask', but, having read the book, I appreciate that there never can be.

A lot of Agatha Christie's books have been well-adapted for TV, the Miss Marple ones by the BBC and the Poirot ones by Granada (I think). I also love the film version of 'Murder on the Orient Express' - I've lost count of the number of times I've seen it. Granada also did good adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

I'll try to think of other books that have been well adapted. Snag is, I'm a bookworm, and I judge an adaptation by a number things:

1. If it's a book that I've read, does the film stay true to the book as far as the constraints of filming allow. I've seen some films that are so far removed from the book that they only have the title and the names of the characters in common.
2. Does the film make me want to go and read the book again (or go and buy the book if it's not one I've read).
3. Can I see the cast as the characters in my mind's eye as I read the book. The answer is 'yes' with a number of the film and TV adaptations I've mentioned (although obviously not with the animated ones). The casting of the famous film version of 'War and Peace', IMHO, made the adaptation a joke. I don't know who cast Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda in their respective roles, but it made the film unwatchable for me.

I used to read Asimov a lot in my teens, and I still love his 'Robot' short stories. However, as I've got older my literary tastes have changed and I haven't read Asimov for years.

I look to adaptations of comic books for another view of this. I view this as a fair analogy, since both genres lend themselves to high-end special effects moreso than most regular books. And both have die-hard fans that can be counted on to scrutinize the tiniest details of the movie for accuracy.

The original Superman was good, but the sequels weren't. The Batman flicks have had mixed success. The X-men movie was surprisingly on target. But for each of these, there are two box-office losers that weren't faithful to the comic. Many of the failures never made it through the script writing process, and a few were filmed but never released.

Notably, Fox did the X-man movie. The studio's willingness to work with representatives from the comics world was well-documented. This tactic could be used with success on the Foundation series as well. While Asimov is no longer around, other Foundation authors like David Brin and Greg Bear could prove very helpful.

Personally, I keep waiting for somebody to make that bloody I, Robot movie. So far, there's no word on it.

Often seems that the results of most adaptions are flawed if viewed in the abstract. Perhaps people expect more from films than they would from a book or a comic.

I'm probably a shallow individual but like the original books, comics or whatever if a film keeps me entertained and the writers have a genuine appreciation for the characters you can forgive a great deal of dramatic license.

Allthough I could pick huge holes in The Shadow, The Flash, Doc Savage, The Phantom and Bukaroo Banzai I enjoyed them at the time and I'm still glad that someone made them.

Perhaps if there were less exclusive rights and more people got a chance to make Film adaptions we would get better results

* steps off soapbox *

It is not very film friendly is it - the first three books are in sections, with each section being fifty or one hundred years on - all new characters, all new politcal situations, different technology, different fashions. I cannot see how the film could remain faithful to the book - I mean no really big space battles - even when the Merchant Princes were at war, it was basically let the others do what they want until all the technology we gave them fails - hmmmm that will make for good cinema. So if Fox do it they are going to totally balderdise it (hmmmm Hollywood basterdising something - there is something new! It makes me angry just thinking about it - Grrrrrrrr.......
BCNU - Crescent

The whole point with 'film rights' is that most books by modern authors (that includes Asimov, who only died a few years ago) are under copyright. This prevents anybody just making a film until 50 years after the death of the author. Film rights also ensure that the author gets paid for the use of their work. I must say that if I wrote a novel and somebody just filmed it without paying me a penny, and then made millions, I'd get pretty miffed!

As for expecting more from films, I actually expect less. I know that an author has room to describe at length, in as many pages as they think necessary. Film-makers, on the other hand, have about 2 hours to pack a story into. In the case of the forthcoming 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, thats 2 hours per book. My omnibus volume is over 1000 pages, so that's 330+ pages crammed into 2 hours. I know it's impossible to do the book justice, but I do expect to find the same plot, as well as the same characters. Where a film is based on a comic strip or comic book my expectations are zero, 'cos I don't read them. A lot of people panned 'Batman and Robin' as a turkey. OK, it wasn't great and the performances weren't Oscar-winning. But I always view it as a live-action comic strip. Approach it on those terms and it's fine. Friends of mine picked holes in the first 3 Batman films because the bad guys died (with the exception of the Riddler), and the comic book Batman never killed the bad guys. This doesn't bother me. Generally speaking it's the overall package that grabs me, or not in some cases.

I think "The Hunt for Red October" and "The Shawshank Redemption" were good films adapted from books. As for the live-action Flintstones movies: WHY?
PLT, Mick.

I've never read The Shawshank Redemption, but I agree with you on The Hunt for Red October. Especially as it's got Sean Connery in it (drool, drool - even if he is old enough to be my grandfather!) I can't think of a good reason for the live-action Flintstones, other than 'because they could'. Even Brian Henson (Jim Henson's Creature Shop) reckoned it wasn't a great film and that the Creature Shop should probably be more picky over who they did effects for. The big question for me was: Why the sequel? If you're going to do a sequel, stick with the same cast at the very least. (Does anybody know who did the creatue effects for the sequel? I don't want to have to watch it to find out.)

Copyrights do not prevent a film company from covering a novel, comic book, or anything else for that matter. The only difference is the film company must pay the author/originator or the heir to their copyright. In most cases, the fees asked for use of copyright for movie serialisation are very slim compared to the overall cost of making a movie.