scary new world…film
by CJ | Apr 8, 2013 | Journal | 90 comments
90 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Books
- spoiler potential: caution: book questions.
- Bibliography
- Alliance-Union Guidebook
- Foreigner Guidebook.
- Foreigner Guidebook.
- Gene Wars Universe: Spoiler Alert
- The Map Room
- Book Discussion: all books: spoiler alert in effect…
- Fantasy books: Spoiler alert.
- About the Foreigner series: Spoiler alerts
- Foreigner Series: Spoiler Alerts: Page 2
- WHO’S WHO in Foreigner
Archives
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
WOW!! Do everybody a favor, and be a real b******d about them getting it right, would ya? =D
So awseome.
Oh. Oh my! Yippee! This is very good news. Or so I hope. I’ll hope for a good adaptation, something you and fans can be proud of. Oh wow!
WOW!!!!!!! hope you have the final say on the scripts!!!!!
D
YESYESYES! I’ve always thought they would make a great movie (or movies) but like everyone else has said, I sure hope you get final script approval! Wow. This is just do cool. I love those books — I’ve been with you since Ivrel came out and they’ve always been my favorites.
Great news, although I know nothing of this man who is doing the adapting. Here’s hoping he can write like Steve Clovis.
Hmm…a quick imdb search is NOT encouraging. His only work listed got a 4.3/10….but of course, there could be many factors in that rating that were out of his control.
How much influence will they allow the author to have? I am hoping that they’ll examine the Harry Potter franchise and realize that sticking with the author’s vision provides the best payback, period!!
That having been said, I cannot WAIT to see Morgaine on screen! The challenging part will be to accurately portray Vanye. Oh, yes. very very challenging, the more I think about it.
I’d think Morgaine would be the harder to get right. She’s so focused on closing the gates. I think the “suits” would be fearful of presenting a woman as she is portrayed in the book.
BTW, as ryanrick, I’ve been a reader since Ivrel came out. 😉
That was one of the best things about Morgaine.
Sigh. If you’re smart, you ASK the author. But an author never has any say in anything unless the producer decides to be smart.
At this point, it’s rather like putting your kid in a toboggan and giving it a shove.
This is not the first option that’s come down the pike: those come and go. This is the first time they’ve put a notice in Variety.
Do you get paid when they option it? Do you get any bucks out of it if it’s made? It irks me big time that writers always seen to get the short end of the stick. They make a film of somebody’s that totally misses the point, rewriting it and “hollywoodizing it” to suit them, they make big bucks and the author gets nothing but poor publicity when somebody decides to read the book and it’s nothing like the film. Your analogy of a kid in a toboggan is a very apt one. Knowing the film industry, they’ll figure out a way to put car chases in it.
Out of curiosity, what would be your dream cast for M & V?– actors of any time period and at any age. Who would you have cast when you were writing it, and would it be different than who you’d cast in it now?
William Goldman managed to get himself as scriptwriter for “the Princess Bride” and succeeded brilliantly.
Orson Scott Card went the rounds with potential producers of “Ender’s Game” for years before finally getting one that had the happy combination of enough money to actually make the move and willingness to accept contract terms intended to prevent them from turning his story into a teen romance and both But then, he’s familiar enough with theater to know something about how differences between print and film work, and actually did a version or two of the screenplay. It remains to be seen how well the translation will work.
Or, if you’ve struck it rich like Stephenie Meyer, you can actually become a co-producer, as she did recently with “the Host”, and also get something recognizably familiar.
But most authors are indeed at the mercy of the money people.
IT’s a small payment up front, more if they actually do the project. Say that I’ve had experience enough with options for such projects that I don’t expect the deal to ever get made. But—this is the first time there’s been any publicity about it.
If I were doing the pair, I don’t know who I’d cast as Morgaine—somebody athletic who can also act, but Vanye (and Roh) would be, maybe, Michael York as he was in the Three Musketeers.
TOboggan, I tell you. But I’m resolved not to get too invested in the ‘movie’ part of it: it’s just out of my hands. I have no prior screenwriting credits, and my chances of getting a word in on production are very small.
Milla Jovanovich as Morgaine? Or, if she’s willing, Sandahl Bergman, but then, it’s been 30 years since she played Valeria in Conan the Barbarian……oh gee, I don’t know, either….
Get a newbie! From the ranks of athletes wouldn’t be a bad choice–they understand having the “everything else is secondary” dedication to one’s goal.
Cool, I can’t wait to collect all of the McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys. Michael York eh? I have always pictured Charles Bronson in The Great Escape when he tries to blend in with the Russian soldiers.
Congratulations!
Do you have the rights to the books? Because one thing’s for sure – if and when the movie gets made, the book sales will really take off.
Truly, I’d be amazed if they followed the books’ story lines, character traits, and the reason behind Morgaine’s mission. What would bother me is that they would focus more on Morgaine and Vanye’s personal relationships and I’m afraid that they’d be just a bit too heavy with those. Not that the relationship isn’t heavy enough in the books, but I’m wondering how many “obligatory” sex scenes they’d put in, which would not add to the story, it would just be tacky in my opinion. I haven’t got objections to sex scenes in movies, per se, but I would much rather it were implied, rather than shown on camera, even if it were done as shadow figures like “Top Gun”.
Of course, I’m with CJ in that it probably won’t go through, but not because she’s against it, but because the screenwriter will probably find that it’s just not going to be feasible to have to “adapt” these books to the screen without ripping away a whole bunch of other things. Will there be reference to Roh? Will we find out why Vanye was outcast and became ilin? Will there be an explanation of where Morgaine had been for so long before she came out of the Gate and met Vanye? Oh, the questions…..I doubt they’ll ever be answered in the movie. I’d wonder if they’d gut the books like they did for “The Earthsea Trilogy”, or in my opinion, both versions of “Dune”.
Oh…. WOW!
I have my fingers and toes crossed. Loved, loved those books.
I’m thinking it would be VERY difficult to get Vanye right. I use these books as an example for people who complain that CJ only writes “weak” men. Which it seems like, because you get the internal dialog of the main character, who happens to be male, generally. Take just about any camp scene with Vanye and Morgaine, and re-write it stripping out any internal dialog, so that you get just what you would see happening, and you will get an idea of what I mean. Without the dialog, Vanye comes across as cool, competent, and quite capable. Which is what a camera would see, which means that we would lose the entire personal growth aspect of the series.
One of my personal amusement moments—I get these, when the people in my books do things ‘on their own’—ie, I’ve stacked up the blocks and get to see how they’ll fall… Vanye does a Conan— he rides through an entire opposing army because he has to, gets away with it, and only afterward has an OMG moment.
Vanye’s ‘inner’ line to the author is, when I plan he’ll do something and he won’t— ‘you didn’t create me stupid…’ and while he gets into messes, he doesn’t go without a reason, which I have to supply. Thisi is the guy who’s survived and hunted on the borders between Nhi and Chya for some time solo, having been tossed out as hardly more than a kid, and being on the wanted list for both clans.
And yet another article: http://variety.com/2013/film/news/fantasy-book-series-the-morgaine-stories-set-for-bigscreen-adaptation-1200334198/
There are SO many ways a screen writer could destroy these stories for me. I tend to agree that an unknown might be better for Morgaine. She is driven. How much emotion does she even show?
“Thee can always leave.” 😉
Whether it is good, bad, or indifferent it is a good thing. I will await the outcome.
I can see that the movie most probably will not be the books but anything to boost sales.
If we did go to screen, it could help, for sure. For an option, you get about 5000, flat, which is nothing to sneeze at. For it going to screen you get, well, enough to seriously dent the house mortgage. And more book sales would definitely help, on all fronts. But that sort of chicken should never be counted in the egg…way, way more get optioned than made. WAY more.
And even so, I confess to a certain misgiving, like sending your kid off across a minefield of problems and an interpretation which you won’t be able to control. The producer is an indie, as I understand, which means he could branch off and do something different than he’s done. Just no telling. Closed Circle is an indie…sorta fits.
The worst case of an author losing control over a book to the movies is, of course, JRR Tolkien. He sold the movie rights to LOTR in 1968 at a time when he was under great financial pressure, and he regretted it ever after.
Fortunately, he didn’t live to see Jackson’s movies. They would have broken his heart.
When Christopher Tolkien denounced the first movie and absolutely refused to have anything to do with it, at first I thought he might be making a mistake. That is, until I actually saw the first movie. Then I fully agreed with him. I’ve never seen the others. It would be too painful.
I realise that I’m in a tiny minority with this view.