Hey Cameron, thanks for the question,
I saw a storyboard by Alasdair Gray of a planned film of ‘Lanark’ that I thought looked pretty interesting. It benefits though from the fact he wrote the thing in the first place and he even mentioned Terry Gilliam as a potential director which I think would work if anyone gave him a Baron Munchausen budget again.
Otherwise I’m not actually hugely fussed about making books into films. I think recently we’ve made a really poor show of doing that but it’s certainly a good source of adventure movies for teenagers so by all means, make more Young Adult fiction into blockbuster movies.
In a quiet and soundproof room I will admit that it’d be interesting to see either Infinite Jest, Dune, The Dispossessed or any of the Iain Banks ‘Culture’ Novels done as a long and involved, heavy duty series on HBO. I don’t have much hope for them turning out anywhere near as good as the book because I’m coming to an iron clad belief that (excuse the caps) BOOKS AREN’T FILMS but I admit it’d be interesting and like, Game Of Thrones, everybody would go out and start reading the book(s) so yahoo.
It has been my experience in life that no film really needs to be remade anymore and that we would probably benefit from making entirely new films and pressing on rather than endlessly rehashing classics from the 80s/90s badly and cranking out more adaptations of superhero comics. Superhero Movies and Remakes of films I enjoyed as a teenager are probably my two current least favourite genres of movie.
Similarly, although I sometimes crave for sequels (and I’m even a big fan of Alien 3 and 4) I think the trend is that sequels get made for the sake of money and it’s rare that there’s a good one because most screenplays will wrap up a story in one film. You have to you know? That said, I’d take a sequel of DREDD any day. Equally as gritty as the first but maybe with all the weird surreal grossness of the comics or some full on Cronenberg style horror via the Dark Judges. (I’m aware this contradicts my superhero movie stance but indulge me-Judge Dredd comics could be as silly as they were violent.) I’ve also seen shorts over the years that I think would make awesome films or short series, ‘A Gun for George’ starring Garth Marenghi’s Matthew Holness comes to mind.
I’m sorry there’s a lot of spoil sport answers in this reply but I saw a really bad adaptation of a book recently (End of the Tour) and had a few discussions about books and films and this is my mindset right now.
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