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Rumors of Pratchett Film
kongjie writes "The BBC reports on the rumored possibility of Terry Pratchett's novel Wee Free Men being made into a Hollywood film, with Raimi attached to it. This would be the first, although in the past his stuff has made the television screen."
CRIVENS!!!
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
Making the Discworld into a film would certainly put LotR to shame just in terms of length. Actually, it would be a much better screenplay too. But let's say they concentrate on one particular aspect; I wonder what it would be? Suppose the screenplay is novel[1], I'd expect it to be based on Ankh-Morpork, but probably with both the City Watch and UU involved somehow. Otherwise it would need to be the whole plot of one of the existing books, but one which is self-contained and also doesn't have too much in the way of explanatory passages. Pyramids would probably be right out, Last Continent would be doable but probably wouldn't make a good film. So I think in these cases they'd probably go right back to the start and make The Colour of Magic, or perhaps Wyrd Sisters.
Out of interest, which game are you referring to? I've played the first two computer games but missed out on Discworld Noir. My overriding memory of playing Discworld computer games is "that doesn't work".
[1]Puns, like Gods, are brought into existence purely by narrative imperative.[2]
[2]As are explanatory footnotes.
He shrugged and told him how much more he'd earned from royalties that month and they first goggled and then shut up!
"A production company was put together and there was US and Scandinavian and European involvement, and I wrote a couple of script drafts which went down well and everything was looking fine and then the US people said "Hey, we've been doing market research in Power Cable, Nebraska, and other centres of culture, and the Death/skeleton bit doesn't work for us, it's a bit of a downer, we have a prarm with it, so lose the skeleton". The rest of the consortium said, did you read the script? The Americans said: sure, we LOVE it, it's GREAT, it's HIGH CONCEPT. Just lose the Death angle, guys. Whereupon, I'm happy to say, they were told to keep on with the medication and come back in a hundred years." - Terry Pratchett. So either things have changed, or the movie will end up being a sequel to Charlie and Chocolate Factory or something.. 'Hey, Wee Free Men? Those are kind of like Ooompah Loompahs, right?'
I really want to get into him. Anyone, anything to be an (in)adequate replacement for Douglas Adams' sensibilities. God I miss that guy.
I've read Kingdom For Sale
IF you want to get into Terry Pratchett, why are you reading books by Terry BROOKS?
"So, what rating are they going to put on the movie, PG-13?"
Er... that would be "Pray to the Gods (all 13 of 'em)", right?
sig? Oh, that sig...
But would you want to be the casting director who had to audition the Nobbs hopefuls???
I really loved the humor in Guards Guards and in Pratchett in general
"- And we'll mark the wounds as self inflicted.
- Self inflicted ?
- Well, they tried to abduct a Werewolf...
- Yes, Is see your point."
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
* fumes angrily at being referred to as part of a sad inbred clique, on SLASHDOT of all places *... but the rest of the point stands. From about Interesting Times onwards things got a little repetitive. Granny Weatherwax in particular got infected by the Son Gokuu Powers Inflation bug... every book she's in, some supernatural menace decides to have a go at Lancre, and she pulls even more witch mojo out of her arse and beats it. I don't think her character has really developed significantly since Lords and Ladies, and the last bit of interest is gone since she finally faced down her Black Aliss side in Carpe Jugulum. She really, really needs to die for the witch stories to go anywhere now. I ATEN'T DEAD isn't funny any more.
But it seems in the last couple of years he's woken up. "Going Postal" is a brilliant piece of work, capturing a clash between the public servant culture, modern business "ethics", and the engineer / hacker ethos. "Thief of Time" runs a close second to this - the description of the spinners going wild is the stuff power plant engineers nightmares are made of, while the whole thing is a nice piss-take / homage to a thousand martial arts movies (Rule One - heh! ;-)
Surprised you didn't mention Night Watch. THAT was incredible. I'd got into the habit of buying Discworld books on release day, reading them once and then shelving them, to be re-examined only occasionally. Night Watch didn't see a shelf for weeks. That was... probably the best fantasy novel I've ever read. Sorry, JRR :)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.