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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."
I would just love to see a movie about Disc World.. Ever played the game? It's hillarious.
Full Tilt
Is currently being shown (in the U.K.) on BBC1 on Sunday nights, serialised, for anybody who might be interested.
CRIVENS!!!
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
I think Watchmen would make an excellent film. It's a fantastic story (I think one of the best - haven't read Thud though) and it stands alone so a wider audience could easily enjoy it.
Although, I would also like to see a film version of Mort made.
I went to see Terry Pratchett speak at the Oxford Union in December and someone asked him if there were anythought of films in the works. He didn't confirm or deny that he was working on anything just that there was something he didn't want to talk about.
This suggests to me that, like Rowling, he now probably has enough clout to prevent his work being butchered by the studios.
By way of illustrating this point, he tells an amusing story about the first time round the Hollywood block. Someone had optioned "Reaper Man", and was actually putting some money into scriptwriting, preliminary planning, focus groups, and that kind of thing. One evening, he got a phone call from a studio executive. Who began like this: "hi, Terry! Great to talk to you, we here at XXXXX studios really like Reaper Man, and we're looking forward to making it a great movie. However, we'd like to make a few changes. We ran the outline past a focus group in rural Iowa, and they weren't very positive about this 'Death' character. If we just replace him with Tom Cruise ..."
This is how Hollywood typically deals with SF/F fiction properties.
And that's why you didn't see a big-budget production of "Reaper Man" (probably re-titled "Die Hard 4: Reap Hard") during the mid-nineties.
I love his books. I think Small Gods would be great to see. If that made it to screen the religious community would go bonkers!(did I mention I like to instigate) Some of his book would make a great Anime feature too.
"The universe is my dwelling place and my house is my only clothes! Why are you entering into my pants?" - Liu Ling
Because it's a children's story and because the Nac Mac Feegle kick arse!
Personally, I enjoyed 'The Wee Free Men' and 'A Hat Full Of Sky' so I'm hopeful that the translation to the silver screen is faithful to the books.
I'd also love to see a film adaptation of Mort, and there were plans for one at one point. Pratchett commented thusly:
"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."
If WFM is a success, we can only hope they might give Mort another go. And Good Omens, too.
Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets Off On A Technicality --theonion.com
Intended audience, I'm sure. Wee Free Men is written for kids, it's not really supposed to stand against the "real" Discworld books. Presumably the movie is going after the Harry Potter crowd.
And you didn't like the rats book? The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents actually won the Carnegie Medal for best children's book of 2001. I'm surprised it wasn't the one chosen for the movie (rats not photogenic enough?).
I'd much prefer to see a film done about another Pratchett book - Mort.
Everyone I know says that's the best of the Discworld books to start with, as it's the most accessible, and the characters are the most recognisable. Everyone for some reason identifies with Mort as he confronts, literally, death. It's funny, it's clever, and you don't need to be a discworld fan to love it - lets convert some people.
I guess Gilliam bailed out - funding I Imagine.
But wee free men (and maurice and a hat full of sky) would be nice, they are fun offshoots from the discworld series that would lend themselves well to film - for that matter the bromeliad trilogy (truckers, diggers, and thieves) would be great as well. Seems like the main discworld strain would be spottyish - I think that all the guards and the witch books would do well, as well as some of the standalone ones, especially small gods..
I suspect it would have been lost on many of the sophisticated adult readers as it was, if he hadn't had Andre explain it to Agnes a bit before halfway through...
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
"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?'
Agreed that I'd rather have no films than bad ones though, don't bother doing it if you can't be bothered to do it right.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
I wrote a (not very good) review of 'Going Postal' for Slashdot, because it turns out to be about hackers and geeks and the Internet. The goodies are a secret nderground of 'information wants to be #Free' types called "the Smoking GNU". When I got to that point of the book I switched from thinking Pratchett might possibly be making vague allusions to the popular (public) perception of "hackers"; after reading the Smoking GNU bit I realised that he was actually talking about the "private" sense of "hacker". Anyway I got discouraged with the amount of polishing it needed, then started a new job, so it wsa never finished. Anyway, so - check out "Going Postal", it's jolly good, and as with a lot of his recent stuff is a bit more ambitious than 'send up Tolkein-esque fantasy fiction"
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 and attempted to read one other novel by him. Oh, and I read Good Omens (w/Gaiman) and it was OK. GO really bugged me though; it was such a meaty bone, and I feel like they nibbled on it and threw it to the dogs. So much more they could have done; it was a topic that lent itself to humor. Compared to Inferno by Niven and Pourneille, for instance, it was weaksauce.
So here's my question:
If I were to give Pratchett another shot, what books should I pick up? What are his top two? I'm unsure if he writes series, but if so don't provide me with two books in the same series, give me something more broad. (If I like the first book I'll burn through the rest; I'm loyal like that)
I'd really like to fill the void of humorous fiction; I'm assuming I've picked crappy books and that's my issue. I can't believe I'm missing the boat because it's too subtle or too British, but maybe that's the case. Anyway, insights are very welcome.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I'm a member of the "religious community". I attend an independent Baptist church, and teach sunday school. I enjoy preaching Christ's gospel message when I have the opportunity. My wife and I are working on continuing our education so we can follow God's promptings and dedicate our lives to His service in the ministry. In most all ways, I'd end up being classified as Christian fundamentalist and a member of the "religious right".
So - for the record:
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
A lot of his books would make good films, the problem is that compared to the book, they wouldn't look so good...
IMHO the best discworld film would be a new story based on the characters in the books. A film featuring the Watch or the Witches would be nice.
Both Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music were done as animated series a few years back; they're available on DVD now - not at all bad. Judging by the trailer on one of the discs, Reaper Man was seriously considered too.
As others have written, the Discworld is more of a universe than a series. There are 4 major "plot series" in it, though: The Wizards, The Witches, The Watch, and Death
Some books overlap these "series", some don't mention them, and some have small tie-ins. If you want to start with the standalone books, "Small Gods" is a good pick.
For the others, "The Colour of Magic" is good for the Wizards, "Equal Rites" is great for the Witches, "Guards! Guards!" for the Watch, and "Mort" for Death. My personal preference goes to the Death books and the Watch books, so I'd say Mort is a good place to start.
Or... you can just bite the bullet and start from the beginning: "The Colour of Magic"
... in england, and has been for ages.
honestly officer grimes, i've just left me thieves guild card at home!
"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...
There was rumor of another Pratchett movie that started popping up back in 1999. It's now 2006 and still no movie.
"Wee Free Men" is one of his so-called childrens' books. It skews slightly younger while still being deep enough for the adults, it stands alone well even to a total Discworld newbie while still containing enough threads of the Discworld universe to please fans.. if done right this could be a Narnia-level of family fare that doesn't dumb things down too much for everyone else.
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Well, as Pratchett's Discworld series has been getting more predictable, less thought-provoking and generally less entertaining for several years, it's no surprise that the film industry has decided that his time has come. Finally, he's nailed the mediocrity demanded by cinema, bravo Mr P!
Actually, I'll go out on a limb here and say that I think Guards, Guards would actually make the best "first movie" in a Terry Pratchett set. Here's why;
;)
1. The narrative is strong, and although not everyone loves an action movie, Guards Guards is probably the most "action-oriented" of the earlier books. A lot of the others tend to be more cerebral, and later in the series the comedy becomes subtler.
2. Dragons! Come on, how can you go far wrong with Dragons? OK, I'll grant you Dragonheart...
3. Characters. Many of the characters introduced in this book either occur later in the series or are referred to (sometimes obliquely) in later books. GG is where Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler is introduced... adn while he's a minor character here he becomes a major character later.
4. Theres a love story. Movie studios love that stuff...
5. Ankh Morpork. To me, AM was bought to life in GG in ways it hadn't been before. You got to see the REAL city, and not from a distance. Even later books often focused on specific aspects of the city (the university for example), rather than on the city which is itself a character in the books.
Unlike the poster I replied to, I started with The Colour of Magic and just continued reading. I got away from the books for many years but returned to them recently and started reading them all again. So far I'm up as far as Small Gods and I'm working on it... but I definitely see how the narrative of a movie series would benefit from starting with Guards, Guards. While it wasn't my favorite of the series, it was definitely the one I think is most "movie-like" and most likely to appeal to a wide audience.
You're joking, right? Terry Pratchett's been putting out an average of a book a year for maybe 20 years, and continues to do so. Tolkien's entire (salable) ouevre consists of four books that have been on sale continuously for something like 30 years. Sure, those four are insanely great books, but market saturation is by now pretty much complete.
You're only a best-selling author as long as you keep writing things to sell. Stephen King has reportedly stopped writing now. J.K. Rowling reportedly plans to stop after HP #7. If Terry Pratchett keeps turning out books, it is quite likely he'll be the #1 best-selling SF/Fantasy/Horror author in the US in a couple of years.
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