10 Best S/F Films That Never Existed

Jamie mentioned (via a Metafilter discussion) a great article entitled The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films that Never Existed. From the piece: "There was a movie that perfectly captured the Douglas Adams experience, the combination of bitter sarcasm and sharp imagination, the droll British wit and whale-exploding slapstick that infused his novels. And that movie was Shaun of the Dead. That movie was not, unfortunately, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a movie that floated around Hollywood for about 20 years before it finally appeared in theaters as a flat, lifeless, americanized lump that was mostly hated by people who liked the book and loathed by people who hated the book. "

Comments

huh?

[garrett714]

There was a movie that perfectly captured the Douglas Adams experience, the combination of bitter sarcasm and sharp imagination, the droll British wit and whale-exploding slapstick that infused his novels. And that movie was Shaun of the Dead. That movie was not, unfortunately, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In the words of Cartman's mom:

"Wha wha wha WHAAAAT?"

Anything written by Terry Prattchett

[geobeck]

Not Sci-Fi, but Fantasy (related)...

Terry Prattchett is, hands down, the most interesting, entertaining, literate author writing today. His Discworld series consists of thirty novels, which somehow continue to get better with each sequel. (Of course, that's my opinion; your mileage may vary.)

But any movie based on a Discworld novel would fall even flatter than Hitchhiker did, for the same reason. You cannot put literature on the screen. The introduction to Death's domain in Mort would be reduced to a Burton-esque black-on-black manor and garden; any one of the descriptions of Great A'Tuin would become a laughable spacegoing turtle; L-Space would become a disorganized stack of bookshelves.

I buy every Discworld novel as soon as it is released in paperback, and buy another copy when the first starts falling apart from re-reading it so much. But I hope Prattchett never agrees to let some Hollywood hack--or even a great director--adapt one of his novels for the screen.

On the other hand, if Prattchett were to write an original screenplay, with the intention of having it filmed right from the beginning, that might work.