"What (fiction) book(s) or series of books deserve... " Topic

A multiple movie (2+) presentation on the movie screen?

For me, Fantasy (LOTR) has been done. Nothing Science Fiction out there seems worthy of 2 or more movies to tell the story.

Just about all the David Webber and John Ringo multi-volume series would stand up to the multi-movie treatment. Weber's 'Honour Harrington' has become a colossus, but the shorter series such as 'The March Upcountry', 'Legacy of the Aldenata' or the 'Assiti Shards' are shorter and currently closed.

Ringo's current Zombie series is another, but it seems to have taken on its own life and is likely to have both mainstream novels and FanFic anthologies in future.

Iain M Banks work are probably ripe for the plucking but I do hope they never make a Culture movie or series. There is no way they would get it right.

Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles.
Larry Corriea's Monster Hunter International series.

Stephen Becker's "The Chinese Bandit".

I don't know where you'd even start with Ian Banks, although some of his novels have translated very well into TV adaptations, the sci fi is quite complex and multi-layered.

It would probably end up like 'Dune'.

Simon Scarrows Cato & Macro series would make a good TV show, one might think they'd been written with just that in mind….

You could take any John Le Carre book and make it into a brilliant film, as has been done so many times. The one about South Ossetia (can't recall the title) hasn't been done yet.

Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series. A good German cop who gets caught up in the politics of the 30s thru the 50s.

And why not the Flashman series?

Yes, there was the disappointing 1970 film with Malcolm McDowell, but that failure COULDN'T have been the fault of the original character or premise of the series.

A properly done (I know--the definition of that is probably impossible to set) film could be sexy, witty, and as full of action as anything.

But maybe the works of GM Frazier are too hip for the modern audience…?

TVAG

I think some of Jerry Pournelle's Falkenberg's Legion series (especially Go Tell the Spartans) would make some very action-y movies.

Or the War World / Codominium series, though those were a lot of short stories.

I would like to see David Drake's "Hammers Slammers" on the big screen.
"Rolling Hot", "Paying the Piper" and "Caught in the Crossfire" are all stand alone novels that would be good choices.

Tom D

I'd like to see Vernor Vinge's Peace War books turned into a movie series. I think they are the right scope for movies, and the VFX budget wouldn't be insane.

I would love to see Perdido Street Station an The Scar by China Mieville turned into movies (the best fantasy / horror / sci-fi / mystery books I've read since I was a kid), but you would need a proper director who really "got it" and about a jillion dollars for VFX to do them right. Maybe Guillermo Del Toro?

"Rolling Hot", "Paying the Piper" and "Caught in the Crossfire" are all stand alone novels that would be good choices.

Agreed.

I'd also like to see John Steakly's "Armor" (i.e. Starship Troopers but with fighting).

Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series and his Arthurian series could make good films.

I would imagine the Arthurian stories would be more popular with the general public.

I would put Honor Harrington out there first. It doesn't have to be an attempt to do the entire series, but it's a strong heroine, with many novels with clear story arcs that would lend themselves to movies. Also, while there is more than one POV in each novel, it's nothing like Martin where there are a dozen plotlines going at once.

Colleen McCullough's "Masters Of Rome" series.

Except I wouldn't do it as theatrical films, but rather as multiple mini-series. HBO is an obvious choice, but the sexy bits aren't so necessary as to exclude AMC.

For theatrical films, I think Lindsey Davis' "Falco" series would translate well to the 2ish hour format.

Doc Smith's Lensman series.

Forester's Hornblower, with an adequate budget.

Sayler's Gordianus the Finder.

Several of Marston's series – Railway Detective, Home Front, Domesday

Pearce's Mamur Zapt and Dead Man series.

And here's the actual answer – A BBC miniseries of the Napoleonic era fantasy Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell:

link

Hammer Slammers would get my vote!

Another vote for Monster Hunter International.

Deserve is a pretty good word to use, as it is the pivot in the phrase "I hope you get what you deserve."

Movies and literature are very different modalities of expression (and, of course, within each modality, there are tons of different sub-modalities…). They both have their strengths in expression, weaknesses, and some overlapping. For example, both are strong ways to convey dialogue. Literature is very good at weaving in internal monologue and third party omniscient view; movies are good at integrating subtlety with non-verbal communication and inflection.

Honestly, I didn't think LOTR in any way deserved a movie. I've seen them and enjoyed them. And while I feel the movies are great works of art in their own right, for me, they represent something different than the Tolkien works.

I think the above comments about Dune and others fall in this line of thinking. I also think the comments about the Honor Harrington series also follow that idea. Weber's series has tons of depth and many things that wouldn't work on the screen. But it is also so broad that there is enough material that is amenable to moviemaking that you could do some parts of it justice, assuming the viewer knew everything else going on around the movie parts.

One of the best things in scifi movies (and other visual media) is what happened to the Star Wars franchise. It has become a series of parallel written and performance pieces that interleave an overarching story but each segment focuses on what its modality can portray best.

I would love to see a series where a movie came out, a month later a book came out that would bridge you to the movie next year with some type of minimal overlap. It would be best if information revealed in each different modality changed the context of what you experienced with the previous modality (text changing the way you look at what happened in the film, and vice-versa).

Carr and Hawthorne's "War World" books would make a great Netflix series. ;-)

The Warded Man series by Peter V Brett.