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'The Scabbed Wings of Abaddon' by Sean Kennedy. (Fantastic book, available free online -- as the author positively refuses to get it officially published.) Some of the action sequences would be awesome on film.
"Hey! Keep your hands off yourself! This is a family game!" - Space Quest. Ph34r it! Ph34r it now!
John Wyndham's novels are ripe for adaptation. They have been so influential, and yet so badly served on film.
"Day of the Triffids", which manages to foretell genetic engineering, is currently being remade by the BBC - but I am not keen on the talk of "re-imagining it for the 21st century"!
"The Midwich Cuckoos", in this age of old before their time children, might be very effective (and in the book the kids, while they can kill with a stare, are just normal children in other respects, which makes them even scarier). The 1960s film is good, but it can stand being remade (and wiping out the memory of the dreadful John Carpenter version).
"The Kraken Wakes" - which is all about alien created global warming and rising sea levels!
"Web" - a really terrifying horror story about spiders with a Hive mentality like ants.
Anne Rice's Queen of The Damned (and consequently, The Vampire Lestat as well) still needs to be done properly. I hope the rumors concerning another adaptation of the Chronicles are true, but leave RDJ out of it. The man cannot be Lestat.
H.P Lovecraft's short story, "Shadow over Innsmouth", would also make a good film. Most of his stories aren't good material for film, but I think that one could work. The 2001 movie 'Dagon' and 1993's Dark Waters were kind of good but they were only loose adaptations, more insipired by several Lovecraft stories than actually based on one of them.
Any of the Lovecraft stories. Stuart Gordon seems to be the Lovecraft connoisseur but his versions of the story still have a tad too much humor mixed in. He's getting better though. Guillermo Del Toro was supposed to adapt In The Mountains Of Madness at some point. Hopefully, that works out.
Also, State of Fear by Michael Chrichton. Totally wacky sci-fi/action about global warming. Hollywood will never make it though as it's blatantly anti-green and compares global warming to eugenics and basically anything racist or Nazi-oriented. Just the same. It's a fun story and a movie would be insane.
Can't believe I forgot to mention this one... Preacher! Probably the only comic book/graphic novel ever made that can hold a candle to Watchmen. Amazing stuff. All it needs is the right filmmakers who are committed enough to bring it to life. Just like Watchmen, the film adaptation's had some trouble with commitment. That and it's subject matter may prevent it from ever seeing the light of day.
Of course it'll have to be The Catcher in the Rye, if only Salinger would just let someone make it already. The guy has let down tons of great directors and producers who could make the thing a very beautiful film.
Remember "Catcher In The Rye" by J.D. Salinger(?)? It was like a mandatory book in the 11th/12th grade. That was an awesome book and I think it would be a great film that most teens would enjoy and could relate to. It's touching, disturbing, exciting and fun.
I hear you. Personally, I would say anything by Ian McEwan, he writes so cinematically. His novel, "Atonement" has already been adapted into an Oscar nominated film. And it's brilliant.
Also, 'When We Were Orphans' by Kazuo Ishiguro. It would be very difficult to adapt and very easy to get wrong. But I think there's great potential there.
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat" - Lily Tomlin
It's a little dated due to 9/11 and the death of Saddam Hussein, (the book was first published in 1997) but in an adaptation, one could make a decent film out of it:
KNIGHT HAWK by Pat O' Donnell
The F-15 Eagle fighter was the U.S. Air Force's most effective weapon in aerial combat. Fast, maneuverable, equipped with cutting-edge technology and the latest military design specs, the F-15 was designed to be virtually unstoppable. But suddenly one has to be stopped at all costs, for the unthinkable has happened--America is being attacked by one of its own super-fighters, being flown by a top U.S. pilot. **** Once you start reading, the two main pilots, both the protagonist and the antogonist--are female pilots. All sorts of tech-thriller action in and around NYC and Washigton DC. "The Bad Girl" is a character who had a rough life in the States and turned into a spy/thief for Hussein's Iraq military
I don't think it's still in print; I could be wrong.
I would also like to see:
THE SELECT by F.Paul Wilson Think 'The Firm' meets medical school.
The only thing that the Arnie movie used from it was the title and the name of the main character. Everything else was original, I fact I have no idea why they bothered buying the rights in the first place.
In fact I am not sure the book can ever be adapted anymore, I will admit now that last year I spent a couple of months trying to write an adaptation. It had lots going for it and could have been decent. I moved locations to London, set in a world similar to Children of Men.
But in the end it fell apart and I gave up, It just will not work with today's technology, even in a Children of Men type of world it was too much of a push to think that society had gone backwards enough to not have mobile phones and Internet and yet still have a thriving TV industry.
The catalyst though was the realisation that it had been adapted before in a way, I think the Will Smith film "Enemy of the State" must of been influenced in some way by this book.
Great book though, would have made an excellent film if someone has bothered to do it in the 80's.
Usher's Passing by Robert McCammon is a sequel to the Fall of the House of Usher by that Edger Allan Poe guy. Set in modern times, it tells about the Usher family, its curse and its sinister secrets for survival. It's an incredible read.
The New Gods is arguably Jack Kirby's greatest comic book work. It's too hard to describe in a few words, but his story of the battle between good and evil on the planet Apokolips is richly detailed and entertaining. While created in the early 1970's, making a movie would be impossible without today's CGI technology.
'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' by Philip K. Dick. Love that book and the visuals in it are fantastic. I attempted an adaptation a while back but it was a bit too ambitious for me at the time but it would certainly make a fantastic, surreal sci-fi film.