Orson Welles Don Quixote and Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote are the two that pop into my head.
Both of Ayn Rand’s mammoth novels: The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have struggled to find a competent film adaptation (not counting Gary Cooper’s attempt at Howard Roark).
The one film that will forever go unseen is Bresson’s lifelong project of the Book of Genesis. What a film that might have been.
Any great modernist novel, the Kill by Emile Zola, an above par rendition of the Great Gatsby, In Search of Lost Time by Proust all come to mind. I don’t want to sound like a snob but these phenomenal and complex pieces of literature would result in heaping mounds of overwrought sentimentality and nostalgia rather then you know three dimensional character and story.
Oh that was harsh but true.
oh and Paradise Lost by Milton
Agreed on the current version of The Fountainhead being lame…. and every fellow Atlas fan makes me promise that if I can, I’ll make a faithful 16 hour version of Atlas Shrugged…. I hope Angelina Jolie follows through with a trilogy as it’s rumored and doesn’t ruin one of my favorite books.
I hadn’t heard “Atlas Shrugged” was gonna be a trilogy instead of one movie…now I have a little more faith in the project.
As long as the Salinger estate survives we will most likely never see “The Catcher in the Rye.” I’m pretty sure they’re adamant about preventing a film adaptation, although I could be wrong.
i don’t get the interest in ayn rand.
but i do enjoy pynchon’s skewering of her.
“How do you spell Prometheus, anybody?”
I also don’t understand the interest in Ayn Rand. And as far as filming Proust-I mean he has 60 pages which consist of what a characters thinking about as he turns over in bed-how the hell would you film that-and why would you want to? I didn’t know Kubrick had wanted to film Perfume but Tom Tykwer did a pretty good job of it. I wouldn’t think A Confederacy of Dunces would be that difficult compared to a lot of other novels. But I never saw Will Ferrell in the role.
Hmmm….that i can think of…
Terrence Malick’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’
Kubrick’s ‘Napoleon’
Welle’s full ‘Magnificent Ambersons’
Fincher’s original vision for ‘Alien 3’
‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay’
I would love to see Malick (or someone equal to the task) tackle ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’
oh and Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune’
Army of Darkness 2/Evil Dead 4
Kubrick’s A.I.
Matt,
Did Malick actually make a catcher and the rye that never got put out? or was this something he had planned on and bailed out? I seem to remember hearing about this a while ago.
I had worked on early development stages of Kav & Clay… and that, just like Confederacy, are films that CAN be filmed, pretty well, too judging how close Chabon/Daldry were planning to do it and how David Gordon Green’s script and reading talent were performing it. Those are examples of failed productions that never made it to shooting. CofD fell due to the family’s estate not agreeing with where the project was going, and Kav & Clay failed to get the proper funding, but is not dead just yet. A lot of time and money went into it and it will be realized again.
And I hate knowing that Kubrick gave A.I. to Spielberg, feeling that it was more of Steven’s kind of story. Kubrick would’ve ended it w/ the boy frozen for eternity (a la The Shining) instead of the extended happy ending reunion that ended up in the film. But thankfully, Stanley’s vision makes an appearance in a lot of the city designing (the open legs for the tunnel entrance.. very reminiscent of the table ladies in A Clockwork Orange.
In response to what Cayley James mentioned, Scott Derrickson is signed to direct Paradise Lost. We all remember him from the just released The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and Hellraiser: Inferno. I don’t know about this…
“One Saliva Bubble”, David Lynch. He promised this movie years ago, and some wag in London even put it in a suggestion box at a rep cinema back in the late 1980s. Still no sign of it. It could have been his magnum opus. He also had a movie called “Ronnie Rocket” in pre-production in the 1980s, but that seemed to go to the wayside. There is a draft of the “One Saliva Bubble” script on-line.
Kubrick’s Napoleon. By far. I would throw every movie released in 2008 in the garbage for that.
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. There is a silent version from 1914, but it hasn’t been attempted since. It would’ve been impossible to do for most of the modern era due to the cold war and McCarthyism, but I think right now would be the perfect time to tackle the issue of the failures of capitalism.
Kubrick’s AI, without Spielberg’s touch. Also, I’m hoping the Magnificent Ambersons is given the same treatment that Touch of Evil was given recently and restored to Welles’ vision.
Jodorowsky’s Son of El Topo
Oh, Ron B
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/(Atlas Shrugged)
I know it’s been rumored for a while…but there is still a chance for a good adaptation.
I’d love to see the Terrence Malick remake of THE LAST MOVIE that exits only in my mind.
Sergio Leone was preparing to shoot LENINGRAD, about the World War II seige, when he died. There is an intriguing description of the planned opening scene on the ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST dvd. Sounds like it would have been suitably epic.
“Aryan Papers” – Stanley Kubrick.
David Lean’s “Nostromo”
HItchcock’s KALEIDOSCOPE/KALEIDOSCOPE FRENZY. I dream about it.
I wish there was a way to merge the DNA of David Lean and David Lynch, and have the resulting director make a film of Ballard’s EMPIRE OF THE SUN that actually managed to capture the hallucinatory power of the novel without letting it drown in Spielbergian Mommy Issues.
De Palma’s “Toyer”, a deliciously wicked film that couldn’t get made.
didnt gilliam announce recently that hes raised the funds to buy don quixote back off of the insurance company that took it off of him when they ran out of money? im sure i didnt imagine this, and that he is indeed looking to finish the film next year.
Last I heard of Gilliam attempting to bid on the film was in 2005. Haven’t found anything recent though.
Kubrick’s “Napoleon”
Jodorowsky’s “Dune”
Matt Honovic
Sorry, but without a Forum Search option, I can’t tell if this has been covered….
Stanley Kubrick has been credited to say, “If it can be thought, or written, it can be filmed,” however even he was, at one point, interested in making the novel Perfume a feature film. There are a few great websites that have rated some of these novels/movies like A Confederacy of Dunces that seem to be in development hell (so so close with the staged reading that David Gordon Green had completed with Will Ferrel); and there are the films that fall apart like Man of La Mancha.
Does anyone else have examples of “unfilmable” novels that would make for an interesting read or wish to share links (or copy/paste sections) that deal with this topic of great films that can’t seem to make it to the big screen?
I mean great films… not just ones in development hell like Ghostbusters 3. My examples are:
The Metamorphosis
On the Road
(Anything else by Phillip K Dick)?