Originally Posted by mad_hatter
I’ve never read any of “The Lord Of The Rings” books, but I imagine the films, being so long, are pretty thorough, at least doing the novels justice. Having said that, “The Stand” has more pages than “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Two Towers” combined. Those two films run at over 7.5 hours! “The Stand” would require a very long film to do it justice. Also, “The Stand” was already adapted into a 6 hour series, but I never saw it. I’m sure there’s talk of adapting it again…
The film adaptations of Lord of the Rings, while missing a great deal of scenes, and having a lot of additions, is the best that could have been asked for so far, and it could have been much, much worse. I say worse not that I think the film adaptations are bad, I believe they're great movies and great adaptations of the source material, but if they went with the original plan the producers had of adapting it into one feature length film then it would have been a very bad adaptation indeed, and two films wouldn't have done it justice either. The novels themselves have their chapters split in two and are listed under Book One and Book Two in Fellowship, Book Three and Book Four in Two Towers and Book Five and Book Six in Return of the King.
The Stand mini-series was pretty decent. It was directed by Mick Garris who also directed the mini-series version of The Shining but I think he did a better job on The Stand than The Shining, which isn't a bad adaptation, it's a bit closer to the novel except it too has differences especially a scene at the very end that's not in the book or the Kubrick film. But yeah The Stand had a great cast of actors, and there were a lot of things not included, certain characters were cut and some were combined into one but overall I think it's an admirable adaptation. A three hour feature film is currently in the works. A director named Josh Boone has been hired and they're still working on the screenplay. One of the actors rumoured to be considered for a role is Matthew McConaughey as Randall Flagg, which I think would be a very good piece of casting if he were to accept if an offer was made to him.
Originally Posted by mad_hatter
If you’re wanting to adapt Stephen King, take a look at “Night Shift”. It’s my favourite of his collections. Are you working on this as a “Dollar Baby”?
I have looked into it in the past but currently don't have any plans to pursue writing an adaptation of one of King's "Dollar Babies" but I would definitely take it as a serious endeavour were I to actually to intend the task, that's for sure. I think it's a great idea that he came up with too.
Originally Posted by Adeimantus
Great thread!
I've written three biopics, two of which made it to this year's Nicholl semifinals.
The problem with biopics, as opposed to novel adaptations, is that a person's life almost never follows the beats of classical storytelling. At least with a novel that's worth adapting, one can assume the author has a strong plot-line and story structure. The usual problem with a biopic is that it succumbs to the "This happened, and then this happened, then this happened..." collection of scenes that don't gel into a satisfying thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Thanks, I think it's a topic that has a lot of areas that need to be researched and is ripe for discussion! Congratulations on making it to the semifinals!
That's true because while a person can experience shocking, thrilling, happy, tragic or other kinds of events there's sometimes no rhyme or reason to the timing of such things and life doesn't follow the same structures a film does, so yeah a person's life never follows the beats of classical storytelling as you say.