Written by Tyrone BruinsmaSo we're in the age of adaptations. We finally got a great Dune movie, Marvel and DC movies are better and more abundant and some of our best movies are adaptations. But I feel that the industry is missing out on a LOT of opportunities to make really great films out of untapped materials. I think the most excited I've been for an adaptation in the past few years was Steve Alten's 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror finally getting to be a big budget movie. So for fun, here's a list of games, books, comics etc that I think would be great when brought to the big screen. 10. Kim PossibleOk, so technically Kim Possible has had two animated features and a live action Disney Channel film-but that's not what I'm talking about. Disney basically has their own version of Alias and James Bond rolled into one and hasn't truly taken advantage of it. The characters of Kim and Ron could easily carry a feature film and with villains like Drakken and Shego...that's a license to print money. You can either directly adapt show or age Kim up so it's basically Lara Croft in Mission Impossible. The series has a fun cast with great dynamics and could easily clean house at the box office. Why Disney hasn't given Kim Possible the big budget treatment, I have no idea. Ideal Director: Lexi Alexander (Green Street Hooligans, Punisher: War Zone) 9. PrimevalFor those who aren't familiar with this show: Primeval is a sci-fi British tv series about prehistoric and future monsters coming to our time. It's pretty much if Doctor Who was scaled back and always a monster of the week show. The problem is that every season ends with a big vague cliffhanger and the now final 5th season left everyone completely unresolved. Solution? Make a modestly budgeted film to wrap up the series. Make something like 2018's Annihilation to give fans closure and go out on a last hurrah as opposed to constantly ending a "too be continued" note. Ideal Director: Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) 8. Batman: The Killing JokeSo The Killing Joke has been officially adapted already as a not very good 2016 animated film and partially inspired the $1 Billion juggernaut that was 2019's Joker. But what I want is the purest form of adaptation told in live action on the big screen. Just make the Killing Joke an exploitation style Batman film like a nastier version of The Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon. The animated film tried and failed to "fix" this novel so I feel like just giving into to the inherent edgy, trashy exploitative vibes could be something better than attempting elevation. Cast brand new actors for all the characters, keep the budget relatively modest and commit to making it as is. Don't chicken out half way and try to make it more palatable Warner Brothers. Ideal Director: Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) 7. PreySo Prey is basically Michael Crichton returning to his Andromeda Strain novel with nanomachines instead of alien viruses. It's kind of amazing that nano machines haven't been more of a prominent entity in sci-fi horror. Sure they appeared in Avengers: Infinity War and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but their only major horror role was in the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. The film is pretty much a confined viral outbreak scenario with tiny killer robots as the villains. 20th Century supposedly has the rights, though under Disney: it's unclear if they'll allow those rights to lapse or actually make this film. Ideal Director: Daniel Espinosa (Life, Morbius) 6. Gears of WarA Gears of War film has been in some form of development since the game's massive success in 2006. At one point, Len Wiseman (director of Underworld and the Total Recall remake) was attached when it was back at New Line Cinema. Universal holds the rights at present, but nothing has been heard of since 2017. Gears of War is kind of the perfect series to get a big studio release; it has a big universe of lore you can play with for a classic "shoot the evil bad guys, save the world" premise. And the fact that films like Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Matt Reeves' The Batman have proven to be successful darker mainstream films on top of R Rated mega hits like the Deadpool movies, Joker and John Wicks films show you can do more violent and darker blockbusters. I mean Gears of War is literally a game whose main weapon is a rifle with a chainsaw. So it's unclear if and when we'll get this possible action juggernaut, but Universal prints money with the Minions, Fast and Furious and Jurassic Park franchise so I think they can afford to spend $200 Million on a film adaptation with an action specialist director. Seriously, I hope the eventual movie turns out awesome. Ideal Director: Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, A Cure for Wellness) 5. DeathstrokeSpeaking of Deadpool, it's a shame DC and Warner Brothers haven't been able to make money off the character Deadpool was a parody of. Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke is one of the most distinct looking villains in the DC universe and he's rarely gotten used in audio/visual media. Ron Perlman played the character perfectly in the Teen Titans cartoon, he was memorable in the Arrow TV show and Joe Manganiello absolutely fits the character in the DC movies he cameoed in, but he's probably gonna get recast. What they should do is tell his origin story of a super solider experiment turned mercenary from the comics to properly set up him to arrive in Suicide Squad 3 or something as a fully formed bad guy. His origin story is good enough that you don't need to add in extra universe stuff and would easily turn out to be a solid mid-budget action film. At one point Gareth Evans, the director of the two awesome Raid films was somewhat attached, but never officially. And Deathstroke NEEDS to be a villain, both to differentiate himself from Deadpool more and because he's best in that role. And considering the newer version in the comics is a pedophilic rapist...yeah don't try to redeem him or make him an antihero. He's a straight up bad guy who kicks some ass and is gonna lose to the good guys. Ideal Director: David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) 4. The Great Zoo of ChinaIt's Jurassic Park, but with Dragons. ... What? You don't need more explanation. It's literally the most popular monster movie franchise and premise...but with dragons. Sony either does or did have the rights...and have done nothing. ... How this isn't already on like movie 3 amazes me. Ideal Director: Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Doomsday) 3. The Enigma of Amigara Fault and Slug GirlTo those unfamiliar with his work, Junji Ito is a horror manga creator who makes some of the most disturbing works to be printed on paper. While Amigara Fault and Slug Girl aren't his most dynamic or expansive works-I think they're the best suite to the big screen. I also think the Hanging Balloons would also make an excellent films, but that might be too bleak and nasty. The Enigma of Amigara Fault is a story about people mysteriously compelled to arrive at a place where human shaped holes have appeared and people then enter claiming to be for them. It's a simple, but terrifying story that evokes somewhat similar vibes to the Final Destination films or even 2016's Arrival. You'd need a great writer, director and studio committed to this vision and expanding upon it to feature length. I won't spoil the ending of the manga, but I'm deathly curious to see how it would be handled. Meanwhile Slug Girl is a more harrowing version of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis or David Cronenberg's The Fly where a young girl goes through a horrific body horror transformation involving a slug. Considering body horror is back in fashion with works like Possessor, Crimes of the Future, Mother!, Hereditary and the Suspiria remake-there's room for this in horror cinema. Ideal Director (The Enigma of Amigara Fault): Josh Lobo (I Trapped the Devil) Ideal Director (Slug Girl): Brandon Cronenberg (Possessor) 2. Batman: KnightfallWhile Knightfall saw a partial adaptation in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, I want a full adaptation of the graphic novel. Because I think a proper Batman: Knightfall adaptation should have Bane as the protagonist of the entire story. Son of a criminal, forced to serve a life sentence at birth, beaten and broken into a beast of a man, breaks out and hunts down a visage of his fear in the form of Batman. You want a real simple pitch? 1983's Scarface, but with a buff genius criminal. Dave Bautista apparently wants this role so I don't see why Warner Brothers hasn't tried to get this project underway. It'll likely become an animated feature first, but I want the big epic cinematic incarnation. Ideal Director: S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99) 1. F.E.A.R.A video game action horror series that started in 2005: F.E.A.R. is one of the most underutilized stories in media. A series involving disturbing corporate experiments, psychically controlled soldiers and a little girl named Alma is ripe for a movie adaptation. The games left a lot of the story in the background (the first game using phone call messages to convey a lot of it) while the protagonist went around blasting everything to pieces in slow-motion. While the game itself was influenced by The Matrix and The Ring, I think the films should take a more direct action/horror/corporate conspiracy story. There's enough existing characters, events and lore in this franchise to get a decent new horror series.
Supernatural horror, slow-motion action scenes, corporate intrigue and the room to expand its universe through cinema should not be difficult. Greg Russo, the writer of the new Mortal Kombat film and upcoming System Shock series is supposedly working on an adaptation for the big screen so that's promising Out of all the possible IPs to get a big screen version, F.E.A.R. is the one I'm hoping for the most to be made and be good. Ideal Director: Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Doctor Strange, The Black Phone)
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