Movie Challenge - $300 Million USD = A new Epic franchise.

[Brown Jenkin]

I would like to see A Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven. It gives space ships, space battles, and cool aliens.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The new epic franchise?

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, baby. Epic fantasy buddy movie with comedy and a touch of the sinister. Done right, it could be the James Bond franchise of fantasy.

You'd probably want to stick to use "Swords Agsinst" in all the titles, as i don't think the name "Fafhrd" is really movie gold.

That would make a better HBO series.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Ill Met in Lankhmar? I'd be there on opening night.

A strong feature of such a movie series is that it only features two main stars and not many recurring characters (a few, but not many).

The problem, however, is that the short story format has lost its resonance with modern readers. So much so that these characters have slipped off of the radar screen for most people.

Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings had the strength of being a widely known property. Fritz Lieber? I think you'd probably get a collective "huh?" from those you would be trying to pitch it to.

If you are going to license a property for huge Hollywood treatment, the argument would be that your license should pre-sell the audience on the film. I don't think Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser do that in the same way that, say, Conan does.

 

[Dragonblade]

Wheel of Time would be the best option for an "epic" series. A lot of the other stuff is too niche, too dark, or too adult. Wheel of Time with its characters, epic plot and over the top sword duels and magic system would be the best.

It would be tough to do in movie format though without making like 5 three hour films. Although one advantage of the movie format is you could cut out a lot of the slow parts and really condense things to the core elements like the LotR movies did.

You need a director and a producer who really take the material seriously though and give it the same operatic treatment that Peter Jackson gave LotR.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Actually - the Belgariad is not a bad candidate. A tolerable cross between a Harry Potter coming of Age Story and epic quest LotR. You might make be able to sell that one.

(And no massive Battle of the Pellinor fields in there as I recall).

There's the Battle of Vo Mimbre, with the duel between Brand and Kal Torak, if you film any of the back story - I suppose that would be the equivalent of the Final Alliance scenes with the fight between Isildur and Pointy-Helmet-Man in the LotR films. Including the Legendary Charge of the Mimbrate Knights.

And of course, in Enchanter's End Game, you have the Battle of Thull Mardu, which once again includes the armies of an entire continent clashing.

-Hyp.

 

[DMH]

3 different Cthulhu mythos stories- At the Mountains of Madness, The Colour out of Space and The Mound. The first and third have alien cities to explore and the second can be full of gore for that crowd.

 

[GlassJaw]

Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings had the strength of being a widely known property. Fritz Lieber? I think you'd probably get a collective "huh?" from those you would be trying to pitch it to.

I think you'd get that same "huh" from 95% of the ideas mentioned in this thread.

The key for "selling" a huge epic franchise that will cost epic amounts of money to make is recognition. I'm sure that everyone who saw the LotR movies hadn't necessarily read the books but I'm confident that the phrase "Lord of the Rings" was fairly recognizable by the masses.

 

[kingpaul]

HH is too long. But David Weber's Dahak series would work quite well for something like this.

I've only read Weber's HH work (main series and some of the supplementals). Not read any of his other works...yet.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Honor Harrington (ok, so its probably more than 3 movies because of the number of books in the main series).

Complete Honor junky here, but I would do just about anything for even a single GOOD movie of On Basilisk Station. Not sell my soul of course, but definitely I'd join your ethnic cleansing of the week for a guarantee.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

The Warhammer universe has bundles of options.

Honestly I think Warriors of Ultramar could be turned into a truly kick ass SF-action movie. If done well by someone who loves the setting (you know like PJ is a fan of LoTR) it could strike like the one that killed the dinosaurs. But there was an entire thread about that a while ago, I know since I started it.

Thing is WH40K is like D&D in that you don't make THE WH MOVIE, you make a movie set in the WH setting. Which I'm not sure you could even get across to movie executives.