The Return of Sword & Sorcery Cinema?

[James Heard]

do we always have to dumb everything down for those people?

Yes, because people who've never read Leiber's work have more money than those of us who've read it, and every Hollywood bomb for a S&S movie kicks it for every future S&S movie. Therefore, if people can't "get it" then it doesn't do well and it actively contributes to less movies that aren't bad sequels of bad movies that people DO get. That being said, I don't think that Hollywood would have a significant problem figuring out F&GM because it's a buddy movie and they "get" buddy movies. The problem will be figuring out which of the dozens of short stories mixes well with a movie production, and of course, introducing Fafhrd as someone other than "the big guy".

It's not a hurdle that couldn't be overcome, if people start saying the name they'll ignore weird spellings. It's probably even worth a joke that wasn't in the original books to make the audience feel "smart". I'm thinking Josh Holloway and Vin Diesel for the two best thieves in Newhon would bring in just about any audience as long as Ewe Boll wasn't directing...

 

[jester47]

And then the Robert E. Howard estate sues you.

I know Fafhrd isn't a name that's going to please a lot of Hollywood execs or casual viewers, but do we always have to dumb everything down for those people? In the pitch they should just refer to Fafhrd as "the big guy" and don't let the bigwigs see what his name is until the film's already in the can.

I guess my point was that the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser movie has already been made and that it was called "Conan the Barbarian." The story does not do a very good job of depicting Conan, but it does do a great job of depicting Leiber's characters. Looking at the characters and plot I would believe it if they took a mediocre Fafhrd and Grey Mouser script and got rights to the Conan properties and then changed the names of the characters.

 

[jester47]

Ill Met in Lankhmar combined with Theives House, would be a great opener. Concepts from Cloud of Hate and Claws of the Night would fit well here. A good followup film would be material from Lean Times as an opener to Swords of Lankhmar with modifications to the rats and Ghouls. The Rats get a little too "Redwall" to me, and the ghouls need to be all skeleton or no skeleton.

The rest of the stories 1. don't revolve around Lankhmar, and 2. are hard to put together and I don't think would translate to film too well.

Basicly you could only ever hope to make 3 movies with any consistancy. There are two "Big Stories": Duo vs. Theives Guild, and Duo Vs. Rats. Other trappings needed to make it Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser:

Lankhmar: The city really is the setting
Ningauble
Sheelba
Gods of Lankhmar

A film that used the above elements would probably do better than a direct adaptation of the stories. Though I would use Ill Met and Thieves as a framework for the first film. As a general outline I think it would look best like this:

Elements of Ill Met storyline, Rat reference
Claws of night, (birds going crazy) and cloud of hate elements
Aid sought from (or given by) Wizards
Elements of Thieves story line, (but instead rats control the theives guild and more! The rats are going to take over, Oh My!)
But use major elements of the finale of Swords of Lankhmar.

That would make one very exciting movie.

 

[barsoomcore]

That would make one very exciting movie.

And one very excited barsoomcore.

 

[Klaus]

I don't know, I'd just use the Epic Comics miniseries by Howard Chaykin and Mike Mignola as a template for a series of Fafhrd & Gray Mouser movies.

Issue 1 - Ill Met in Lankhmar
Issue 2 - The Circle Curse/The Howling Tower
Issue 3 - The Price of Pain Ease/Bazzar of the Bizarre
Issue 4 - Lean Times in Lankhmar/When the Sea King's Away

I highly recommend this mini.

 

[nikolai]

I hate to break it to you, but the F&GM film is by far the least likely of the lot. Dark Horse are just working on the treatment (the pitch of the story) and concept art. No film studio has looked at it yet, it's very very early days. So don't get your hopes up too much.

Looks like Elric will be shot in Arizona. http://news.ansible.co.uk/a222.html

Has anyone seen any *recent* low budget S&S (direct-to-video or tv, like D&D2 or Ring of the Nibelungs)? I was hopeful there'd be a lot of this post LotR, but haven't seen any. The cheesier the better.

 

[Ranger REG]

Has anyone seen any *recent* low budget S&S (direct-to-video or tv, like D&D2 or Ring of the Nibelungs)? I was hopeful there'd be a lot of this post LotR, but haven't seen any. The cheesier the better.

Do soft porn count?

 

[James Heard]

Has anyone seen any *recent* low budget S&S (direct-to-video or tv, like D&D2 or Ring of the Nibelungs)? I was hopeful there'd be a lot of this post LotR, but haven't seen any. The cheesier the better.

I started watching Dark Kingdom, but I haven't watched the whole thing yet. The only thing that looked really promising in the first half hour or so was the soft porn bits, and then I realized that I'd recorded it from the scifi channel...and so I was sad

 

[Hypersmurf]

Well, I don't want them to do one movie for Dragonlance. I want three. If that means producing one film at a time -- rather than all three films in a yearlong-span production shooting period -- so be it.

Don't forget, the Turks already filmed the trailers!

Unfortunately, the site is down with bandwidth problems, apparently.

-Hyp.

 

[qstor]

This I don't understand. How is it that this book get to have a film adaptation and not Dragonlance.

To Hollywood: What the HELL?!?!!!

It was a pretty popular kids book. When I worked at Barnes and Noble in 2003 around Christmas it was a pretty hot seller. There was a lot of press cause the author was only like 15(?)

Mike