10 Books I Want to See Adaptations Of

Happy Tuesday, friends! 👋🏻 Yes, I took another unexpected break but this one was due to my annual birthday existential crisis and also not being at home for my birthday (which was on Sunday, by the way). But I am back with some renewed inspiration!

This week’s prompt is actually “Books That Make Me Hungry” but I have serious issues with food and don’t like thinking or talking about food, so I am doing my own thing this week by talking about adaptations.

I like to consider myself to be pretty chill when it comes to adaptations of books because I don’t mind if things are changed or taken out, as long as the characters and the story are mostly the same as the book. You won’t find me in the cinema with a notebook or an imaginary checklist, making a tally of everything that the director got “wrong” because it doesn’t matter that much to me. If that’s your way of seeing it, that’s fine. You do you, but I prefer to chill out about it.

Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld – This book has been at the very top of my adaptation wishlist for such a long time mainly because it is one of my absolute favourite books ever. But I really, really, really want a Studio Ghibli adaptation of this book because I don’t think the world of this book could be done that well in live-action when animation exists. And I wouldn’t want it to be 3D animation because that will eventually age poorly. Traditional 2D animation is definitely the way to go for that one. However, I will have to break every Ghibli fan’s hearts and say that I wouldn’t want this one to be directed by Hayao Miyazaki because he has never made a faithful adaptation. He takes the original source material as a starting block and then does whatever he wants. I’m not usually a stickler for book accuracy, but Leviathan is my favourite of favourites so I have to have it here.

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – This book is one of my favourites of the year so far and I think it would make a great Star Trek style TV series but one that follows a proper story instead of an episodic one. I’m not too knowledgeable of TV writers and directors so I don’t know who would be good to adapt this one (not Netflix because they cancel everything after one season) but I do know that I want Joss Whedon to stay as far away from this as possible. This book is quippy enough as it is, but I feel like Whedon would make it overly quippy and suck out the emotion to make room for more jokes. Plus, he was abusive to Ray Fisher on the set of Justice League so no thank you.

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas – If my memory is correct, I believe that the rights to this book have been sold and there is a movie in the works. But then again, I have an absolutely terrible memory so I may be wrong. But anyway, even though I still haven’t seen the movie of The Hate U Give yet, I would love to see this book be turned into a movie by someone who really has a passion for hip-hop and sees how important music is to the story. Ideally, we would have a Black director for a movie of On the Come Up, but I am not as familiar with Black filmmakers as I should be, and I don’t think Spike Lee would be a good fit for this one at all.

Warcross by Marie Lu – I’m a little stuck on whether this book series would make a better movie series or a TV show. Or maybe even a video game. Imagine if there was a real Warcross video game! But even deciding what kind of game that would be is difficult. Would it be the actual Warcross game in VR, or would it be an RPG style game that has Warcross as a mini-game like how you can play Blitzball in Final Fantasy X? The possibilities are endless with this one.

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer – Would The Lunar Chronicles make a great TV series? Yes. Would it be easy to make? Absolutely not. There are a lot of things going on in this series that would require a lot of special effects or CGI, and because TV has a smaller budget, those don’t always look as good as movie effects. But that’s fine with me because I’m here more for the characters and the story than I would be for special effects.

Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff – I think this book would also make a good anime movie or OVA series but I’m not sure how Studio Ghibli would go about making this book into a movie because it is for adults and most of their work tends to be for all ages (minus Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies I guess). There are a lot of studios out there who do some beautiful animation work and I would love to see this one on screen.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – I’m pretty sure there were news stories here and there about this series being made into a TV series (along with the usual ‘please be good’ tweets that I find annoying) but I haven’t heard anything for a long while now. I would still be excited to see a TV series of this show so my fingers continue to be crossed.

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – It has been a couple of years since I read this book, but I would love to see this one be adapted into a movie by Guillermo Del Toro. Maybe even in Spanish, since this takes place in Mexico City and Del Toro is Mexican himself. The only issue with that is that Del Toro is more Romantic when it comes to monsters and there are pretty clear bad vampires in this book, and I feel like he is someone who doesn’t see monsters as being all bad, which is something that I admire about him, but it doesn’t always work with every adaptation.

A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab – Why can’t I come up with ideas for movies that would be easy to make? I haven’t been reading a lot of contemporary books lately so of course I have SFF on my mind. But anyway. A Darker Shade of Magic would make such a great series of movies or maybe even a TV show, but my mind is going more towards movie because a series like this deserves a big budget. Maybe we could have a trilogy of movies by Peter Jackson? Or the people who made the Narnia movies whose names I don’t know?

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco – I know I just talked about Guillermo Del Toro, but hear me out. The man is a ‘Ripperologist’. He has rooms in his house dedicated to his fascination with the Victorian period. If there were ever a director to make this series into a TV show, it’s him. There aren’t any supernatural elements in these books, but you don’t need ghosts and monsters for something to be Gothic.

talk to me!

What book would want to see on screen the most? Who would you want to make it or star in it?