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Post by kaichampion on Aug 10, 2006 15:06:13 GMT
Im in the process of writing Peter Jackson a letter to direct Lone Wolf movies - assuming Joe is keen. I think we should all sign a petition and send it to him! Harjinder
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Post by Black Cat on Aug 10, 2006 16:55:58 GMT
Hey, Kaichampion! We already discussed who we would see in a LW movie (and even a GS and FW movie), but I don't think that we said how many movies there would be. Ok, let's start at least with one movie about books 1 & 2 together. They would fit well in a 3-hours movie. After that, if the first movie is a success, we could start thinking about a sequel. Personnaly, I wouldn't make a whole movie about book 3. There's a lot of elements that are missing to make a good movie with it, unless you twist a lot of things (I doubt that you would like to see too many differences between the book and the movie). The plot is not strong enough IMO for a movie, there's not enough big action scenes, and a 2-hours long movie in which a character mainly explores caves is not very attractive for the movie-goers. However, we can't pass under silence the events that took place in that book. So, the second movie would be about book 4. But, at the beginning of it, we could put an action scene featuring the final battle between Lone Wolf and Vonotar in Ikaya (a little bit like the action scene at the beginning of a James Bond movie). After that movie, we could do a third one (again, only if the second movie is a success) featuring book 5. I'm not sure about the Magnakai series... Some books could be good as a movie, but not all of them. And since that each book is the sequel of the other one, it might be hard to make movies about this series. The best solution IMO would be to make a movie about book 10 & 11 together in which you give glimpse of what happened previously and then one about book 12. To know what I mean by the glimpses of the quest of the Lorestones in the movie about books 10 & 11, think of the beginning of first LotR movie. A voice explains the story of the ring while images of the events are shown. We could do the same thing in this LW movie: "My name is Lone Wolf. I've found the book of Magnakai (images of the battle against haakon). It told me of Lorestones (LW studies the book). I found one under a city (final fight against the Dakomyd); another one in a fortress of evil (images of LW escaping Kazan-Oud in fire); the third one in a thick jungle (images of LW finding the temple) and the last one in an underground city (images of LW picking up the Lorestone in the egg-shape chest). Now, I'm about to find the remaining three."In the GM series, the best books that could become movies are 13 and 15. Otherwise, unless you tweak a lot of things, the other books aren't good as standalone movies. My final answer then is that we could do between 5 and 7 movies about LW.
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Post by Zipp on Aug 10, 2006 21:32:10 GMT
I think a lone wolf movie franchise would end up being more like James Bond than Lord of the Rings. Lone Wolf actually has more in common with James Bond than with epic heroes.
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Post by Wolfus on Aug 11, 2006 7:24:46 GMT
Can you imagine dialogues in LW movies...? I can barely... I really want LW movie but I am also afraid of what could it look like... You will hate me but Legends are more suitable for shooting LW movie. And there is also cool Quineffer bathing scene
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Post by nigthhunter on Aug 11, 2006 10:06:22 GMT
I'm going with BC on this one. Each book is not enough to make a movie. We can do a movie on books 1 & 2, a movie on books 4 & 5, a movie on books 9 & 10 and a movie on books 11 & 12. After I don't know. Starting to books 16 to 18, these books are following, no time seperate the plot line. And finally, we can do a last movie with book 19 & 20.
But I wonder if a movie would be so great. There will be too much informations missed by the auditory whos haven't read the books. Good example, the Da Vinci Code. I would prefer to see, instead of a movie(s), a series which each episode will be between 1 to 1½ hour on each book.
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Post by Black Cat on Aug 11, 2006 16:17:28 GMT
Can you imagine dialogues in LW movies...? I can barely... That's why I thought that only some books could be good in movies without changing too much the story. LW makes a lot of interactions in both book 1 & 2 (okay, maybe not a lot in book 1, but since my idea is to make one movie with both books, the part where LW goes to Holmgard will take a very small place in the movie). In book 4, there's the soldiers that follow you in the first part of the book (one of them could become some kind of sidekick for this movie), and then there's D'Val that could follow you up to Maaken. In book 5, there's Banedon that is present in part II, so the movie could focus mainly on the second part of the book. Book 3 wouldn't make a good movie because, like wolfus said, it's hard to imagine the dialogues in this one once LW is in the caverns. Same thing goes for book 7. Book 10 and 11, there might be a way to make LW have a lot of interactions without changing the story too much. I have to agree with Wolfus though: a female character present in every movies will please the producers...
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Post by Zipp on Aug 18, 2006 16:45:40 GMT
Can you imagine dialogues in LW movies...? I can barely... I really want LW movie but I am also afraid of what could it look like... You will hate me but Legends are more suitable for shooting LW movie. And there is also cool Quineffer bathing scene I agree, the legends would make better Lone Wolf epics, though of course it could be changed so that Lone Wolf gets the spotlight again. I still think you could do every book as a stand alone movie if you threw in cheesy dialouge: "My name's Wolf.... Lone Wolf."
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Post by outspaced on Aug 18, 2006 23:30:55 GMT
The Legends would make lousy movies IMHO. Too much drivel centred around Q****** and other non-entities. The idea of consolidating certain gamebooks into one movie (3+4 -> one movie, for example) seems the best way to go for me. Maybe even 1-3 for Movie 1, 4+5 for movie 2. Not that Joe's books lack plot or character, merely that the gamebook genre calls for less plot than general novelisation does; and the Legends novelisation is almost always inferior to the gamebook. Excepting, perhaps, The Lorestone of Varetta.
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Post by Wolfus on Aug 19, 2006 18:59:35 GMT
Believe me, I know what I am talking about. I have bachelor degree from film editing and I made some short movies (not very good, but I did . You HAVE to make some "meanwhile" parts, when Lone Wolf is trvelling on his feet from Cetza to Torgar (it's example, don't tell me about Sebb Jarel!) and Quinefer is really good option to do this. NOONE will look at LW striding 30 miles and avoid to fall asleep. You HAVE to show someone's else action. You cannot simply show words AFTER FEW HOURS and then show LW standing on other place. It will look poor...
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Post by outspaced on Aug 19, 2006 22:52:08 GMT
Yes, obviously. The thing is, adapting a screenplay from a book or books, even gamebooks, requires paring the storyline down to its most basic, uncluttered form, removing everything that doesn't have direct relevance to the plot. Q****** has no relevance to the plot. Thus she should be axed.
Other characters, Rhygar, D'val, Banedon--they need to have their roles increased to emphasize their importance to the story. The way such roles are increased is most easily accomplished by decreasing the importance of other roles, even excising characters entirely and re-apportioning their actions/lines (thus no Glorfindel in Fellowship of the Ring). Yet another reason to ditch the superfluous witch.
Any way you look at it, any potential Lone Wolf films would be far superior without a know-it-all harpy who's so much better at everything than the main hero, thereby making a mockery of the whole notion of the Kai Lords as a warrior élite--some untrained, unskilled farm girl batters a Giak and a Helghast in the first film while the main character gets knocked this way and that by any tiny creature that comes along.
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Post by Zipp on Aug 20, 2006 6:05:37 GMT
No, no, I agree with Wolfus on this one (though not because he took classes in it... a real man needs no excuse for being awesome at something!*). First of all, we all know you hate the Legends like almost no other, Outspaced. Quinifer may have the hatred of many Lone Wolf fans behind her, but if we're honest with ourselves, that's mostly because she stole the spotlight from the real hero.
Now, I don't think she should do THAT in the movie. I think a movie based on the Legends would be a good chance to rewrite the Legends. Remember, they did have good basic plots, and Grant did a good job of filling out sections which consisted of Lone Wolf pretty much travelling. I say, if you want an epic movie, you need to take the Legends, make Lone Wolf the main character again, and get the fans to agree on what he looks like so they can choose some actors.
Either that or put him in a tuxedo and make him a super spy for Sommerlund.
*however, they do need an excuse for being bad at something, and Wolfus seems to be saying he has some bad shorts out there. In that case, College makes an excellent excuse for being bad at something.
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Post by Wolfus on Aug 21, 2006 7:39:37 GMT
Yes! Exactly! I fully agree with Zipp.
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Post by gasghiss on Aug 22, 2006 21:59:58 GMT
I'd really like to see a LW movie, but I'm not very optimistic that it would be done well. I fear they'd turn LW into another one dimensional action hero and strip away everything that made the books great. I'd rather have no movie than see that happen...
I do agree with what Wolfus said about editing, but...
I've never read any of the Legends books (only 2 came the US and the whole idea seemed somewhat sacreligious to me...). so I'm not sure why they (rather than the gamebooks) would need to be used as a basis for the script. Do the Legends books fill in major events between books? Obviously the scriptwriter would need to create a lot more dialogue and develop supporting characters more. But I think there's enough "story" in the gamebooks to make a movie per 2-3 gamebooks.
But of course Quinifer would be in the movies... LW has to have a love interest. Hollywood doesn't produce many action movies w/o some cheesey romantic subplot... Most likely a Han Solo - Princess Leya thing where they hate each other one minute and are jumping each other's bones the next...
Perhaps the DVD could have multiple endings (I know they've done that for some movies in the past) to keep with the interactive feel w/o making it into what would basically be a video game.
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Post by outspaced on Aug 25, 2006 10:53:59 GMT
Phew! Yesterday's over; back to responding.First of all, we all know you hate the Legends like almost no other, Outspaced. So much potential, and so much of it wasted. For one thing, yes. But both she and Alyss were also blatant examples of worship to the great God "Politically Correct". I know I was a precocious child, but I can't believe I was the only one who spotted it way back in 1989/90 (when I would hve been about 11 or 12 years old). These characters also obscured the actual plot, which is what I was saying in my previous post. Chop out all the extraneous matter from the Legends and you've got a good basis for a story in a visual medium (i.e. the gamebooks). When they stuck to the source material and expanded on it, yes, sometimes they did. But the new stuff that was added was usually irrelevant or annoying or both. He already wears a cape--he could also wear his underwear outside his trousers as well. And have a big 'LW' monogrammed onto the chest of his clothes. Gashgiss wrote: Which is why Hollywood can .... off! Lone Wolf is such an interesting character. His priorities are duty to King, country, fallen brethren, and God, though not necessarily in that order--reminiscent of some kind of wu xia hero. He doesn't need a romantic interest at the start of the film series. If I wanted to watch a tedious teen romance I'd subscribe to the Disney Channel. Strangely enough, I don't. By all means introduce a romance element to it later in the series, as long as it isn't overplayed, but the start needs to be quick, snappy, and bloody. It's a war. If your country was invaded by muderous psychopaths, would your first thought be "Hmm, how can I get my end away?"? Or why not be controversial and play up the 'relationship' between Lone Wolf and Banedon? Introduce a 'will they, won't they?' scenario of sexual tension between the two. (I'm not being wholly serious, I just consider it to be superior to utilising the characters of Alyss or the Q. )
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Post by Zipp on Aug 25, 2006 23:39:44 GMT
-reminiscent of some kind of wu xia hero. He doesn't need a romantic interest at the start of the film series. If I wanted to watch a tedious teen romance I'd subscribe to the Disney Channel. Strangely enough, I don't. But a huge component of Xu Xia heroes is their romantic interests, ussually with tragic endings. Actually, that would be really cool. A gay lone wolf would make a lot of sense and the movie could have some value beyond the usually trite Hollywood relationship.
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