Big Screen Honor Harrington!

[seawasp]

According to David Weber Himself, contracts are in/on the way to produce an Honor Harrington movie and possibly a series, starting with the first novel On Basilisk Station.

I sure hope that this works out. Modern filmmaking has reached the point that this could be done well, and I'd love to see an HH movie. For a while in the early 2000s (2002 - 2003 mainly) ADV was working on an adaptation of Mutineer's Moon, but that never went anywhere, alas. Hopefully this will not die in Development Hell.

Comments

[melchar.livejournal.com]

That ... could ... be ... awesome!

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

I'm alternately excited and despondent!

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

Yep. That about sums up my thinking too.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Ooh! I would love to see that done up right.

Though with my luck, it'll end up being retitled "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Part 2"...

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

Squee!

Cool

[tamahori]

I've got that mixed joy and dread feeling ... but I've seen adaptations done well before, and they do seem to be getting better at not screwing stuff up over the years.

I'm curious what their take on Nimitz will be.

-- Brett

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I assume Angelina Jolie will NOT be involved?

[gary-jordan.livejournal.com]

...unless she's Baroness Medusa?

[gary-jordan.livejournal.com]

I look over the series as a whole and consider which books lend themselves to movies. On Basilisk Station, yes. Honor of the Queen as a sequel? A lot needs to be trimmed away for the big screen. Short Victorious War? More trimmage than book. Most of the movie would take place at Hancock. All that buildup would be reading messages at meetings (or interrupting meetings) with maybe two breakaway scenes showing Helen Zilwicki's final discussion with Anton and the bridge chatter immediately following it where the battle is off-screen or viewed in bad holoscreens.

After that? Parts of novels. The Honorverse is not directly sized for movies.

[richardboustead.livejournal.com]

I've always thought of the HH series as more suited to a mini-series style of treatment, and A Game Of Thrones showed that the larger epic stories can be told effectively in a TV-series format.

However, if it can be told in a movie format, I will still happily go to see it, and if it's done well, I might even go a few more times. The initial post by DW certainly looks good. Put me down for cautiously optimistic.

My two cents on adaptions in general: To me, it seems that a book, a movie and a game are all different mediums, and content (surprise surprise) is best suited to it's original medium. Don't get me wrong - A Game Of Thrones and Lord Of The Rings are proof that adaptions from one to another can work. Likewise, virtually every game trying to cash in on a movie has been a failure.
Then again, I'm not sure if there has ever been a epic space opera book-to-movie conversion before....

[krmtdfrog.livejournal.com]

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice. here's hoping they don't screw this up

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Negotiations are WAAAAaaaaay too early a stage to get excited.

[meril.livejournal.com]

I have been neglectful in my fannishness; didn't realize that Weber was using his website for anything yet. ^^;

But finally! He's been talking about this project for years!

[lexomatic.livejournal.com]

Well, "sold a movie option" doesn't mean much alone, but the other details in Weber's post (unnamed producer==studio, principals are fans of the books) are encouraging. (Remember, never sell the option at a price so low the studio can afford to sit on it.)

For instance, consider the 30 years of options that have resulted in no final results for the Dragonriders of Pern series. But there's actually encouraging movement in that direction, too, according to Todd McCaffrey and Anne's long-time agent at the recent Dragon*Con. Successful scriptwriter; his wife is a fan; studio is considering three movies, so writer gets to "break" the novels all at once; since the entire series exists, the writer knows which characters to emphasize because they'll important later.

Not coincidentally, the same factors are at play for both Pern and the Honorverse: a fashion for movie series that amortize development costs, mature CGI for the fantastic elements.