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Books & Hollywood: An Author’s Dream and Nightmare
Before I get into this, let me say that I am an avid lover of Hollywood. Though I’m an author by trade, I was raised on more movies than books. This was largely due to my ADD, but that’s another story for another time. I love movies, and the only industry that gets even half as much of my money is the video game industry. And because of the love I have for you, Hollywood, we need to have a long talk about how you treat authors.
Specifically, you need to adapt our material more faithfully.
Don’t get me wrong; you’ve done great work before. Lord of the Rings and the Twilight Saga are the best book-to-film adaptations I’ve ever seen. With Rings, you took an enormously detailed world and managed to not only capture the richness of the world, but you condensed and streamlined the narrative in such a way that one could (and I would) make the argument that the films are largely better than the books, particularly if
we’re talking about the extended cuts. Even more faithful to the original novels are the Twilight movies. Sure, there wasn’t nearly as much history or detail to the world, but the books themselves were big and seemed to scream “massive cuts incoming!” You stayed truer to the source material with those books than I ever expected. And sadly, there’s a reason for that.
Eragon.
I thought about adding Harry Potter to the list, but though I have many problems with the film series, they are small and the films have remained genuinely faithful to the source material. I can’t say the same for Eragon. Seventy-seven documented changes were made from the book to the film and most of them are significant. Six characters that play important roles in subsequent books were cut out of the film entirely. Still others have their personalities changed significantly, and of the other changes, forty-three of them were made to the plot itself, and many of those changes directly contradict events in later books! Because of this, the film not only bombed at the box office thanks to bad reviews and terrible word of mouth from fans of the book but also made it virtually impossible to adapt Eldest, the second book in the series. Had the movie been truly faithful to the source material, it would have allowed Hollywood to adapt the other novels as well, and most likely create a film series on the level of Lord of the Rings.
As both an author and a lover of film, I would dearly love to see my novel, Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing, brought to life on the silver screen. With its brisk pace, numerous action scenes, and story of both revenge and redemption, I feel like it would be a great candidate for a summer blockbuster. But I know Hollywood’s track record with books, and it’s filled with more Eragons than Twilights.
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Check out Zach's book (available both in print and electronic formats) at his website here:
"When you sacrifice the lives of your wife and children to prevent the world's most powerful clan of assassins from unleashing the Apocalypse, what does that make you? And what do you do when you learn that it was all in vain? For Jin Sakai, that sacrifice turned him into a mere shell of a man, filled only with guilt and hatred. When he learns that it was a sacrifice made in vain, he instantly sets out on a violent one-man war to tear the assassins' clan down around their ears. After all, who better to destroy them than the man who brought them together?
Things soon turn down a darker path as Jin uncovers the disturbing truth behind his family's sacrifice; a truth he was never meant to learn. Undone by the revelation, Jin is consumed by doubt and confusion and very nearly loses his life. It is only later when he meets Leah Lawson, a woman who overcame her own dark past, that his doubt and confusion vanish and he begins to see a path that will not only lead him to his revenge, but to his redemption.
Unfortunately, there is far more going on behind the scenes than Jin realizes. Forces are at play that have been manipulating the course of his life ever since he was born. By setting out on his quest for vengeance, Jin unknowingly cements his destiny as one of the key warriors in the apocalyptic war that’s brewing just beneath the surface."
You can also find him on YouTube.
1 comment:
This series seem kick ass.
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