Warner Brothers have optioned the film rights to Tad Williams' Otherland sequence of SF novels. John Scott III is writing the script (he's also adapting Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel for 20th Century Fox).
From the sound of the press release, the film producers are not planning a faithful adaptation, but will instead compress the 3,300-page story (in paperback) into a single two-hour movie. Expect about 5% of the plot from the books to end up on the screen.
An odd choice, it has to be said. Given Otherland's episodic nature, a 3-4 season TV adaptation is a much more logical way of adapting the series. Whilst the film may be entertaining, it will certainly not be a faithful adaptation of the books.
In the meantime, a free-to-play Otherland MMORPG will be released later this year by DTP Entertainment.
This was a great series, unfortunate if they are only making a 2 hour movie out of it. It almost never turns out good when they do stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteThat's such sad news. I've always day dreamed about doing a faithful film adaptation, or tv series. It would be so amazing. Hopefully the film could set off enough interest in the series that someone actually does a faithful version.
ReplyDeleteOtherland, much like Alice through the looking glass, does get very repetitive after a while. The esscence of the film could be done in 2 hours easily- amnesiac man finds out the world he's in is artificial reality, falls for an angel who's dead and gets chased by the Other.
ReplyDelete(think that's the gist, haven't re-read it since the final volume came out in hardback!)
Another flop??
ReplyDeleteHollywood ruins almost everything they touch :-(
ReplyDelete