Turning Old Books into New Movies

The movie industry has been rehashing the same old storylines for ages, as if there's nothing new they can do. They seem to be missing the wealth of original ideas held within the pages of older books.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick and tired of seeing the same old story lines rehashed again and again under new titles, and the constant onslaught of poorly-made sequels. It seems Hollywood is only looking at plots written for Hollywood, and they're missing out on a treasure trove of great ideas that are already out there in the world.

There are probably millions, maybe even billions of books that have been published in the US and around the world. Every book contains an idea, and a lot of those ideas could be translated into movies. A lot of books are being turned into movies and TV series these days, but they only seem to be picking from wildly popular books.

The truth is, there are a lot of books out there that no one's ever hear of that would make fantastic movies. I just finished reading "Down on the Farm" by John Stchur, and I know it would make a fantastic horror movie. I'm sure Lion's Gate would take it on if anyone suggested it to them. It even has an ending that's open to a sequel. (The author never wrote one, but I'm sure someone could make one.) And in our sequel-ridden age, that's a big plus.

I've read a great number of books and wondered why they never got made into movies. A good example of a missed gem is Stephen King's "Eyes of the Dragon". I think that it's one of his best books, and yet it was left to collect dust while titles of lesser quality like "The Langoliers" got made into movies. So not only is Hollywood missing out on some great books by unknown authors, they're missing out on good books by famous authors too.

Moviegoers are getting more savvy and more demanding when it comes to what they watch these days. People aren't falling for the trite, overdone bits like they used to. People are looking for something they've never seen before, and there's actually a lot of it out there that's being overlooked. Hollywood might be surprised at the payoff if they took a chance on turning some authors' more unusual stories into movies.

It's too bad there isn't a database out there somewhere so we could input the title and author of books we'd love to see on the big screen, and allow other users to vote, and have Hollywood listen. Imagine if movies ideas were actually chosen by the movie-going public. What we really want to see would probably differ greatly from what Hollywood thinks we want to see.