Honor Harrington books optioned

Cool. I'm looking forward to big space battles. [Link]

There was quite a bit of discussion on the forum a while back about what goes into a successful movie adaptation of a literary work, and whether or not a literary work can be "successfully" adapted at all. The Lord of the Rings was used as an example, and everyone involved (including me) trotted out the aspects of the Peter Jackson adaptation that didn't work for us. And now, if all goes well, it's going to be Honor's turn, beginning with On Basilisk Station.

I'm not going to lie to you — I feel a certain degree of trepidation. I think that's inevitable, given how many years I've put into creating the books and the characters in them. It's a given, inescapable, that there are going to be changes to the books to bring them to the movie screen and that some of those changes are going to tick off some of Honor's most devoted readers. It can't be any other way, if only because of the size of the books and the sprawling nature of the Honorverse.

At the same time, though, I'm very excited about the discussions we've had so far on this project. There are several things, I think, working in our favor.

(1) The studio involved is headed by people who have actually read the books, who like the characters, whoknow the characters, and who have pulled up blocks of actual dialogue from the books in face-to-face discussions with me to illustrate their understanding of Honor's character and the reason they're excited about the project.

(2) Although the studio is a cutting edge CGI/3-D studio, what they said to me more than once when we were discussing the option is that "All the special effects in the world cannot make a successful movie. Special effects may make a satisfying visual spectacle, but a successful movie requires storyline, and a successful series of movies requires characters. It's the characters and the fully developed background of the Honorverse which have drawn us to this project."

(3) The producer and the studio are the same entity, which is going to preclude or at least hugely reduce the kinds of pissing contests producers and studios can get into.

(4) They have not simply hired me on as a creative consultant, but we've already been in fairly intensive coast-to-coast videoconferences about the characters and the story line, and they are clearly listening to me.

(5) They are thinking in terms not of a single feature film but of a series of films, based not on generated-for-the-movie plots but on the actual storyline of the series. As a result, they have a very strong interest in treating the characters and the storyline with respect.

(6) One of the things they are especially excited about is the opportunity to bring actual fleet combat to the screen. Not a couple of starships dogfighting at visual range, but actual walls of battle engaging one another. Obviously, since they're starting with Basilisk Station, there is going to be the classic single ship duel betweenFearless and Sirus, but that's not all they have in mind. I'm not going to tell you what else they have in mind at this point, but I will say that while I experienced a moment of reservations when they told me the first additional thing they were thinking about, I've since come to the enthusiastic conclusion that it's A Good Idea™, especially from a cinematic perspective, and enthusiastically aided and abetted them in making it work.