Top Ten Tuesday: books that should be made into movies

So the wonderful people behind Top Ten Tuesday are taking a 7 WEEK BREAK and I’m like “um, what do I do on Tuesday’s now????” So I’ve just decided to go back through some of their old topics and keep my TTT posts going each week until they’re back with new stuff! (TTT is back on Aug 15!)

This week I’m going to talk about the top books I think should be turned into movies! In no particular order…

Synopsis: No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.

Until now.

As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. ‘I nearly missed you, Doctor August,’ she says. ‘I need to send a message.’

This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

This book as a film would be tricky to do, but with the right director, it could be seriously great. It’s a twisty turny, tense, emotional and witty. A perfect sci-fi thriller flick!

Synopsis: Lincoln is a good boy. At the age of four, he is curious, clever and well behaved. He does as his mum says and knows what the rules are.

‘The rules are different today. The rules are that we hide and do not let the man with the gun find us.’

When an ordinary day at the zoo turns into a nightmare, Joan finds herself trapped with her beloved son. She must summon all her strength, find unexpected courage and protect Lincoln at all costs – even if it means crossing the line between right and wrong; between humanity and animal instinct.

It’s a line none of us would ever normally dream of crossing.

But sometimes the rules are different.

I think this book would make a really great heart-warming but tense movie. I’d love to see this adapted on the big screen!

Synopsis: Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She’s still in the marital home – a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse – but not with John. Instead, she’s with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb.

OK, so this one is more a challenge than something I actually want to see adapted to screen. This would definitely be a Curzon film if it ever did come out!

Synopsis: For his whole life, the boy has lived underground, in a basement with his parents, grandmother, sister, and brother. Before he was born, his family was disfigured by a fire. His sister wears a white mask to cover her burns.

He spends his hours with his cactus, reading his book on insects, or touching the one ray of sunlight that filters in through a crack in the ceiling. Ever since his sister had a baby, everyone’s been acting very strangely. The boy begins to wonder why they never say who the father is, about what happened before his own birth, about why they’re shut away.

A few days ago, some fireflies arrived in the basement. His grandma said, There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light. That light makes the boy want to escape, to know the outside world. Problem is, all the doors are locked. And he doesn’t know how to get out.… 

I rarely talk about this book on my blog but it’s well worth a read! I think this would be such a menacing, creepy film if it ever got made. It’s got such a normal sounding plot for a captive thriller kind of story but it’s ooohhh-so different in many ways!

Synopsis: TWELVE CONTESTANTS

When Zoo agrees to take part in a new reality TV show, In the Dark, she knows that she will be tested to the limits of her endurance. Beating eleven competitors in a series of survival tasks deep in the forest, living on camera at the extremes of her comfort zone, will be the ultimate challenge before she returns home to start a family.

A GAME WITH NO END

As the contestants are overcome by hunger, injury and psychological breakdown, the mind games, tricks and hazards to which Zoo is subjected grow dark beyond belief. This isn’t what she signed up for: the deserted towns and gruesome props, the empty loneliness. Is this a game with no end? And what is happening away from the cameras’ gaze? Discovering the truth will be just the beginning…

AN ALTERED REALITY

Now onto a book I talk about a lot… this dystopian game-show novel would be FANTASTIC on screen!  It would be so exciting to watch, just as it had been so exciting to read!

Synopsis: Adrenaline junkie Simon Newman sneaks onto private land to explore a dangerous cave in Wales with a strange man he’s met online. But Simon gets more than he bargained for when the expedition goes horribly wrong. Simon emerges, the only survivor, after a rainstorm trap the two in the cave. Simon thinks he’s had a lucky escape.

But his video of his near-death experience has just gone viral.

Suddenly Simon finds himself more famous than he could ever have imagined. Now he’s faced with an impossible task: he’s got to defy death once again, and film the entire thing. The whole world will be watching. There’s only on place on earth for him to pit himself against the elements: Mt Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.

But Everest is also one of the deadliest spots on the planet. Two hundred and eighty people have died trying to reach its peak.

And Simon’s luck is about to run out.

If this one was done well it could be an amazing horror movie. I can imagine it all in my head as a movie and it’s just perfect! Agh, I wish I had fund$ lol.

 

Synopsis: “Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

To all of you who have read this novel, there is no denying it would be bloody fantastic as a movie. right?! As long as they did it well, ofc, but that goes for any movie. I can see myself in tears watching this at the cinema.

Synopsis: Most people dismissed the reports on the news. But they became too frequent; they became too real. And soon it was happening to people we knew. Then the Internet died. The televisions and radios went silent. The phones stopped ringing And we couldn’t look outside anymore.

OK, so yes, we’re going with a bit of a horror theme on this list, but imgaine this one. How absolutely horrifying!

Synopsis: You won’t remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key.

That’s absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine?

The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

William Heming’s every pleasure is in his leafy community. He loves and knows every inch of it, feels nurtured by it, and would defend it – perhaps not with his life but if it came to it, with yours…

Ah, yes, a nice slow burning creep-fest. I would love to see this one adapted to film! This one is a slow moving thriller novel, but it’s a seriously great story and I think it would work perfectly as a film!

Synopsis (kind of): Chaos Walking is a young adult science fiction series by the U.S.-born British novelist Patrick Ness. It is set in a dystopian world where all living creatures can hear each other’s thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise.

APPARENTLY THEY’RE MAKING A CHAOS WALKING FILM!!!! AAGGHHHGGHHHGHHHH.

So I realise now that this post only really work if you’ve read the books I’m talking about, because I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone but I want to scream and shout about how good they were at the same time.

But anyway, those were my top ten picks for books that would make great movies!

What do you think about my list this week? Would you like to see any of these as movies too? Or what other books would you love to see on the big screen?