Soooo, who's going to send Peter Jackson a copy of "A Wizard of Earthsea"?

[Bossy Monkey]

First book of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea series. Problematical because it wound up stretching to 5 books with a bridge story between the fourth and fifth. Also the fourth one (Tehanu) is practically unreadable (Great, but unreadable), but if he could stop at the original trilogy it would be neato and might give Harry Potter a little competition at the bookstores.

[brooklynite]

1. An earlier attempt

About 10 years ago, a lawyer left my wife's law firm to go work on this project. Not sure whatever happened to it (nb-she had started out before her law career editing Star Trek books).

[Reader Rabbit]

2. Only in silence: the word

As much as I love UKL's novels, I can't imagine them on the big screen. To me, the strength of her stories is her masterful use of language. I just don't see film capturing that aspect.

Visual storytelling thrives on conflict and spectacle, and a great deal of the conflict in the Earthsea series is internal—no blood and gore, no spectacular battle scenes, etc. The themes are primarily people coming to terms with themselves.

Still, it would be interesting to see someone attempt it.

[Bossy Monkey]

4. Welcome to DU!

Wizard of Earthsea has enough conflict and spectacle for a movie. Tombs of Atuan would be more difficult (spells fighting off invisible forces). I think Farthest Shore could work.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

5. I agree

"The Lathe of Heaven" was made into a PBS drama some years back, and even though it had a very visual premise I prefer reading Ms. LeGuin's work to watching it.

Welcome to DU!

[blindpig]

3. if you love the story, no!

I guess I'm a member of the Noldorian Taliban but I think that Jackson did grave disservice to LOTR. I understand editing and compression to accommodate an inferior art form but some of the "liberties" Jackson took were over the top, elves at Hornburg being the most out of line. Too many more to enumerate unless you'd like me to. It was a good movie, but not a faithful rendition of LOTR. Books rarely are translated into movies well, the only one I can think of is Fear and Loathing, and that because of Mr Depp's brilliant portrayal of the Good Doctor.