Any mainstream movie (read: big budget) based on anything by Lovecraft would work, I particularly like 'Rats in the Walls', though I doubt it could be stretched to movie length, and there is the small matter of the cat's name... But any adaptation of a Lovecraft story would be good. An accurate adaptation of Dracula (Bram Stoker)might be nice as well, and American Gods (Neil Gaiman) would be interesting. Pretty much anything by Tolkien could be made into a movie also.
'All shall love me and despar!'del Toro was going to do an adaptation of Beyond the Mountains of Madness (and I think it would have been epic) but it died in development hell. Peter Jackson bought the rights to the Temeraire series but apparently decided that he'd rather make more movies out of The Hobbit than he should.
edited 27th May '13 5:36:12 PM by tricksterson
Trump delenda estThe Avatars Trilogy- It's similar to Percy Jackson but on a more global scale, with all the world's belief systems included. Like my last post on here, because of the multiracial cast I fear that Hollywood would completely botch the casting and make, say, Channing Tatum play an African weather god or something.
Zender: Not everything Lovecraft wrote is horror... :P Though doesn't one of the forms of Nyarlathotep appear in Dream-Quest in an incidental fashion?
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NOIf they cared to improve upon the books' flaws, The Kingkiller Chronicle would make great movies. Though The Wise Mans Fear would need some serious rewriting with the pacing.
edited 29th May '13 1:33:57 PM by Ninety
Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.I'm not sure about Lovecraft. Film is primarily a visual medium and Lovecraft's work is decidely non-visual. Usually when a protagonist encounters the abomination he'll ramble on about how if he tried to describe the unhuman, cylcopean monstrosity standing before him it would throw him off a cliff and descending into an unending chasm of insanity. Or something. The only film adaption of HPL's that's any good is the Call of Chtulhu that was done as a silent film.
It would be unfilmable, needing hundreds of speaking roles, millions of CGI, be confusing as hell, but I'd love to see a more or less faithful adaptation of Eriksson's Malazan series.
The Broken Empire trilogy, starting with Prince of Thorns, would totally rock. I also think it's doable. The story is very focused on the main character, but there's still an impressive scope to it. Plus, since it takes place in a far-future Earth where things have gone medieval again, it would be so cool to see the flashes of science and technology.
It would take some serious adapting but I think some of his stories could work. It would take a really really good director/cinematographer team though. I'm thinking of how Black Swan had all those weird visual moments that got progressively more extreme as the film went on, but even in the beginning there was blink-and-you'll-miss-it stuff that added to the unease (like the paintings' eyes following the main character). "Rats in the Walls" could make for a great subversion of the typical haunted house film.
edited 8th Oct '13 1:45:54 PM by phoenixflame
Rats in the walls was my favourite of Lovecraft's writing. I'd love to see a movie version of it.
'All shall love me and despar!'My first thought was "The Wheel of Time", but that would actually make a way better TV series...in fact, if they throw out the more useless subplot, a well done TV series might end up way better than the books, which certainly lost their direction towards the end. But for a movie series...the Alanna Series of Tamora Pierce might work, even though those are more children books than epic stories. Nevertheless, they have the ideal structure for a movie series, enough content to grab the viewers but not so much that it gets confusing because too much has to be cut to reach movie length, as well as a proper climax at the end of every book.
Someone actually made a little independent animated film out of the Dream-Quest. I have heard good things about it.
Speaking of the Weird Tales set, Merle Prout's odd little short story "The House of the Worm" would make for an interesting riff on the now-cliché "apocalyptic plague" film.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.I mentioned Dream-Quest at the top of the page.
You know, it could be an anthology film of some of Lovecraft's other stories. Like the Cats of Ulthar, because Ulthar appears in the story, and the one where the guy meets the "Other Gods" (they get referred to as the Outer Gods in the rest of the Mythos not written by Lovecraft), and you could even put the story about how Randolf Carter got to Dreamland in the first place.
Yo, I'd totally love to see The Dresden Files turn into a James Bond-esque long running series. Except a little more faithful to the source material (not like what I hear of the TV show).
A fistful of me.

I found another one. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft. It tones the horror down, but it has so many scenes that would look great on film, and Carter never actually meets anything indescribable. And it has a galley rowing to Dreamland's moon! What's not to like?
Also, the racism and all that is way toned down, as this isn't really a horror story.
Edit: Admittedly, Carter does meet what appears to be The King In Yellow atone point.
edited 26th May '13 12:01:36 PM by Zendervai