Rice Deep Sixed Her Future Film Opportunities

It's unfortuanate but Anne Rice pretty much ruined her future books to
movies prospects.

- She publically criticized some of the casting choices for IWAV
although she clearly signed away the rights to the film. The movie
already had to deal with other things without bad press from the
author. (i.e. would an audience accept this version of a vampire
story?) Part of book to movie adaptations is the bonus of a built in
audience. Lord Of The Rings knew it would sell tickets, it just didn't
know how many. Plenty of LOTR fanatics are out there. If Tolkien was
alive and panning Mortensen as Aragorn, how good would that look? If
Rice wanted a better movie in her vision, she should have made her own
movie. ( It's been done, Stephen King did Maximum Overdrive himself)
Now what studio is going to want her movies? Face the risk of having
the author go nuts and dish out bad press to your vaunted built in
audience? The same thing happened to Tom Clancy. He said he didn't
like Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan. So Ford heard this and said 'Screw
it, I'll do something else then' It took a long time between Clear and
Present and Sum of All Fears. An actor or director can be problematic.
Their oddness is accepted in movie making. However a writer with
limited screenplay experience probably doesn't rate the latitude of a
Cruise or Spielberg.

- Stephen King gets tons of his books made into movies. Why? Besides
being popular he doesn't get into a public fit if the movies don't
turn out right. And King has far far more reason to be upset at
Hollywood's treatment of his work than Rice ever will. When King signs
the movie rights away, they are gone, he doesn't take digs at the
productions later.

- Queen Of The Damned didn't do well critically or bottom line. There
were rumors that it would go straight to video if not for the
cash-in-now effect of Aaliyah's death. This doesn't bode well for
future movies. Two movies inspired off your books flopped { Exit to
Eden, QOTD) and the other had the author pigeonholed as chronically
problematic.

- The books themselves look hard to adapt. There aren't many action
sequences in her book. Sometimes it's hard to define who the
protagonist and villians are, you just can't make a set of movies
trying to push the Travis Bickle antihero sentiment. The lack of
female protagonists would hurt the movies ( there are no real
male/female dynamics) And the vampires deviate so greatly from other
more successful movies about vampires ( Blade, the new Underworld,
Dracula 2000) It's unfortunate Rice doesn't explore vampires in
science fiction or focus more on the lost humanity angle or even use a
little comedy here or there to bring some levity to some fairly
depressing themes.

theonesixthsense.DeleteThis@yahoo.com (The One Sixth Sense) wrote in message news:<92ca2b00.0307191336.6426f168.DeleteThis@posting.google.com>...
 > It's unfortuanate but Anne Rice pretty much ruined her future books to
 > movies prospects.
 >
 > - She publically criticized some of the casting choices for IWAV
 > although she clearly signed away the rights to the film. The movie
 > already had to deal with other things without bad press from the
 > author. (i.e. would an audience accept this version of a vampire
 > story?) Part of book to movie adaptations is the bonus of a built in
 > audience. Lord Of The Rings knew it would sell tickets, it just didn't
 > know how many. Plenty of LOTR fanatics are out there. If Tolkien was
 > alive and panning Mortensen as Aragorn, how good would that look? If
 > Rice wanted a better movie in her vision, she should have made her own
 > movie.


I agree, I know she is the author but once those rights are gone they
are gone, She should have became a producer, found a director, wrote
the script or have someone else do it and since she is the producer
she will have full control over it and can do it the way she wanted,
but to go all out in public bitching and moaning about what they are
doing just did not look right.




( It's been done, Stephen King did Maximum Overdrive himself)
 > Now what studio is going to want her movies? Face the risk of having
 > the author go nuts and dish out bad press to your vaunted built in
 > audience?


I don't think her bitching ruined it totally, although it helped, but
IWTV was the only good movie made from her books. Exit to Eden was a
nightmare, Feast OF All Saints was terrible altough it was a mini
series (It wasn't as bad as QOTD but it could have been much better)
and QOTD is said to one of the worst movies ever made. This will have
a really bad effect on any future book from her made into a movie,
They will connect those movies to any other Anne Rice movie and
automatically go into it with bad feelings.



- Queen Of The Damned didn't do well critically or bottom line. There
 > were rumors that it would go straight to video if not for the
 > cash-in-now effect of Aaliyah's death. This doesn't bode well for
 > future movies. Two movies inspired off your books flopped { Exit to
 > Eden, QOTD) and the other had the author pigeonholed as chronically
 > problematic.


I think it was her greed that ruined it above all others, The
contract was ending and Rice was eager to get her rights back and sell
it to another company instead of just renewing the contract with the
existing, They (also in greed) thru the movie together to make
deadline to make whatever money they spent on it back.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->