This past weekend Where The Wild Things Are topped the box office a fact that has turned it from that “troubled over budget indie movie” to the darling of Hollywood. The suits woke up this morning with their teeth extended just waiting to sink their incisors into the next cash cow kids book. This was inevitable, the same as it was when comic book movies became huge moneymakers. Give it a year or more and watch as a sudden influx of movies based around kid’s books begins to clog up theaters.
What’s great about this gold rush, above the comic book frenzy, is that very few people write or want to write children’s books. Every dork and his brother (including myself) want to write a comic book but it takes a certain kind of person to sit down and create a book just for children. These books are also usually pretty thin and have little plot so if they were to be turned into movies there would need to be a lot of creativity put into it. Comic books have stories and plots already written into them so any hack can hash out a film version. With children’s books it would take a visionary like Spike Jonze to bring them to the screen with any success and that could make for some great movies.
However, as seen with the interpretation of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, Hollywood can also ruin a children’s book. I’d go into the differences between the book and the movie but it would take to long, trust me they’re plentiful and annoying. To try and halt all that I decided to toss my ideas into the ring for 10 Children’s Book That Would Make Great Movies. I’m sure some of you will have your own ideas, which is awesome. For right now here are mine.
10. GO AWAY BIG GREEN MONSTER
This would be an interesting book to bring to life mainly because the original book is so simplistic. The first half of the book basically creates a monster, the kind that kids think live under their bed or in the closet. First the eyes, then the nose and so on until the monster appears in all its glory. At the halfway point the child says “No more” and beings to take each thing away from the monster until it’s gone.
A movie version would be animated in the style of a Pixar movie and run with the theme of how what we think can cloud what’s really there. The main kid in the story can be scared of a monster he hears in his room and when he describes the monster it’s this huge evil thing.
Deciding to be brave the boy enters his closet and goes into a world of little people also terrorized by the monster. In the end when he confronts the monster it’s really this small creature that wants to make friends but doesn’t know how. The boy learns a lesson about imagination versus reality and sleeps peacefully from then on.
09. ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY
This is a live action children’s movie goldmine if pulled off correctly. In the original book Alexander is a normal kid who goes to sleep with gum in his mouth and wakes up with it in his hair. From there on he has a continuously terrible day the whole time saying he’s going to move to Australia. The best part is that the day never gets better; Alexander has to deal with this bad day until the very end.
Taking this basic plot you could ramp up the slapstick and the size of the events to make it almost ridiculous how badly the day is going. The filmmakers would have to make Alexander a good kid not somebody “learning a lesson” so that we root for him the entire time. It would be a tough line to walk because while the film should be funny it shouldn’t become mean spirited. There could also be funny vignettes where Alexander daydreams about how great Australia will be. Dancing on the beach, playing with funny creatures, etc.
There could even be an element of Alexander thinking he’s cursed and trying to find out why. Then the next day he could see some other kid having a bad day and realize he’s not cursed and that all kids have bad days. If the story remains sweet and true to the spirit of the book as well as slapstick funny, you could have a real winner here.
