Writing is Cake

The ‘Illiad’. The most classical of classics. An epic in every sense of the word. And best of all, no copyright. Nobody owns rights to this thing! Let’s make a movie!
Troy: (some guy named) Homer, David Benioff
I got into Greek myths at an early age. I don’t know [...]

When I organized these movies in my head I thought I was going from the least changed to the most changed in regards to the source material. Now I realize I’m also going in reverse cronological order. The X-Men originated in the sixties, The Lord of the Rings was published in the fifties, [...]

Tolkien gave us a fully realized world of fantasy. A history-that-might-have been with its own long history, languages, and races. He gave us maps with mountains, seas, and countries so we knew just where our heroes were when we read they rode up to Minas Tirith or rowed across the Long Lake. [...]

Last time we talked about the difficulty of adapting the long, intricate storylines of a comic series into a movie. X-Men went on to be a trilogy although if you’re looking for good writing, there’s only two movies.
What if you already had a trilogy though? Wouldn’t that be tailor-made to a movie trilogy? [...]

The book is better than the movie. It’s a common complaint from people who read a lot. It’s often true but you know what? Movies aren’t books. They’re movies. It seems obvious but I think many people just don’t really grasp how different writing a screenplay is from a novel. [...]