Animorphs Movie

[Rit]

Hello all,

I'm not much of a contributor to the forums yet I'm a huge Animorphs fan.  I picked up the first book in 1996 as soon as I saw it at a school book fair.  This was the first book that actually captured my attention as a child (9 years old at the time).  The next few book fairs I picked up a few more, out of order, and devoured them.  By the time I was 14 I decided to read the first book again.  After reading it, I began to wonder where the series had gone from that point on.  I started to do research and found that the series had ended in 2001.  I read every single book in the series over the course of a summer.  I rediscovered them in my 20s and decided to do a reread of the entire series.

The series as a whole is absolutely great but a lot of it's problems are due to the marketing of it.  To keep up with the series, they began to hire ghost writers to write the books.  Most of them were poorly written while others were somewhat acceptable.  I think it's a shame that such a great series was rushed due to marketing and deadlines.  I wish KA had been allowed enough time to perfect her series altogether.  Think of an artist who paints a picture and comes to personally frame it in your living room.  Once you see it, you ask if the artist could redo it so that it goes with your couch.  The artist would walk out with his painting and tell you to get a new couch.  I don't blame KA.  It's just the way business works.  I just find it a shame that this series wasn't given that respect.

I was very satisfied with the ending.  I understand that many of you absolutely hated it.  I believe that the ending was perfect considering the themes of the series.  It was a believable outcome and it tugged at us emotionally. 

I would truly like to see this as a movie.  I think that a TV series would be better considering how many books there are.  The Nickelodeon series was atrocious (not a bad attempt for the times though).  At one point, I thought that this would work as an anime but the more I considered it, America just won't get it right.  Japan could probably accomplish this and do it right, but I don't see it happening.  If the rerelease had gone well, we probably would have seen a movie released.  The marketing for the series just wasn't any good, especially for the times.  If you really think about it, it would have been better to make a movie or TV series before marketing the books again.  I also believe that a 90s setting is a crucial part of the series and, in my opinion, nothing should be changed.  I don't think we should even replace them with 16 year olds.  If you really think about it, it would have been better to make a movie or TV series and then rerelease the books at the same time or after. That would have been a gamble but I can assure that the series would have gained a lot of popularity that way. 

Considering all of this, I think we should write a letter attached with a petition to Sony Pictures about making a movie or TV series.  I understand that this has been done many times before without result.  Given that there are so many Animorphs fans, I think that this can still be accomplished.  The letter and petition will need to be done right to convince them that Animorphs is worthy to make a movie or TV series out of.  I assure you that this can be done.  As an adult, already entered into the workforce, one of my main jobs is to get third-party companies to do their jobs (it's amazing what can be done if the right questions are asked).  With the right approach, the same can be done with Sony.  Sony works for us and not the other way around.  I will work tirelessly to have this series adapted.  I would also like to see KA's involvement in the process of the adaptation so that it's done right (of course it is up to her whether or not to become involved).  It would help to get as much support as possible for this.  Think of the series 'Firefly' and the outrage of fans once it was cancelled.  They ended up with the movie 'Serenity'.  I would also like to note that I agree with most of you that Joss Whedon would be perfect for adapting this (not so much Michael Bay, guh).  In fact, I think most independent film makers would have satisfactory results. 

Please reply or contact me via PM to discuss this and offer any suggestions.  This is a group project and I plan to consider everyone's concerns as a whole in this letter.  Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to connecting with all of you as we all share a common interest in the Animorphs series.  There is no doubt in my mind that we can have this done.

-Rit

[NickDaGriff]

I am now imagining Animorphs as an anime and the idea keeps making me giggle like an idiot.  I dunno, it usually turns out funny when Japan attempts Western culture.

Also, I think it would really work better as a medium-budget TV show.  The short, episodic nature of the books really lends itself to being told in weekly one-hour blocks. 

Animorphs probably doesn't have the same kind of following and fandom power as Firefly, but it could still happen.  All us '90s kids are grown up now, and getting into places where we can make this a reality. 

Speaking of Michael Bay, the first problem that really needs to be resolved is the question that hit Transformers so hard because it went unanswered.  Who is the target audience for this?  Transformers suffered because it wasn't sure if it wanted to be a kids movie, or an action movie for people who grew up with it years ago.  As a result, you have a movie with dumb potty humor jokes alongside people getting straight-up massacred by terrifying robots.

So when doing Animorphs, do you keep the brutal violence, blood and gore, and dark psychological themes?  Or do you censor it to an extent for the age group it originally targeted?  (I definitely vote the former.)

[Rit]

That is absolutely the best description of the Transformers movies I've ever come across.  Thank you.

I would like for them to stay as true to the series as possible.  I think that they should concentrate on the core themes of the books.  Each character is unique in their own way.  Jake's leadership.  Rachel's violent nature.  Tobias's human vs hawk conflict.  Marco's comic relief.  Cassie's morality.  I think that there should be a strong focus on these aspects if a movie or TV series were made.  I don't think that they should hold back at all and make it all glossy like Twilight.  They need to pull a Hunger Games on this one.

[cathey]

I've been thinking of this for quite a while and there are some limitations.

First off, there is not "lots of Animorphs fans out there". Animorphs ended in 2001, most people reading it then are already 20-30 yrs old now. Most of the people forgot about it, or just took it as another kids adventure book. The remaining fanbase is really small for a big budget movie. And yes, I do think a big budget movie is necessary to really put Animorphs to life. There's some super heavy CGI out there for the morphs and some convincing Andalites, Hork Bajir, Taxxxon, and all those alien morphs of Visser Three. You really need someone as determined as James Cameron to make a high budget film like this.

Second, Animorphs have 54 books. Most of the books (almost all the ghost written ones) are not worth filming, but even most of the good ones had some over-simplified endings. In an action sci-fi film it's almost required that you put up a grand fight in the end, and the Animorphs series really don't have much of that, lots of the stories end up with them bailing to save their butts. And most stories are too short so they'd have to merge and put lots of effort into rewriting the script.

And then there's the dilemma, do you make it a cheesy teen fantasy movie (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc) or do you go big and make it a big superficial hero action movie (like Avengers, X-men, etc) or do you want to explore the dark sides of Animorphs and make it deep (you'll have to buy Christopher Nolan or David Fincher for this)... It's hard to predict the level of success here, and the budget will be huge so missing would be really devastating

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah, it's pretty much unfilmable as a movie/series of movies.  The budget's one thing, but moreso it's just the tone of the thing.  No studio's going to spend that type of money on something like Animorphs, without forcing the creative team to neuter it and make it more palatable.

Mostly the major hurdle is the 13 year old (at the time of #1) thing.  The books aren't in their ultra-dark stage by then, no, but it's the type of thing that the soccer moms and cultural talking heads frequently get up in arms about.  You can't really have 8th graders fighting some morally-complex & bloody Vietnam-esque guerrilla war and keep a PG-13 rating.  I mean, The Hunger Games seems fairly tame and acceptable given the themes, and that's about as intense as you can get in the blockbuster/studio system if your protagonists are kids.

And, sure, there's the argument "you could just make them highschool seniors" or whatever, personally I'd prefer no movie at all if liberties that substantial were being taken with it.  Would lose so much impact.

[NickDaGriff]

I'm kinda of the opinion that nothing is completely unfilmable.  I know I felt that way about The Hunger Games and Ender's Game (which turned out okay as adaptations go, weirder parts included).  Someone could do it if they were determined.

One change I wouldn't really care about is if they made them high school freshmen, fourteen years old.  Some of the ways they described their school activities, even early in the series, seemed more like high school to me than junior high.  And, Chapman continued to stick around, even after the summer break which would have put them in a new school.  In the end, it's less than one year's difference, and it makes the moral guardians feel slightly less on edge if it's high schoolers doing it.

Personally, I think the biggest obstacle is the size of the fanbase.  It's just not going to get the kind of traction needed to make a movie happen.  Not like Firefly did.

[NothingFromSomething]

Well, even that's apples and oranges.  Serenity was a cheap-as-hell movie ($17 million from memory I think?) as far as big special-effects films.  The amount of people campaigning for Firefly after the show was ditched was still pretty laughably small, they were just very vocal.  And half of that was Joss fighting so hard himself to get it made.  It's not like Universal spent a significant amount of cash or layed out much risk to resurrect it, Serenity was pure fan-pandering (as much as I'm a FF/Serenity geek and I'm glad it got made).

Animorphs is a little different.  To do book #1 with any kind of production values you're still looking at, say, $80-90 million at the least, probably more, higher-end blockbusters are like an average of $150-ish. 

And unless they're ultra-confident they're making that money back, no studio's going to greenlight it.  That means a PG-13 rating (which, sure, you don't want it R anyway, Animorphs has still gotta be viewable by older kids, say 10-11+), and that means playing their game since you're spending a buttload of their money.  Likely means making it much more "good v.s. bad", softening a lot of the terrible decisions the kids have to make, and even simple stuff like "you're showing grizzly bears and tigers fighting with teeth & claws, but no blood's allowed on screen".  You don't want anything gratuitous, no, but you do want to keep that ability to suspend disbelief, it's gotta have a little grit and realism.  Stuff like The Hunger games has such heavy themes, but you don't see any exploration of it on-screen and it all feels really sanitized and safe.  I wouldn't want that for Animorphs.  You'd have to go, like, Terminator 2 in tone, without all the cussing, pretty much.  PG-13, but right up there bordering the line and pushing the limits of that.  It'd have to be a little more visceral than, say, The Avengers or the recent Batman flicks, to keep any sense of it not being laughable.

And that's not gonna fly these days, you'd have the choice of "soften it up", "suffer an R rating and we'll only give you $20 mil to make it, and the kids all have to be approaching 18", or "be satisfied with the books, don't mess with a good thing by trying to force it into a movie series".  You just can't adapt/translate the books as they are and keep any sort of reasonable budget for effects and production, the reality is you'd be playing ball with the executives and getting something palatable, that they're comfortable selling Happy Meals with.

It's been that way since Batman Returns in '92, unfortunately, and even that wasn't dealing with kid protagonists, or close-quarters fighting with tooth & nail.  Animorphs has the whole...genocide & slavery thing going on, to boot.

[NickDaGriff]

Yeah, it's definitely a miracle Serenity happened.  And that's what I'm saying, basically.

Ultimately, I think the best chance this has of happening is an unsanctioned fan film, possibly animated.  They'd just have to stay under the radar for as long as possible until they can get it made.  I was semi-involved with a project on deviantArt a while ago to make an animated film of the Brian Jacques book Mossflower, from the Redwall series.  It started off well, we had storyboards, good voice actors, brilliant artists/animators, a screenplay, and even personal critique and advice on character design from the man Don Bluth himself.  Unfortunately, a little while after Brian Jacques' death, the copyright holders for Redwall found out about the project and sent a cease and desist.  It was pretty sad, but that's what happens.  Fan-made content technically kinda straddles the legal line, which is why I think we need a heavy revision of some of those laws.

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah, there have been a few attempts at stuff like that over the years, Project AM and such.  I think only a couple of comic strip ideas have got off the ground, unfortunately.

[cathey]

Well I do think the Animorphs is a good idea for the big screen. And the concept could easily turn into a deep hero franchise. But it's just too risky for the big studios to throw in the money. The CGI required is pretty much Avatar level. And nobody could really promise that it would sell well. Also, you really have to hire scriptwriters to squeeze KA's books into movies. The plots of the Animorphs books aren't as good as Harry Potter's to automatically quality as scripts.

I don't think the characters will be 13 years old... Actually, I don't even view them as 13 years old when I'm reading them. I think of them as 16 year olds starting off and 18 year olds when the war ended.

[NothingFromSomething]

Well, sure, you're obviously open to visualizing it however you want, but that's not what's on the page.  To me having them start at 16-17-18 really loses such a huge chunk of the impact of how horrible it all is.  Jake as the "boy general" and all, by the time he's only just old enough to enlist in the army as a private he's been through more and seen more than any Navy SEAL or career colonel/general.  You're not really going to be able to delve into those themes in a movie, without pissing off soccer moms to the point they're creating petitions and going on Oprah/Ellen/Katie etc to "have a serious conversation about the effect entertainment's having on the children".

[NickDaGriff]

Well, sure, you're obviously open to visualizing it however you want, but that's not what's on the page.  To me having them start at 16-17-18 really loses such a huge chunk of the impact of how horrible it all is.  Jake as the "boy general" and all, by the time he's only just old enough to enlist in the army as a private he's been through more and seen more than any Navy SEAL or career colonel/general.  You're not really going to be able to delve into those themes in a movie, without pissing off soccer moms to the point they're creating petitions and going on Oprah/Ellen/Katie etc to "have a serious conversation about the effect entertainment's having on the children".

Haven't they already done that, though?  I remember reading that Animorphs was the most controversial kids' book series before Harry Potter.  That didn't really slow it down at all.  Controversy only adds to viewership and popularity, because everyone wants to find out what all the hubbub is about.  In fact, that's probably what contributed in large part to Animorphs' popularity in the first place, just like with Harry Potter.

The thing is, they could just not market it towards kids.  Imagine if Game of Thrones was only about the Stark kids.  It would still be watched by adults, and it probably wouldn't be any more controversial than it already is.

[cathey]

Well, if you're going to sell to kids of late elementaries, your characters need to be 12-ish. Ash Ketchum was 10 years old when he started traveling all over Japan to catch Pokemon and fight some huge battles. Does it make any sense that in any universe parents would agree that their 10 year old children go out there, abandon school, and fight monsters, with no parent guardian? No. If this occupation existed at all, the pokemon trainers would be at least 18 years old when they left home, but how can you sell that to little kids then?

There was never really any reason out there that they had to be 13. The only factor is that they still lived with their parents so they couldn't be college age yet. Oh and Jake's older brother had to be in school as well... So you put that all together, and KA had to go with the age that would profit her series the most, which was the absolute minimum that made fighting possible.

If they do make a movie, the kids can't be 13 year old. I saw the movie Super 8, and the whole time I was thinking why I was even watching it. Okay I guess I'm not a great person, but it happens. Adults can't really relate to kids that haven't even hit puberty.

And Animorphs never really stressed over how horrific it is to have kids fighting in the war. Yeah KA did portray war as cruel and horrible and full of moral conflicts, but it was never really about how kids can't be forced into these roles. It's not that I wanted to see them as 16 year olds. They just seemed more like high schoolers to me. And it just seemed that the only reason they were 13 was that KA wanted her characters to be of an age most attractive to her primary audience. That does matter, you know. That's why Justin Bieber is so popular among young kids. He looks relatable. As the kids grow up they will develop a different sense of what's sexy, but at that age its easy to like teens over adults. But we're all past that now.

Plus, it's easier to find good actors if you just want "young", instead of "haven't hit puberty". You don't come across people with freakish talent at a young age like Natalie Portman everyday, but a 22 year old actor with more experience and better acting could easily pass as 16.

[NothingFromSomething]

Haven't they already done that, though?  I remember reading that Animorphs was the most controversial kids' book series before Harry Potter.  That didn't really slow it down at all.  Controversy only adds to viewership and popularity, because everyone wants to find out what all the hubbub is about.  In fact, that's probably what contributed in large part to Animorphs' popularity in the first place, just like with Harry Potter.

The thing is, they could just not market it towards kids.  Imagine if Game of Thrones was only about the Stark kids.  It would still be watched by adults, and it probably wouldn't be any more controversial than it already is.

Books are seriously different to a visual medium, though.  That scene toward the end of the series, forget the specific book, where Jake comes across the recently-abandoned human host who's dying and begging for a blanket because he's cold, and Jake backs out of the room in tiger morph to just leave him there, slipping on the blood-soaked floor in the process?  You can write that on a page and (somehow, I don't know how they dodged the editors/censors on that) get away with it.  You'd get production notes from the financiers 30 seconds after even suggesting doing that, with a movie.

With Game Of Thrones, I'm not entirely sure of the rating system on cable, but obviously if you take that show and put it on a network or turn it into a movie, that's an R-rating.  Instantly.  It's a little different, you can do that on HBO with a relatively-small, paying audience.  You're not getting something of that nature in a multiplex and allowed for under-18s, though.

Cathey, Super 8 was a stunning movie.  Serious "how dare you?!" moment there.     That's basically exactly what Animorphs should be in terms of the kid's ages and that natural believable character-interaction.  Take that late-70s Spielberg/Amblin tone and transpose it to the 90s, and have the balls to make the war stuff plausible/non-sanitized, and you'd be golden. 

[NothingFromSomething]

Ah, missed this the first time around:

QUOTE:
"And Animorphs never really stressed over how horrific it is to have kids fighting in the war"


Katherine Applegate (and Michael Grant, I guess) strongly disagrees, given the post-series letter/correspondence she wrote.  I do too.  What was Animorphs if not the antithesis of big & bright & fun rock-'em-sock'-'em kid's adventure/superhero series?  There's obviously plenty of levity in the books too, and the initial intent of exploring the animal world in a fun way, but you'd be hard pressed to say that by 3/4 of the way through the series Animorphs hadn't delved into some pretty surprisingly intense & controversial, complicated material, where kids are borderline war criminals, some of the evil alien slugs aren't all that evil, and alien allies decide they might want to commit 6-billion-people genocide on a little blue backwater world.