The Animorphs movie thread

[NateSean]

with the crazy success of the Veronica Mars kickstarter campaign, I was wondering if it would be possible for us to do something similar, to show we REALLY want a great movie? just an idea...

Veronica Mars was already successful enough as a TV series to have a following of people who were willing to pour their own cash into it.

[NothingFromSomething]

I agree, I just don't think the series would fit into a single movie...

I don't think anyone's saying they want the whole series to be in a single movie, to be fair to the people who want an Animorphs flick.  That'd be ridiculous.

It just seems that there's a window of opportunity for whoever they'd want to cast in the roles.  Say they hire 12 year olds for #1 to maximize their time filming sequels before they get too old.  There's generally a two-and-a-half to three year gap between blockbuster sequels being released.  Even if you did a half dozen or so movies (being ultra optimistic, even that wouldn't happen) Harry Potter style, by the time you get to the final few the kids are approaching 25.  Doesn't work.

Unless they were to film concurrently, LotR/Matrix sequels style, which generally doesn't turn out well, and you'd have to do about a decade pre-planning, have all the scripts ready to go, locations scouted, the whole thing cast for all the movies, etc, before even filming the first frame of #1.

If you want to do this "right", there just isn't really a way to get all the content into live-action movies without taking a chainsaw to the plot and cutting like a mofo.

[QIfry]

Actually I (kheetor84/Heather L Haskett) posted this very same question on Twitter with asking about "If Veronica Mars could get funding for a possible movie, what if we got permission for a kickstarter and get something going?" I would love movie but the more practical would be an animated series. Use the animation studio who animated Avatar: TLA and Legend of Korra and make a short mini-series just to see if it catches. Put it on Nickelodeon because Animorphs has history with them *twitch*

- pic courtesy of Hirac Delest. I was STUNNED to see myself on its Facebook feed. XD

[NothingFromSomething]

Veronica Mars is a little different.  Yeah, it has a cult following, but the movie's going to be cheap to make, probably 15-20 mil max, and overall the fan base is probably larger in the scheme of things.  It's just less work, and less risk, to satisfy more people.

Animorphs is kind of the opposite.  Big financial undertaking, big unknown element on whether doing it faithfully passes the angry-at-the-media-soccer-mom test, and let's face it, if we look at the big picture we're not a giant population of rabid fans.  We're just the leftover 20-somethings nostalgic for something from the 90s.  Not a big incentive, if you're some studio exec or practical filmmaker.

Why do it when there are so many other more-doable, more ultra-modern and appealing to kids in 2013 properties out there?  Less risk and more return on the investment.

And again, if this The Host movie coming out is a tenth as successful as Twilight, that's another kick in the crotch for it.  It's based off the exact same source/inspiration, and while there are obvious differences it's the same basic concept.  If you get a franchise happening with that, Animorphs won't happen anytime soon.

[SuperBlue]

I agree, I just don't think the series would fit into a single movie

That's what sequels are for




I personally don't mind how many things they change or how many books they fuse together. As long as the overall concept is the same and the execution is done well, I wont have a problem with an Ani movie. Think of it like superhero movies. Do those follow the comics to a T? Dear God, no! Are most of them EXTREMELY successful anyway? Hell yeah!

The only time I didn't get bored with movies that followed the books ALMOST exactly, were the Harry Potter movies (well after the first two movies they kinda did their own thing) and Hunger Games. Any other time the movie becomes dull because you already know what's gonna happen. If an Animorphs movie is made, I DO hope that the director takes some liberties and changes some stuff up just to keep us fans wandering what'll happen.

However, there are some people who are NEVER allowed to take liberties with something based on somebody else's work. I'm looking at you, M Night Shaymalan! It's one thing to stray from the source material but when your "creative" decisions end up making the series WORSE, then you need to just go ahead and follow the story how it was originally written.

[Valennia]

I agree, I just don't think the series would fit into a single movie

That's what sequels are for

If they made a whole bunch of sequels, it still wouldn't fit. After all that splicing and plot changing, it still wouldn't work. Say, we condense ten books for each movie giving us a total of about 5-6 movies. Here's what the first one would look like (books 1-10):

Animorphs: The Beginning
5 kids walking home from the mall cut through an abandoned construction site only to find a dying alien who gives them images of the Yeerks and the doom of mankind. Meanwhile Visser 3 shows up, gobbles up Elfangor, the kids then run for their lives. (half an hour to portray this and for character introduction before they all hang out at the mall)
The next day after discovering they can all morph and during the aftershock of this discovery, Jake is concerned about Tom and then Rachel's friend Melissa reveals doubts about her father, leading the Animorphs to doubt and follow Chapman, then find the location of the entrance to the Yeerk Pool, which after getting battle morphs from The Gardens, they try to infiltrate, revealing the horrors within, and Tobias gets permanently trapped in hawk morph. On the other hand they do manage to rescue Ax, who was being held prisoner in the Yeerk Pool (undersea exploration wouldn't fit and would require too much effort). They also discover that Marco's mom is actually Visser 1.
After the failed attempt and barely escaping alive, the Ellimist wants them to reenter the Yeerk Pool to save 2 Hork-Bajir to give Tobias an opportunity to regain his morphing power? Oh yeah, and they get help from Erek the Chee. All while: Jake wants to save his brother, Marco's dad is in depression and Marco is torn that his mom is on the dark side, Cassie is having moral doubts about all this and has slight feelings for Jake, Rachel's parents are divorced and she is using the battles with the Yeerks to release her anger, Tobias is freaking out that he's trapped as a hawk, oh yeah and Ax explodes on Cinnabons.

You get the point.
That's gonna be one crappy 4 hour long movie. All while excluding a whole bunch of awesome plotlines from the books. I'd like to see some other attempts at this too.
The superhero movies are great because there's only one character who they have to develop, whereas the Animorphs are 6. Each character has his/her own story and even with a condensed/changed plot, it's going to be hard to fit into a movie because there's just too much stuff going on.
It would only work if they made a TV series like Heroes, and if the series were to be successful, they could conclude it with an action packed movie. I'd love to see the Animorphs on big screen as much as anyone but it's just not happening.

[NothingFromSomething]

I dunno.  I just feel like since all of the major "plot points" in the series are so spaced out and kind of unrelated, when you start picking and choosing from various books and trying to weave it all into one cohesive story, that's not going to work, ever.

Having all the various sub-adventures as broken up into all the various books really goes a long way to add that sense of this being a prolonged conflict over a couple of years, too, instead of just having 3, 4, 5 or 6 movies picking up with all the major showdowns and just alluding to the other stuff indirectly.

The only way to even make the series work while covering a majority of the necessary stuff would probably be some multi-medium ambitious experiment, like having a movie for each of the characters for all of the "major plot-driving stuff", and an animated series filling in all the between stuff, which you'd have to assume people have seen before the next movie.  It just becomes one big mess that average-non-Animorphs-dweeb-McGee isn't going to want to bother with.  Only the hard-core fans.  And that's not reason enough to do it.

[Alan Fangor]

As others have said, a TV show with various episodes would be better suited to the structure of the books, which are relatvely short and self-contaied, with events clearly separated from each other and narrated in turn by six different characters, that every time give precedence to theri specific features and their personal thoughts.

Anyway, a movie is possible but it would be strongly adaptated. For example, there wouldn't be a single protagonist. And a lot of stuff should be omitted, starting from many endings - happy or not.
It's not easy. For example, the first book : it could be alone a movie. It has all : the beginnig, the introduction of main characters (Animorphs, Visser III, Tom, Chapman, etc.) the discovery of the aliens and of the invasion, the first morphs, the first battle, the escape, and the sad final with Tobias trapped. So, it should be modified to make a continuous adventur with the later books.
It could be a tetralogy, perhpas in this way :

#1 Movie : the events of books 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-12
#2 Movie : the events of books 13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20
#3 Movie : the events of books 21-22-23-25-26-27-29-30-31-33-34-38
#4 Movie : the events of books 40-43-45-46-47-49-50-51-52-53-54

Or something like this. The problems of the kids actors who grow up could be solved making all the movies at the same time (as in The Lord of The Rings). Notwithstading that a huge budget is vital. Then, if the film is succesfull, could be made a series of spin-off based on the Chronicles or Megamorphs. But it's a very ambitious project and maybe it's too risky.

Another possibility is to realize a single film with a running time of 3h and 30' with a fast beginning, many battles and special effects and a spectacular conclusion with the final victory. But it would be very difficult to make and it might upset the spirit of the series.

[NothingFromSomething]

That's what I've always thought, book #1 is basically page-for-page perfect as it is, for a movie.  The problems start from there.  You could do #1 fairly easy, in that very classic 80s-Spielberg vibe. 

From there though, as soon as you make it, you have a window of about 3 years.  For the rest of the series.  Kids age, and quickly, and you don't want to have some college-age kids still trying to pass themselves off as 15 or whatever.

A studio wouldn't greenlight something like Animorphs to shoot a significant amount of movies simultaneously, with no guarantee it'll even make money.

As for the suggestion of cramming the events of that many books into singular movies...  Why?  That's just not going to work well.

[SuperBlue]

An animated TV show would be best for this kind of series. But a movie is still doable IMO. It may not follow the books exactly and cut out/change plot points that we think are important but probably aren't, but that doesn't mean it'll be crap.

[RYTX]

As for the suggestion of cramming the events of that many books into singular movies...  Why?  That's just not going to work well.

I agree, but I'm more curious as to the choice of books for said plots Alan.

Ex. Why leave out 11, but keep 12. Or 9. Or 34. I'm not pushing for the story in 11 to be included in this type of...megafilm, but it's certainly no more inconsequential than 12 was. Is there any reasoning to the ones you did pick?

[SuperBlue]

Imagine how much back-to-back shooting they'd have to do to make sure the actors stay within the 13-16 age range like in the books. And people thought Harry Potter would be tough

[NothingFromSomething]

Blue Boy, the structural stuff is kind of the secondary point of why it won't happen, or at least won't be happen and be faithful to the books.

The major one is just tone.  I mean, while the really intense stuff was sometimes just implied rather than described in the books, I'm still amazed Scholastic let some of that stuff be published in their YA line.

A lot of it's certainly not going to fly in PG-13 endorsement-tie-ins Summer-movie-land.

Like, think about how dark Harry Potter got toward the end.  Still fairly tame compared to some of the Animorphs stuff, no?  Trapping David as a rat and leaving him to die, Jake the is-he-or-isn't-he-a-war-criminal stuff, should Marco have to make the call about killing his mother or shouldn't he, and just in general the *nature* of the action scenes.  Animals fighting in close quarters basically means blood.  So you're either cutting away with editing every time a fight goes down, or you're sanitizing it significantly to sell a Happy Meal or two.  There's not really a middle-ground.

You can show Batman punching guys around like ragdolls and still be safely in PG range, no matter how dark the movie themes may get.  If you're dealing in tigers and bears and Hork-Bajir, though?  Making any of that fall in the suspension-of-disbelief realm, you're at least needing to depict that in a somewhat grounded non-cartoon way.

People'll biatch about it, and more importantly, it won't make it to the stage where they can do that anyway, as the MPAA will put a stop to that real fast, unless the studio's comfortable bumping it up to an R and not making any money.  That won't happen either.

[Alan Fangor]

As for the suggestion of cramming the events of that many books into singular movies...  Why?  That's just not going to work well.

I agree, but I'm more curious as to the choice of books for said plots Alan.

Ex. Why leave out 11, but keep 12. Or 9. Or 34. I'm not pushing for the story in 11 to be included in this type of...megafilm, but it's certainly no more inconsequential than 12 was. Is there any reasoning to the ones you did pick?

Simply those are the books that I consider to be the most useless. But this is questionable. Maybe other books could be excluded, but those are the first that came to my mind. But, I mean, Helmacrons are not necessary, even for  books

[Snakie]

As others have said, a TV show with various episodes would be better suited to the structure of the books, which are relatvely short and self-contaied, with events clearly separated from each other and narrated in turn by six different characters, that every time give precedence to theri specific features and their personal thoughts.

Anyway, a movie is possible but it would be strongly adaptated. For example, there wouldn't be a single protagonist. And a lot of stuff should be omitted, starting from many endings - happy or not.
It's not easy. For example, the first book : it could be alone a movie. It has all : the beginnig, the introduction of main characters (Animorphs, Visser III, Tom, Chapman, etc.) the discovery of the aliens and of the invasion, the first morphs, the first battle, the escape, and the sad final with Tobias trapped. So, it should be modified to make a continuous adventur with the later books.
It could be a tetralogy, perhpas in this way :

#1 Movie : the events of books 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-12
#2 Movie : the events of books 13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20
#3 Movie : the events of books 21-22-23-25-26-27-29-30-31-33-34-38
#4 Movie : the events of books 40-43-45-46-47-49-50-51-52-53-54

Or something like this. The problems of the kids actors who grow up could be solved making all the movies at the same time (as in The Lord of The Rings). Notwithstading that a huge budget is vital. Then, if the film is succesfull, could be made a series of spin-off based on the Chronicles or Megamorphs. But it's a very ambitious project and maybe it's too risky.

Another possibility is to realize a single film with a running time of 3h and 30' with a fast beginning, many battles and special effects and a spectacular conclusion with the final victory. But it would be very difficult to make and it might upset the spirit of the series.

If they were to make the movies I could see a trilogy set over a 3 year period in which the invasion begins and is eventually defeated.  They'd make sure and hit the "highlights" of the war and focus on a handful of important plot points in the series, but many many story threads would have to be ignored entirely.

I think an earlier poster hit the nail on the head though: all that's left is those of us in our 20's who miss one of our favorite childhood series, along with a handful of younger kids who may have gotten interested in the series upon re-release.  This movie would take a ton of money to make properly and it just doesn't have the fanbase behind it to give any notion of an Animorphs movie legs.

And I accept that.