Book View Cafe is reporting that Vonda McIntyre’s The Moon and the Sun is being adapted for film, with Pierce Brosnan playing Louis XIV.

The synopsis from Screen Daily:

The fantasy-adventure centres on imagined events during the reign of King Louis XIV as the French leader’s bid for immortality leads him to capture and attempt to steal the life force from a mermaid, to be played by rising Chinese star Fan Bingbing.

Complications arise when the Sun King’s 18-year-old illegitimate daughter Marie-Josephe falls for the mermaid’s keeper and risks everything trying to set him and the mythical creature free.

Sean McNamara (Soul Surfer) will direct The Moon And The Sun. Bill Mechanic will adapt the novel with co-writers Barry Berman, James Schamus and Laura Harrington.

The trailer for Ender’s Game is finally here.

Based on the worldwide bestseller by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game takes place 70 years after a horrific alien war. An unusually gifted child is sent to an advanced military school in space to prepare for a future invasion.

The film starts Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin), Harrison Ford (Colonel Hyrum Graff), Abigail Breslin (Valentine Wiggin) and Ben Kingsley (Mazer Rackham). It opens November 1st.

In the near future, a hostile alien race called the Formics have attacked Earth. If not for the legendary heroics of International Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), all would have been lost. In preparation for the next attack, the highly esteemed Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) and the International Military are training only the best young minds to find the future Mazer.

Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), a shy but strategically brilliant boy, is recruited to join the elite. Arriving at Battle School, Ender quickly and easily masters increasingly difficult challenges and simulations, distinguishing himself and winning respect amongst his peers. Ender is soon ordained by Graff as the military’s next great hope, resulting in his promotion to Command School. Once there, he’s trained by Mazer Rackham himself to lead his fellow soldiers into an epic battle that will determine the future of Earth and save the human race.

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Variety is reporting that C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine fantasy book series has been optioned for film by producer Aaron Magnani. The plan is to launch a possible franchise called The Gates of Morgaine.

Cherryh’s Morgaine Cycle consists of four novels: Gate of Ivrel (1976), Well of Shiuan (1978), Fires of Azeroth (1979), and Exile’s Gate (1988). The series is about a time-traveling heroine named Morgaine and her loyal companion Nhi Vanye i Chya. Described as “sword-and-sorcery meets hard sci-fi”, the epic story chronicles one woman’s mission across time and space to preserve the integrity of the universe.

Screenwriter Peter Arneson has already penned The Gates of Morgaine: Ivrel, the screenplay based on the first novel.

Science fiction fans see so much poor original SciFi emerging from Hollywood that the standard rallying cry has become “Hey! Look to the pages of written science fiction!”

Sometimes Hollywood listens.

The screen rights for Ramez Naam’s science fiction nanotech thriller, Nexus, have been acquired by Paramount Pictures.

Nexus is a near-future thriller about an experimental nano-drug than can link human minds together. Such a powerful technology can be used for good and evil, as the young scientists protagonist learns when he becomes embroiled in international espionage.

For more insight into the ideas behind Nexus, check out Ramez’s guest post on The Science of Nexus and
Brenda Cooper’s interview with the author.

[via Deadline via io9]

Richard Matheson’s 1956 novel The Shrinking Man is no stranger to the big screen. In 1957, Matheson adapted it for the big screen as The Incredible Shrinking Man, a film that starred Grant Williams, Randy Stuart and was directed by Jack Arnold. In was about a man who, exposed to radiation, slowly began to shrink in size — a metaphor for how man’s place in the world was diminishing. In 1981, the story was radically rewritten as an uninspiring topical pro-environment comedy called The Incredible Shrinking Woman which starred Lily Tomlin.

It may hit theaters again.
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Over on the Kirkus Reviews Blog today, I have a post about the three-volume set of graphic novels based on Charlaine Harris’ Grave Sight.

Charlaine Harris is probably best known for her Sookie Stackhouse books, which serve as the foundation for HBO’s popular True Blood television show.  But another fan favorite is the Harper Connelly series (four books) that follow title character Harper Connelly and her stepbrother, Tolliver Lang.  Harper has the power to find the dead and see their last moments, revealing how they died.  She uses that power to eek out a living by sharing the information with the living.

Click here to read more…

In days when big screen adaptations of single novels balloon into a 2- or 3-film series — I’m looking at you Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hobbit — it’s refreshing to see a science fiction adaptation that tells a complete story from beginning to end. Even better when the source material is by one of the field’s most lauded writers.

Variety is reporting that Ted Chiang’s novella, “Story Of Your Life”, is coming to the big screen.

FilmNation Entertainment and Lava Bear Films are partnering to finance the film, which is being written by Eric Heisserer (2011′s The Thing, Final Destination 5) and helmed by commercial director Nic Mathieu. Production begins next year. In the story, a linguist is hired to interpret the language of aliens who orbit the Earth and make first contact through an artifact. Her understanding of the aliens written language bring to her a unique view of her life.

If you haven’t read Ted’s Nebula Award-winning story, “Story Of Your Life” can be found in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others.

REVIEW SUMMARY: A gritty, faithful adaptation of Frank Miller’s seminal graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: An aging and retired Bruce Wayne sees his city spiraling down into crime and fear at the hands of Harvey Dent and a new threat, the Mutant Gang, forcing Bruce to reclaim the mantle of the Batman to bring order and justice back to Gotham.

MY REVIEW
PROS: Excellent animation, acting and storytelling; gritty and dark, channeling the original material well.
CONS: As dark as it is, the PG13 rating means most of the ‘in your face’ violence and themes of the original work have been watered down.
BOTTOM LINE: A fine addition to the growing library of Warner Brother’s Premiere / DC Animation titles.  Well worth your time and money.

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Malinda Lo‘s first novel, Ash, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Huntress, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her young adult science fiction duology, beginning with Adaptation, will be published in September 2012. Visit her website at www.malindalo.com. 

SF Signal had the opportunity to chat with Malinda about her new novel, Adaptation, and is proud to bring that interview to you today.

CHARLES TAN: Hi Malinda, thanks for agreeing to do the interview. Let’s talk about your latest novel, Adaptation. What made you decide to write a science fiction thriller?

MALINDA LO: The idea came to me in a dream! Seriously. I had a dream in which I was in an airport while birds started falling dead from the sky. When I woke up I wrote it down immediately in my writing journal, because I thought that it would make an awesome beginning for a book.

I’ve always had very vivid dreams, some of them totally crazy, but this is the only one that has ever inspired me to write a novel. I had a really strong gut feeling about it, and I’ve come to respect my gut when it comes to writing. I try to do what it tells me.
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Here’s an animated 2007 production of Edwin Abott’s Flatland…
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Joss Whedon is bringing The Avengers to movie theaters everywhere on May 4th.  Not everyone knows who The Avengers are or what they’re all about, so I thought we might take a look at the team before that movie comes out.

The Avengers began in the pages of Marvel comics way back in 1963.  They followed in the footsteps of DC comics who re-launched their team, the Justice League of America, in 1960 (The Brave and the Bold #28). A lot of heroes have been part of the team throughout the years, but the original team had Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye and the Black Panther.  Captain America joined a little later.  Similar to the JLA, the idea was the team would ‘assemble’ whenever there was a threat too big for any one superhero to handle.  Hence, they were ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’.

For the film, they are looking at a team of: Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow, all of whom have been part of the team at one point or another. 

Let’s take a look at each one…

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…but not adapted from the story you might think…

SlashFilm reports (via ScreenDaily) that an Iain M. Banks Culture story is headed for the big screen. That story is the short fiction piece “A Gift from the Culture” in which a female member of the Culture, now re-gendered and living among humans as one of them, is asked to commit an act of terrorism to cover some gambling debts.

It’s a great story (see my review here) and while it may not be based on one of the more widely-known Culture books, I think this will play out well on the screen…not only because of the story itself, but because short fiction seems to be better suited towards a standalone film.

Maybe this will finally be the push I need to finally start diving into the Culture novels…