They already had to cut out a big chunk from the middle of The Martian (which then broke the I’ve got no radio, so no one can give me permission to board, so I’m now the first space pirate joke, which they decided to keep anyway), and Project Hail Mary is a much longer book - it’s about as thick as Dune, which became two movies and still cut loads. Something major will have to change if they’re going to give it an acceptable runtime.
No it isn’t, Hail Mary is 180 pages shorter than Dune
Dune is way more dense than Hail Mary, Weir very clearly writes his books to become movies. Way more dialog, much simpler problems, and clearly defined acts translate much easier to the screen
They’ll obviously have to cut some parts, but having read/seen The Martian I don’t think anything of major importance was lost
I said they’re similar thicknesses because they’re right by each other on my bookshelf and are similar thicknesses. I just looked inside for the page counts, and excluding appendices, maps and diagrams of spacecraft, my copy of Project Hail Mary (the original paperback, starting on page 3 and ending on page 476) is just 55 pages shorter than my copy of Dune (50th anniversary paperback, starting on page 1 and ending on 529). Having 10% fewer pages seems pretty reasonable for about as thick. If yours are different by 180 pages, then you’ve clearly got a different edition of at least one of the books to me with a different font or page size, which is pretty likely given how long Dune’s been in print. Given that I didn’t even mention page count or word count or the complexity of the prose, just thickness, which could have simply been because of thicker paper, I think your response is unreasonably harsh.
Obviously, I don’t disagree that Dune’s a more complicated book, but regardless of that, The Martian is much shorter than either, and to turn it into a film, a lot of detail had to go, and a whole act had to be turned into a montage and condensed to Watney modifies a rover and drives to another site, then takes apart a rocket that’s waiting for him there. I don’t think there’s anything simultaneously as large and expendable in Project Hail Mary, yet they obviously need to cut more.
I used goodreads because different editions are presented differently. It puts Dune at 658 and PHM at 476. If you want to truly go apples to apples the kindle edition of both, which I assume has consistent font/margins/spacing/etc has Dune at 883 and PHM at 482 for a 400 page difference on an eReader. Comparing the task of turning a vacation book into a movie vs adaptating a legendary book into movie (which was so difficult to do, that this is the third attempt and the first commercially successful one) is a false equivalence
I never said that it was the same, just that more would have to be cut than The Martian as the book was much longer, and gave an example of the most similarly wide sci fi novel on my shelf that’s successfully been turned into a movie. You’re the one that made the leap that the thickness of a book is a definitive measure of anything and wanted the comparisons to be apples-to-apples, which it never was as one book’s becoming one movie, whereas the other became two.
If they cut too many of the flashbacks, it gets rid of, or at least erodes, the WTF? Where am I and how did I get here and why? part of the book, which is a pretty major part of it.
That’s a pretty ambitious book to turn into a movie. Hope they don’t go too “Hollywood” on it, and respect the source material.
The Martian was almost entirely internal monologue and they did a faithful job adapting it. It wasn’t as good as the book, but still great.
I can definitely see some difficult moments to adapt on the big screen, but I have faith
They already had to cut out a big chunk from the middle of The Martian (which then broke the I’ve got no radio, so no one can give me permission to board, so I’m now the first space pirate joke, which they decided to keep anyway), and Project Hail Mary is a much longer book - it’s about as thick as Dune, which became two movies and still cut loads. Something major will have to change if they’re going to give it an acceptable runtime.
I said they’re similar thicknesses because they’re right by each other on my bookshelf and are similar thicknesses. I just looked inside for the page counts, and excluding appendices, maps and diagrams of spacecraft, my copy of Project Hail Mary (the original paperback, starting on page 3 and ending on page 476) is just 55 pages shorter than my copy of Dune (50th anniversary paperback, starting on page 1 and ending on 529). Having 10% fewer pages seems pretty reasonable for about as thick. If yours are different by 180 pages, then you’ve clearly got a different edition of at least one of the books to me with a different font or page size, which is pretty likely given how long Dune’s been in print. Given that I didn’t even mention page count or word count or the complexity of the prose, just thickness, which could have simply been because of thicker paper, I think your response is unreasonably harsh.
Obviously, I don’t disagree that Dune’s a more complicated book, but regardless of that, The Martian is much shorter than either, and to turn it into a film, a lot of detail had to go, and a whole act had to be turned into a montage and condensed to Watney modifies a rover and drives to another site, then takes apart a rocket that’s waiting for him there. I don’t think there’s anything simultaneously as large and expendable in Project Hail Mary, yet they obviously need to cut more.
I used goodreads because different editions are presented differently. It puts Dune at 658 and PHM at 476. If you want to truly go apples to apples the kindle edition of both, which I assume has consistent font/margins/spacing/etc has Dune at 883 and PHM at 482 for a 400 page difference on an eReader. Comparing the task of turning a vacation book into a movie vs adaptating a legendary book into movie (which was so difficult to do, that this is the third attempt and the first commercially successful one) is a false equivalence
I never said that it was the same, just that more would have to be cut than The Martian as the book was much longer, and gave an example of the most similarly wide sci fi novel on my shelf that’s successfully been turned into a movie. You’re the one that made the leap that the thickness of a book is a definitive measure of anything and wanted the comparisons to be apples-to-apples, which it never was as one book’s becoming one movie, whereas the other became two.
It’s nowhere near as complicated as dune though. They can cut out a lot of the flashbacks.
If they cut too many of the flashbacks, it gets rid of, or at least erodes, the WTF? Where am I and how did I get here and why? part of the book, which is a pretty major part of it.
They don’t need endless scenes of meetings. Those will probably go.
Regardless, I just hope the main character isn’t as annoying as he was in the book. (He shouldn’t be mr cool, either)