I need your help - your HG WELLS help!

I've never read it but it's a good title

SEQUEL TIME

but to jog your memories:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/H_G_Wells.htm

(p.s. thanks for the links!)

The Sleeper Awakes was a pretty good story too as far as I can remember.

I watched Things To Come in the middle of the night a few months back. Very well done.

Dada OTM.

He was "lower middle class" and all the posh totty was after him even tho he was a stumpy misogynist

First Men in the Moon and When the Sleeper Wakes are both on my list - thank you! Do tell me why you think they'd make good movies TV though - that's the kind of input that'll help me pitch.

First Men In The Moon has already been a great film (featuring Lionel Jeffries if I'm not very much mistaken)

When The Sleeper Wakes would offer some extraordinary analogous opportunities for making people look at the foundations of our modern society, cf. 1984, Brave New World.

I also think that a freally good modern, satirical take on The Food Of The Gods could be very entertaining (in a fast food Jamie Oliver do you see sort of way).

I'll have to pick up my copy of "selected short stories" and have a run through it all.

I just re-read "the war of the worlds", after seeing the film, and holy fuck, what a great book! Trying to imagine how it must have read back in 1898!

Didn't he write 2 autobiographies, the second of which only came out after the last of his lovers had passed away? That wd be good, in the period costume shaggery sense, perhaps.

Yes, I should familiarise myself with more of the works, but as he wrote about 200 books, I totally need to narrow down the playing field!

Pete, The Food of the Gods is unavailable, sadly :(

haha: a thread concept for s1ocki: 'REVIEW THIS FILM... PLEASE'

[penny drops] So the copywright's expiring because it's 70 years from when he died, right?

I'd suggest you need to give anyone a pretty good reason to make a film *NOW* and pay you the royalties rather than just waiting another 10 years and pocketing the extra dosh themselves - which I'd humbly suggest means you need to cash in on War Of The Worlds FAST, which also probably means concentrating on the sci-fi stuff.

I did say you'd be helping me with my work and I did say thank you :(

(also I do have lots of filing thxbye)

Tuomas, I work for the agency that represents the rights on behalf of the Estate and I happen to have inherited this particular role.

I know nothing of this world of these "execs" of which you speak - but aren't these "execs" ultimately going to have to put their case for spending a substantial amount of money to a lot of nasty, grey accountant types, who are likely to say irritating things like "I like the idea, but if we just wait another 10 years 'til the copyright expires, we can save ourselves X% in royalty payments...."?

though many of its themes were straight up jacked for the equally incredible Quatermass and the Pit (aka 5 Million Years To Earth), Wells' version is much more optimistic

also prefigured Childhood's End and 2001 in several ways

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:BeKxbUJsLPEJ:www.worldsinwords.org.uk/revs/hgwsb.html+%22star-begotten%22+wells&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

But most of all, if someone reckons that they'll make a great film out of a Wells title, they (and the accountants) should view it as an opportunity to be grasped. They have to pay for 90% of rights, so it's not like this is a big step.

As I said before, I have absolutely no experience of this industry - however if the potential cost of royalty payments is significant I'm sure this will increasingly become a factor as the time to the expiry of the copyright gets ever shorter.

orange and white covers. 85p.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/hg_wells/

There has never yet been a really satisfactory version of "Island of Doctor Moreau", though "Island of Lost Souls" comes close. The key theme of animal rights (Vivisection, in Victorian terms) and what it means to be human is still current, and it wouldn't require a great deal of money to film. But, please, nothing about genetic experiments or radiation induced mutation. Everyone seems to want to update Wells, as in the recent "War of the Worlds", but they always end up by muting or distorting what he set out to say in the first place.