Lead in to Film Adaptation

I know that it has been discussed in the past of bringing some of our celery addicted friend's novels to the big screen; and that many will say that Honor gets the honor ( )... However I was bored at work and began surfing on old interests such as "I am Legend" and I came to a page talking about a sequel to Independence Day

"SYNOPSIS

Set 15 years after the original, this sequel sees the nations of Earth use the alien technology to develop an advanced defense system for the planet. But nothing can prepare them for an unprecedented force of alien attackers out for revenge. It’s up to a few brave men and women to save the world from extraterrestrials once more.".. http://screenrant.com/tag/independence-day-2/..

Imagine an adapted intro for Off Armageddeon Reef, and bam; story line is already in place and it would just need a few nudges to get it to where it would respect the novels.

Any thoughts?

You probably could adapt OAR into a movie. Maybe the 2nd book as well. But after that, the story becomes so complicated and so many characters are introduced that I am not sure a movie could cover the action of a book in a 2 hour feature. I think for a series of this complexity a TV series along the lines of Game of Thrones would be a better bet.

Actually, what would work best would be the Taiga dramas that NHK produces. That format allows for much more complex story lines and many more characters than any other format I can think of, and occur frequently enough that people would not lose track of what is going on. In fact, the format of the novels, with a series of chapters in one area, then a jump to a different area, would actually fit that format rather well. Note that in some cases the stories extended over more than one year - there was one set of three related dramas over a one and a half year period.

The one difference is I think they would possibly need to use an hour and half format weekly instead of 45 minutes.

Two problems leap to mind right away.

First off, the naval battles. Pirates of the Caribbean managed to get the ships looking right, but the production values involved would be way too much for a TV series. Even OAR has the battles off Armageddon Reef and of Darcos Sound, which would probably take a huge amount of budget. You'd need at least one Galley and one Galleon set which could be easily redressed to look like the several different ship we see in the series for filming purposes, plus a CGI budget that could handle the enormous battles.

Second off, the complexity. OAR is, by TV standards, frighteningly complex, with lots of characters who appear as bit parts but don't become major characters for a book or two. You'd need to lock in good actors for Cahnyr, Sharleyan, and plenty of others without actually giving the actors in question parts yet. More importantly, we'd run into the Four Lines All Waiting problem, with so many different story arcs interactin that viewers would have a hard time following it.

To sum up, Safehold isn't really a good choice for adaptation, even on the heels of the success of Game of Thrones.