3 Unfilmable Books That I Know Would Actually Be Great HBO Shows

There are few networks that have found as much small-screen success as HBO, and these unfilmable books might just be their next major hits. Over the years, HBO has built for itself a reputation as one of the most trusted networks for prestige TV. Having found massive critical success with shows such as The Wire, Oz, Sex and the City, Band of Brothers, and Game of Thrones — among many others — HBO is perhaps the most trusted name in television. With a mix of completely original stories and some adapted from other media, there are many masterpiece HBO TV shows that establish just how innovative and consistent the network has been over the years.

There are always stories that are deemed unfilmable, with fans of certain books absolutely certain that they can’t be brought to life on the screen. The complex nature of some stories can often seem incredibly prohibitive, but that doesn’t mean adaptations are completely impossible. After all, there are already several HBO TV shows that revolutionized TV, so if any network is up to the task of adapting these supposedly unfilmable stories, it’s them.

3) House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

One of the most notoriously unfilmable books of all time is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, a complex work of horror that blends epistolary storytelling with metafiction. At its core, it’s a story about a mysterious house that is larger on the inside than the outside. However, looking deeper, it’s a genre-bending and intricately crafted tale that follows several interconnected narratives and touches on many complex themes.

Commonly considered unfilmable due to the way its storytelling relies on ergodic typography and layered visual subtext, adapting House of Leaves is undoubtedly a gargantuan task. However, considering the variety in the many great HBO TV shows over the years marks a willingness to embrace new and experimental narrative presentation. Giving a visionary director the opportunity to work with Danielewski’s source material could prove to be a massive success, and though it would take a major leap of faith on HBO’s part, House of Leaves could prove to be an absolutely mind-blowing TV show.

2) A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

A Fire Upon the Deep is nowhere near as well-known as it deserves, but it does boast a loyal following in sci-fi circles. Vernor Vinge’s 1992 space opera makes use of incredibly high-concept ideas in its core premise, including one of the book’s main characters being an alien entity whose species operates in a group mind capacity, with many of its other narrative elements rooted in the notion of evolved artificial intelligence and a carefully structured galaxy categorized by “Zones of Thought”; areas in which life abides by different physical laws.

If all that sounds complex, it’s because it is. A Fire Upon the Deep is high-concept sci-fi at its finest, but that’s exactly why it seems practically unfilmable. However, considering many of the truly great sci-fi TV shows and movies often rely on similarly complex ideas, HBO could prove the perfect home for an adaptation of Vinge’s novel. After all, Dune was once considered unfilmable for very similar reasons, and that’s something that is sure to give fans of A Fire Upon the Deep a little hope.

1) Red Rising by Pierce Brown

2014’s Red Rising proved one of the stand-out pieces of dystopian sci-fi of recent years, and fans have been desperate to see it adapted into live-action ever since. The first of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series of novels, it follows Darrow, a young member of a mining colony on Mars born into the lowest rank of humanity’s caste system, who is transformed into a Gold — a member of the elite caste — and tasked with infiltrating the upper echelons of their society. With Hunger Games-esque action and an intricately crafted sci-fi premise, Red Rising seems like perfect source material for an HBO show.

The main reason that Red Rising is considered unfilmable is that attempts to adapt it have, so far, stalled. However, considering the sci-fi and fantasy nature of some of the best HBO TV shows such as Game of Thrones and The Last of Us, it’s easy to see how Red Rising would fit among their other programming. Under HBO’s guidance, Red Rising could become the gloriously violent spiritual successor to The Hunger Games that it is destined to be.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!