1. The Dark Is Rising - Susan Cooper
I was hard-pressed to decide whether this book or Northern Lights was the more mistreated by Hollywood. I finally decided The Dark is Rising had fared a little worse because, as a friend put it, "The Golden Compass had a Kate Bush song." Not only that, The Golden Compass at least got the full box office blockbuster treatment: fancy tie-win website, star-studded cast, loads of promotional material, merchandise, etc. Even if the movie sucked (and it did), all the attention it garnered maybe made some readers curious about the series. It put the name back into the public consciousness (assuming it had ever slipped away to begin with). The Dark is Rising movie (I'm sorry: "The Seeker: The Dark is Rising"), on the other hand, had almost no fanfare. If movies were farts, you could classify The Seeker: The Dark is Rising as an SBD: Silent But Deadly. It was a repulsive movie released entirely without fanfare that still managed to disgust everyone in the room. I will confess to not seeing this one; the trailer alone was all I needed to know. As soon as I saw Will's stupid gelled-up haircut, I knew. The scriptwriter, John Hodge,
clearly thinks little of either young adult fantasy novels, the kind of people who would go to a movie version of a young adult fantasy novel, or both. Apparently anything more subdued or subtle than Trainspotting needs to be shiny'd up for the movies and the movie-going public. Add to this that he never worked directly with Cooper (who only dealt with, or was allowed to deal with, producer Marc Platt) on the adaptation and direction from a guy who's only worked with a couple tepid television series before and you have a recipe for a disaster. Unfortunately, like The Golden Compass, the fact that The Seeker: The Dark is Rising was such a flop of a movie, and so recent, means that any chance of a proper adaptation is now years and years away, if at all. Unfortunate, because like A Wizard of Earthsea and Northern Lights, The Dark is Rising is in that sweet spot of "deserving a proper movie because it's a classic" and "deserving a proper movie because the earlier one was so crap." If a proper The Dark is Rising movie is ever made, it will be the most satisfying cinematic experience of my life. Hands-down.