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Sci-Fi Media Television

Scifi Channel to Make Ringworld Miniseries 431

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
Snaller writes "The Sci Fi Channel has listed its programming for the upcomming year, it includes the Farscape miniseries already mentioned by Slashdot, it also includes a miniseries based the legendary scifi story by Larry Niven: Ringworld. In the far future 4 travelers crash on a ring around a sun in a distant system. Shall be interesting to see how they depict the Puppeteers."
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Scifi Channel to Make Ringworld Miniseries More

Scifi Channel to Make Ringworld Miniseries

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  • And Earthsea, too! (Score:3, Informative)

    by sabernar ( 245306 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:03PM (#8781298) Homepage
    According to the article, they're making Le Guin's Earthsea, too!

  • Outstanding! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slusich ( 684826 )
    I for one have been waiting anxiously for someone to do a movie or miniseries on Ringworld. Hopefully they'll treat it as well as they did the Dune books.
    • While Children of Dune was well done, the SciFi Channel version of the original Dune wasn't quite so cinematically adept. Notice the borrowed techniques taken from the Batman TV series: Whenever the bad guys were shown, they were always backlit in red with the camera tilted. When Feyd was fighting the slave, I half expected to see a "KaPow!" balloon show up on the screen..

      • Re:Outstanding! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Cyno01 ( 573917 )
        I dont know what expirience the director of the first one had, but i doubt it was in film or television. I really liked it, and this is not a complaint, but the cinematography is more suited to a stage production than the screen. If you watch it and expect what you would from a stage play its actually quite good. CoD was a much better mini-series though. The other 3 books are too out there (imho) to continue the series unfortunatly, but the prequil books would do well in translation to screen.
    • Hopefully they'll treat it as well as they did the Dune books.

      [troll] Well, maybe they'll actually read "Ringworld" before they start filming. (Unlike Dune.) [/troll]

  • Interesting... (Score:2, Informative)

    by tallpole ( 723263 )
    Considering the ringworld idea was one of the primary sci-fi influences of Halo, this should be pretty cool.

    I'm looking forward to this series!

  • PLEASE, (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fidget42 ( 538823 )
    let it be better that RiverWorld! I loved the book but SciFi's miniseries sucked, big time.
    • I agree, riverworld was SO damn bad. I actually suspect that riverworld and probably ring world will need several incarnations before someone brings a good version to screen. Just like Lord of the Rings.
  • ...Puppeteers.

    Well, do you remember a few years ago? George Lucas made a movie called Episode One. Well they're thinking of using the actor who played Jar-Jar...

  • About time. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kabocox ( 199019 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:05PM (#8781321)
    It's about time some one makes this. Too bad it really needs to be on an IMAX though.

  • Wanna see a puppeteer? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mikey-San ( 582838 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:06PM (#8781333) Homepage Journal
    Well, a rendition of one, anyway:

    http://students.biology.lsa.umich.edu/bio208_11/ br ain.html

    The image is taken from this book, which is definitely teh awesome:

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/08 94 803247/002-9348466-3390413?v=glance
  • As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series, it should be very cool miniseries. RingWorld, Hyperion, and Ender's Game were the books I loved in High School. If they make the remaining two into mini-series I'll be very, very happy!

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)

      by sydb ( 176695 ) * <[michael] [at] [wd21.co.uk]> on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:08PM (#8781365)
      As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series

      Why, what's wrong with alien sex?

      • As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series

        Why, what's wrong with alien sex?
        --
        Never bored enough to resort to spectator sport.


        was that sig intended to go with that post? :)

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrZaius ( 6588 )
      Last I heard, OSC was working on a screenplay for Ender's Game. No URL's, but it was up on his website. I'm sure google will point to this.

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:12PM (#8781423)
      "As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series"

      dont worry. I am gathering that the 'Sci-Fi' channel is american so you wont see anything but precious precious violence.

      *rocks back and forth, slowly carressing his sweet sweet gun*
    • I just have one thing to say in response to this story:

      OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG XD XD XD

      Ringworld is my favorite book of all time. I can't wait.

      Scifi may yet win me back as a viewer. :D

      </giddy_fanboy>

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by admiralh ( 21771 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:14PM (#8781447) Homepage
      As long as they keep the whole sex bit out of the series, it should be very cool miniseries

      True. Goodness knows that we shouldn't think of sex as part of normal human behavior, so it should never be depicted, nor even talked about in polite company, especially around the children (We MUST Protect the Children!). And then once we perfect in vitro fetilization and artificial gestation, there's no reason to have that disgusting sex whatsoever.

      • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by b-baggins ( 610215 )
        Gratuituous cross-species sex to seal contracts is not part of normal human behavior, it's just some guy with weird sexual hangups playing out his bizarre fantasies in print.

        • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by admiralh ( 21771 )
          I had forgotten about the alien sex part (it's been 20 years since I read it). I was thinking of Louis Wu, Teela and the zero-g bed. However, Niven was never that graphic about it anyway.

          As for "weird sexual hangups", there is a (possibly apocryphal) tale about an early sex researcher who, when defining various sexual behaviors, categorized everything he personally did not like as "abnormal" or "perverted".

          And just because they are "weird" doesn't mean they are "wrong".

      • Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by AnonymousKev ( 754127 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @03:55PM (#8783787)
        I don't know why the OP wanted the sex scenes left out, but I'll give you my reasoning. It has little to do with protecting the children and a lot to do with protecting the part of my brain that shorts out when exposed to bad writing. Larry Niven writes about sex with the vocabulary of a 14 year old boy. (Least favorite line in Ringworld: "She impaled herself on him in ecstacy." Sheesh, that's forever lodged in my brain like an evil splinter)

        I really liked the concepts presented in Ringworld, but the character interactions just seemed ... juvenille ... to me. Sorry if that runs counter to your own (well-reasoned, I'm sure) opinion.

        If the sex scene contributes something to the story, by all means, include it. But if it's <pun>inserted</pun> only for shock value, then replace with with something clever that does further the plot.

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:15PM (#8781474) Homepage Journal
      Ender's game is already being made into a movie [frescopictures.com] by the same people as XMen2! :)

      • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Telastyn ( 206146 )
        I think you meant:

        Ender's game is already being made into a movie by the same people as XMen2! :(

        There's no possible way I see that book being faithfully translated into film. Far too much of it is... 'unamerican'. At least unamerican film.

        (*spoilers*)

        Almost the entire book has the tone of a child/teen who's teased, taunted and manipulated how how that child/teen strikes back. I doubt God Fearing soccer moms will be interested in seeing or allowing others to see Columbine-like tragedy on planetary scale

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wazzzup ( 172351 )
      Agreed. I'm no prude by any stretch, but the whole "rishathra" thing was an annoying subtext that added nothing to the stories. I recall being embarrased for Larry Niven everytime he threw in "rishing" - which seemed to be every ten pages.

      I bet it's fun being his wife - having to put on a puppeteer costume before getting busy.

  • Not to be outdone... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Throtex ( 708974 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:06PM (#8781337)
    ... the Discovery Channel will be releasing its new parody miniseries: Ringworm

  • Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RecoveredMarketroid ( 569802 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:06PM (#8781338)
    I really had the hots for her in Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles...
  • How are they going to talk about Rishasthra? (or in other words, inter-species sex, often done as part of diplomacy/trade agreements).

  • even better, The Screaming Brain (Score:4, Informative)

    by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:09PM (#8781378) Journal
    "THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN: When a upscale banker suffers a traumatic head injury, part of his brain is replaced with that of a street hustler. The movie will be written, directed and stars EVIL DEAD's Bruce Campbell. Shooting begins this spring. "

    Come on, it's got Bruce Campbell. It must be good!

  • Cool... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:09PM (#8781388)
    Also on that page was this:

    ALIEN APOCALYPSE: Another Bruce Campbell action fest, this time with Campbell playing a deep space explorer who returns to Earth years after leaving it, only to find the planet has been invaded by an alien race and mankind reduced to slaves. Campbell and his fellow astronauts try and mobilize a rebellion.

    Aliens, an invasion and Bruce Campbell? They might aswell rename this 'Duke Nukem: The Movie'. Should be cool. (Tho knowing Sci-Fi ...)

  • Unoriginal (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nutsquasher ( 543657 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:11PM (#8781403)
    His book is obviously an unimaginative rip-off of Halo. ;)

  • Can't wait for some hot rishathra!!!

    Think they'll get Jeri Ryan to play Halrloprillalar? Sexy!

  • Other Ripoff (Score:2, Funny)

    by Fortress ( 763470 )
    A few people mentioned about Ringworld being an obvious ripoff of Halo, but I haven't seen anone mention the ripoff from Wing Commander.

    C'mon, those Kzinti are obviously Kilrathi warmed over.

  • Disclaimer at the beginning to turn away the lost Tolkien fans who tuned in by mistake.

    Sponsored by "Whisk" : ring around the collar, ring around the collar

    Zone of Ringworld occupied by muppet mushroom-lizard things [bbc.co.uk]

  • Which way will Louis Wu go? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:16PM (#8781493)
    In the open scenes of Ringworld, Louis Wu travels around the Earth for his 200th birthday -- using transporter booths to jump to the next timezone and have a 48-hour long birthday party. In the very rare first edition of the book, he travels from West to East, which is the wrong direction. Later versions corrected this.

  • The original was OK, but (Score:4, Informative)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:16PM (#8781500) Homepage
    You may not want to bother with the sequels.

    Ringworld Engineers was almost as good as the original, maybe, but Ringworld Throne was a huge disappointment. I'm not the only one who gave up on it halfway through. It's almost like Niven let somebody else write some of it, or decided to fuse unrelated plots into one book, or something equally horrid. Just stay away.

    After reading (half of it), I'll probably never read another Niven again.

    I'd ask for other book recommendations - but somehow the Slashdot structure isn't very suitable for recommending stuff (books, MP3 players, whatever) and rating it on a regular basis, so we have to make do with a roundup story once or twice a year.
    • Niven is either on or really off in my experience. IMO, he's not that great of a writer even at his best but his settings often make up for that shortcoming. When he's off, though...

      I can't remember the title but there was a Niven novel set in a future arcology in LA - one of the worst pieces of dreck I've ever read. I had trouble believing that is was written by the same person.
    • Niven seems to have had this problem across the board.

      I really loved his books The Legacy of Herot, and The Mote in God's Eye... but a couple of years later he wrote sequels to both that were just terrible. He undermined the stories of the originals and filled the sequels with mindless drivel.

      That said, I highly reccomend the first book of both of those, and Lucifer's Hammer. All three of those books are imaginative, gripping, and well worth the read.
  • After all, the ringworld is unstable [yarchive.net].

  • [SPOILERS] Questions... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheFrood ( 163934 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:19PM (#8781544) Homepage Journal
    I'm wondering exactly how much material from the books they're going to include.

    The original Ringworld book doesn't really end with a tense climax. It's a satisfying ending for a book, but I think it would fall a bit flat in a movie/miniseries.

    Ringworld Engineers ends with a good fight scene, but including that would mean they'd have to explain Pak Protectors and a lot of other things. I don't think that much material can be adequately handled in a four-hour miniseries.

    Ringworld Throne just wasn't very good at all, so let's not go there.

    And how faithful will they be to the books? Will they have the "invulnerable" General Products hull? Will they have the Slaver shotgun? Will they include the Puppeteer Fleet of Worlds?

    This has so much potential to be great or awful.

    TheFrood
    • No, but in keeping with the traditions started by other Skiffy channel productions they will be replacing Speaker to Animals with a sexy female robot.

      Nessus will be replaced by a sexy female alien. You will be able to tell she is an alien because she has a ridge on her forehead and very large breasts.

      In an interesting plot twist, Louis Wu will be replaced by a cigar smoking, sexy female explorer.

      The character of Teela Brown will be cut from this version entirely. Lucky her.

      The Lying Bastard will be re

    • Re:[SPOILERS] Questions... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @03:17PM (#8783303) Homepage Journal
      Ringworld was essentially the "Wizard of Oz" in disguise. In terms of climax, you have Dorothy (Louis) suddenly realizing at the end that she had the means to get home all along by clicking her heels (going through the mountain).

      In the sequel, Teela gets a brain and ends up ruling the place. just like the Scarecrow in the Oz sequels.
  • It will be interesting to me how they imagine and portray the scope of the Ringworld. All the great science-fiction that inspired me let me "see" things I'd never seen before. To see thousand-mile high walls, oceans the size of planets and the curve of the Ringworld in the sky would have to be mesmerizing.
  • In an animated Star Trek [larryniven.org] episode. It's years since I saw that epsiode but I vaguely remember it being quite good and I think Niven was involved with writing the script.

  • Ringworld's Children (Score:4, Informative)

    by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:50PM (#8781995) Homepage Journal
    And don't forget, Ringworld Fans, the new book, Ringworld's Children [google.com], comes out June 1!!! Woohoo!

    It trails the children of Teela Brown and Seeker (Who it turns out was also the product of a "Breeding for Luck" selecting breeding project.), and what happens to them. (Before Teela turns into a Protector, and also explains why Protector-Teela wanted to lose the fight with Louis Wu! :) )


    • We know why Teela wanted to lose the fight. It was explained oerfectly well in Engineers. You know, when it actually happened.

      Why do successful series always feel the need to go insert unneeded stories in the "gaps" between the same stories that made them successful? We don't need a day-to-day diary.

      Following the events of Teela's children would be interesting, though.

  • Concerned (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xihr ( 556141 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @06:59PM (#8786179) Homepage
    The press release implies at least a little bit that it's going to mix together multiple books into one movie, which seems to be me a big mistake. Ringworld is a self-contained story and should be kept that way; including elements of the sequels is a pattern that the Scifi channel likes to do but doesn't bode well for making a quality miniseries.

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