Prey (A Movie Adaptation)

[Jack Corbett]

I like reading Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novels. Last year, the Sunday Telegraph had a free book come with the newspaper every sunday for six weeks. The first of these novels was Michael Crichton's excellent Prey.

Well, it blew me away. So hard, i fact, that I almost ended up in the US.

So, I have decided to give the film a script treatment, and I want to make it using the videogame The Movies when I get it.

So then, here is the rundown of Michael Chrichton's Prey:

NAME: Prey
GENRE: Thriller, horror, sci-fi
PLOT:
In the Nevada desert, a handful of scientists are battling to retrieve a rogue swarm of micro-robots that has escaped from the lab. The swarm is self-sustaining,self-reproducing and capable of learning from experience. It is, to all intents and purposes, alive. And very, very deadly. Because it has been programmed as a ruthless predator, a predator that becomes more dangerous with every passing hour...

And we are the PREY.

CHARACTERS:
Jack
Julia
Ricky
Mae
Charley
Bobby
Rosie
David
Vince

Ellen
Amanda
Eric
Nicole


So, what do you think? Sound good?
By the way, you will have to read the novel to understand exactly how much danger the swarm poses. It (Or they) is/are one dangerous motherf**ker/s.

I'll do character bios a bit later if people like the idea. Thoughts? Anyone read it?

[Jack Corbett]

I think I am most similar to Charley... heh heh... overweight surly, farts without discretion, hums all of the time... yep, pretty much describes me

[AndyC]

Read this book last summer, and it was pretty good. I think we can count on it being made into a movie, since Crichton, in recent years, has pretty much written all his books with that in mind. He doesn't really write novels anymore, so much as movie novelizations before the fact. Very easy to put on the screen.

[JohnL]

Sounds like another in Crichton's line of "Technology and progress are BAD" series, which he's been working on ever since he wrote Westworld.

[Yaddo 42]

Don't forget the time Crichton decided to stretch his one theme with "Rising Sun". That time it was "Japan's hording of their technological advancements is BAD, and will turn the US into a second tier nation". I think that was the most recent of his books I read, it was the last straw when I got tired of his formula and bland characters.

He's a cash cow, at least he seems to have stopped directing films. "The Great Train Robbery" and "Westworld" were good, but "Looker" was bland and vague. "Runaway" had potential, but is clunky and by the numbers. I've never been able to pay attention to "Coma" and "Physical Evidence" enough to watch all of either one.

I liked some of his books like "The Terminal Man" and "Jurassic Park", and some of the movies based on his books like "The Andromeda Strain", "The Carey Treatment", and the ones I mentioned earlier. I was even a fan of "ER" for years. But after films like "The Lost World", "Sphere", and "Twister", I've learned to set my expectations low for anything he writes or produces in film.

[DaveMunger]

I hear that in the director's cut of "Looker" the bad guys have some kind of motive. In the version I saw, they were apparently trying to kill Susan Dey for no reason at all.

I think his latest, "State Of Fear" is more anti-anti-technology.

[Yaddo 42]

From everything I've read about it, "State of Fear" is anti-environmentalist, and involves environmental groups (or a group) trying to cause several disasters to drum up support and funding for their anti-global warming efforts. So anti-anti-technology, anti-anti-industry, anti-anti-big business, etc. I guess.

Crichton was even on C-Span 2 this past weekend during their "Book TV" programming speaking at the American Enterprise Institute presenting his case for he doesn't believe in global warming.

To promote "State of Fear", he had an article in Parade magazine several months ago about all of the dire warnings of technological, environmental, and societal disasters in his lifetime that haven't come to pass. He made no mention of subjects from his own books and movies. The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking, "Pot. Kettle. Black. Pot. Kettle. Black......."

[AndyC]

Very odd for a guy who built a career on stories about technological advances having disastrous results.

Prey, in particular, is pretty alarmist in the way it deals with nanotechnology. Beats the reader over the head with the threat of a robotic plague.

[Shit Demon]

What is the book like?

[AndyC]

Wish I could say it was nice to have you back, Jack.

[odinn7]

You think it's Jack? All these one liners from "s**t Demon" (real classy BTW) in Australia replying to Jacks old posts...does seem like it's him.
Did Jack get banned before or did he just decide to leave? I don't recall him being banned but possibly I just missed it.

[AndyC]

Didn't hear that he was banned, although it wouldn't have surprised me. I just assumed his attention span had reached its limit.

[Shit Demon]

No, it said "forbidden" when I tried to log on.

But my computer crashed, and several things happned, and I discovered that this temporary connection worked.