Film adaptations – love ‘em, hate ‘em, the truth of the matter is, they’re loud, they’re big, they’re successful and they’re probably coming to a screen near you.  The advent of CGI in the last few years has led to an explosion of science fiction and fantasy movies, spearheaded to a large degree by Lord of the Rings and the Marvel Comics lot deciding to cash in on a good thing… now when you think of summer blockbuster, you can fairly reliably count on not just running, jumping, chasing, but you can probably also hold out for the destruction of New York by alien ship or the fall of civilizations.

I’m not going to re-tread the old arguments of book vs. film here.  There are pros and cons either way and frankly the two mediums are so different in so many respects that it seems like a rather futile bit of ground to wander over.   For my part, I should declare that I actually prefer the film of Lord of the Rings to the book, love comic book adaptations… when they’re done well, that is… and am delighted to discover that the occasional CGI fuelled bit of science fiction movie making is in fact, slipping through the net and coming up on screen with the odd bit of an idea behind it.

I’m also in the curious position of watching someone trying to adapt one of my books – A Madness of Angels – for film.  As a writer, nothing sets the dollar sign spinning behind your eyes more than the notion of a film adaptation, but the truth of the matter is there are so many hurdles to get through, so many pitfalls and traps that even getting close to production is something that makes the tomb crawling activities of Indiana Jones look like a leisurely walk along Brighton Beach.  Ladies and gentlemen, the sign should say… do not watch this space…

But even once the realities have settled in and the glow of dollar signs has started to fade, a certain semi-artistic alarm does creep occasionally out of the darker corners of the imagination.  My ex-boyfriend had an excellent way of summarising this with a triumphant flap of his hands and a great battle cry of ‘Vin Diesel IS Matthew Swift’ – a notion which, for anyone who’s actually read my books, should hopefully induce horror.  Say it in your best hot chocolate voice and picture a man with a sub machine gun riding a double decker bus down Fleet Street while being pursued by a dragon, and you pretty much have the full nightmare embedded in your psyche.  Welcome.

And of course when you think big budget film adaptations, you think Hollywood.  But then, my novels are all set in London and when you think Hollywood and London, once again, a glimmer of alarm sets in.  While it perhaps takes a local to recognise that the odds of your character trying to get from Greenwich to Kings Cross via the Palace of Westminster are a little… oh really?… I think we can all appreciate that the double decker bus is not always staffed by cheery Cockney character types and that you can above all never, ever, EVER get a taxi when you need one.  There’s also the question of the classic American-does-British-accent debate.  In recent years, I fully concede, the quality of British accents in American movies has soared, but there still remains a tendency among Hollywood movies to go for one of two linguistic options.  There’s Cockney… and there’s the Queen.  And maybe, just maybe if you’re really unlucky, there’s Irish, that famous funeral pyre of all good dialect intentions.  As a writer you cringe up inside, but as your agent would point out… when you sign a Hollywood contract, you might as well have handed over your Granny and left kidney in the process, because that’s about how much say you have left when the ink is dry.

When the going gets tough, there’s always some comfort to be found from the author of The English Patient.  When asked what he felt the movie had done to his book, his reply – and it’s a damn good one – was something along the lines of ‘nothing at all.  The book is still on the shelf, exactly the way I wrote it.’  Which seems like a healthy attitude to have, all things considered.

Thankfully, the producer of A Madness of Angels demonstrates – at least with me – a loyalty to the text and an understanding of it that arguably surpasses mine.  At our one dinner in London I found myself in the rather awkward position of genuinely liking this lady, and being genuinely impressed and excited to meet her, which was not the aura of ‘so you think you’re worth it?’ that I should probably try to cultivate professionally.  Having signed the contract I’m all of the ‘let it slash and burn’ school of cinematography, but she not only respects the book, she knows its intimacies in more detail than I can, having, I would point out, read it more recently…

None of which is to say that anything will come of this. It’s an exciting thing to fantasize about in the sleepless hours of the night, but to give you an idea of just how much emotional investment I have in the success of this project, let me say this: that should the movie happen, I have promised my best mate that I will buy a whole, reckless, dangerous-living pair of new socks that I will wear, for her, to the premiere.  I am therefore committed to this project a whole pair of socks worth, and while I cheer for it, and support it, and hope for it, and will do everything in my power to aid it, I will try my very best not to lose any sleep over it… yet…