Who could be the right director if this story were to make a film deal?
Skyhome aka Perched On Sumerian Eyrie: Floating Ziggurat
This is a very wild idea to discuss this sensitive issue of picking a filmmaker or a movie director for the subject fiction that is yet to be published. In a literary world as well as filmmaking, non-linear narratives may dramatize perceptual constancy.
There are cases where a book was adapted into a movie before it was officially published. Sometimes the manuscript gets optioned or developed while still in draft form, especially if the author is already well-known or the concept is considered highly cinematic. Here are some interesting examples:
🔹 1. Forrest Gump (1994)
Book by Winston Groom, published in 1986
However, the movie rights were optioned before the book gained traction, and the film diverged significantly from the novel. After the film's success, the book was reissued and became much more popular.
🔹 2. The Shape of Water (2017)
Film came first, co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro
Book version by Daniel Kraus and del Toro was published simultaneously with the film release, but it was actually written as the source material while the film was still in production.
The novel goes deeper than the movie, but both were developed side by side.
🔹 3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The film by Stanley Kubrick was released in April 1968
The book by Arthur C. Clarke was published shortly after, but both were written in parallel. Clarke and Kubrick collaborated on the concept, and the screenplay was finished before the book was.
🔹 4. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
A novelization ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster was released in 1976, credited to George Lucas.
Interestingly, the book hit shelves before the movie premiered, even though it was based on early versions of the script. So while technically published first, it was intended as a promotional tie-in for the film.
🔹 5. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2021)
The novel version by Quentin Tarantino was released after the film, but Tarantino claimed he had conceptualized it as a novel first and then rewrote it for the screen.
He said he wanted to "do a novelization the way they used to be done"—almost a reverse adaptation.
🔹 The Book of Eli (2010)
The movie starring Denzel Washington came out in January 2010, based on an original screenplay by Gary Whitta.
But a novelization was written before the film was released—also by Whitta, who turned his screenplay into a full novel, though it wasn’t officially published until after the movie came out.
What’s unique here is that the novel wasn’t just a script-to-prose conversion; it offered deeper insight into the post-apocalyptic world and the character’s inner thoughts.
Whitta later released the book version to coincide with the film’s fanbase interest.
Who could be the right director if this story were to make a film deal before it is officially published? This story of Skyhome is highly cinematic.
Based on the layered, visionary, and profoundly human storytelling in Perched on Sumerian Eyrie: Floating Ziggurat, here are five directors who could compellingly bring this Skyhome epic to the screen—each with a different flavor to match the melancholic, defiant tone of the story: