Quote Originally Posted by Manga Shoggoth View Post
I'm always a little cautious about the "adaptation must be a reasonable fit" thing.

The old Robin Hood and Jungle Book films were great films.

Robin Hood took a lot of inspiration from the Robin Hood legends, and all the characters were recognisable.

On the other hand the Jungle Book took very little except the names and species from the original stories (In the books, Kaa was one of the good guys, a mentor to Mowgli and one of the single most dangerous animals in the jungle; Hathi was a leader and shrewd tactician, Baloo was a wise teacher; Bagheera and Shere Kahn were about the only characters who got through the adaptation process reasonably intact.

That didn't stop me from enjoying them both, and I still like Jungle Book after having read (and preferred) the original stories.

Admittedly, my feeling is that if you are going to adapt a work, then adapt it, and if you are going to do something different, then don't pretend to adapt something; but sometimes you do get something good out the other end.

But no, this doesn't sound good.
I view stuff like that essentially as fan fiction (though the worst stuff where they only take some names probably doesn't deserve to be called fan fiction.) And fan fiction is fine as long as you don't try to sell it to me as the original story. I wish you had to clearly declare that yours is a spin on the original (yes hard to draw a precise line but the wish isn't realistic anyway.)