Ben Kane is the author of The Forgotten Legion and The Silver Eagle. He lives in North Somerset, England.
His latest novel is The Road to Rome, the final book in The Forgotten Legion trilogy.
Here he shares some suggestions for director and cast of a big screen adaptation of his story:
I have to confess that I very much wrote The Forgotten Legion with a movie in mind. With a backdrop of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of Julius Caesar to power, and with a panoramic sweep from Rome to the Middle East and Afghanistan, it provides the perfect settings for a wonderful blockbuster ‘sword and sandal’ epic in the style of Spartacus or the more recent Gladiator. The book is full of scenes in gladiator schools, and vicious fights in the arena. It moves on to Parthia (modern day Iran), and one of the greatest defeats ever suffered by Rome – at Carrhae, where the general Crassus lost 20,000 men killed in one day. 10,000 legionaries were taken prisoner and marched to modern day Afghanistan, where they were lost to history. A great setting for a movie, in my opinion. Crassus was killed at the end of the battle, but with a movie in mind, I gave him the brutal end suffered by a Roman governor in the area some years previously: having molten gold poured down his throat. Argh!My ideal director would without doubt be Ridley Scott – he directed the amazing Gladiator, and his style of action movie appeals greatly to me. Fast-paced, full of action and with great stories, they are almost all movies to watch again and again. The cast list is more problematic – as my main hero starts the book as a 13 year old boy (his sister and twin is the same age). While Russell Crowe would do a fantastic job later on in the stories, he’s too old to start from the beginning. After much thought, I then decided that the approach Peter Jackson took with The Lord of the Rings trilogy would be the best one – to mostly cast unknowns as the heroes. By doing this, it allows the viewer to identify each actor first and foremost with the first film they saw them in – namely, The Forgotten Legion!
People who read my novels frequently say, “Man, that reads like a screenplay.” This is not surprising, since I come to novels from a long history in writing for television and film, not to mention 20 years of worldwide travel, teaching and training writers to do these things. That said, I have to confess that I never see actors in my characters as I write. Part of this is selfishness on my part: my characters are my characters; they’re not Brad Pitt and they’re not Amy Adams. Part of it is also a function of how I write. I listen carefully to my characters and try to capture their voices, rather than impose my own. So when I’m writing Radar Hoverlander (the con artist protagonist of The Albuquerque Turkey and The California Roll) it’s rather important that I hear his voice, not Brad Pitt’s (and certainly not Amy Adams’).But okay, the novels are done now, and my agent is shopping the film rights, so why shouldn’t I indulge in a little happy fantasy about who might bring these characters to life on the screen? With that in mind, here’s my dream cast, with a little character description to illuminate each choice.
Ah, yes. The question readers love to ask, the question authors struggle to answer: If my book becomes a film, who should play the lead roles? 
