What would you like to see made into a movie?
I love Victorian melodramas, and recently I handed in an American history essay about slavery in The Octoroon; or Life in Louisiana by Dion Boucicault for an elective unit I did in uni as part of my arts degree.
Some posters will know this was filmed twice in the 1900s, once here in Sydney (with the Murray River doubling for the Mississippi) and the second time in the States. Back when it premiered in 1859, some slavery supporters thought it was an abolitionist play. Some abolitionists thought it was proslavery. Boucicault mostly saw it as entertainment.
It's got everything; romance, social commentary, a murder caught on camera and a scene involving a burning steamboat. The only problems I could see would be the portrayal of race and slavery (the slaves are so loyal to Judge and Mrs. Peyton that it's mentioned none of them ever thought of running away and the white Southerners are all mostly good in a paternalistic kind of way), the nineteenth-century stage black dialect, the ending (which one do you use?) and the title.
Maybe a sound version of The Colleen Bawn would work better. Actually Boucicault's colourful life would be a good subject for a biopic.