Uncovering the Mystery: The Scarcity of Harlan Ellison’s Works in Film and TV

Among the few cinematic ventures is the cult classic “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), directed by L.Q. Jones and featuring an unlikely lead performance from Don Johnson. Television has seen sporadic adaptations of Ellison’s stories on genre-specific shows. A standout example is the 1985 iteration of “The Twilight Zone,” which debuted with an adaptation of Ellison’s “Shatterday,” directed by Wes Craven and starring Bruce Willis.

Ellison himself adapted his story “Soldier from Tomorrow” into “Soldier,” the opening episode of the second season of “The Outer Limits” in 1964. More recently, the “Love, Death & Robots” series featured an episode titled “Life Hutch,” based on an illustrated story by Ellison and Ken Steacy. Despite these instances and a few other adaptations in sci-fi or horror anthologies, the landscape remains largely silent.

Perhaps the most acclaimed adaptation of Ellison’s work is the 1990s video game rendition of “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” Ellison was deeply involved in this project, even lending his voice to the malevolent AI, AM. In 1995, Dark Horse Comics released “Harlan Ellison’s Dream Corridor,” a series presenting comic adaptations of his stories, including a notable version of “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” illustrated by John Byrne. But why are Ellison adaptations such a rarity?

The scarcity of Ellison adaptations can be attributed to the absence of a definitive history explaining the reluctance to bring his work to screens. The likely reason lies in Ellison’s reputation as a challenging, often combative figure within the entertainment industry, which may have deterred many from pursuing adaptations of his compelling tales.

A precise history of why people haven’t flocked to adapt Harlan Ellison’s work doesn’t exist, because it’s hard to catalog things that haven’t happened. However, a likely reason for entertainment industry folks generally steering away from Ellison adaptations is simple: Harlan Ellison was a difficult, even combative man.

The author, who died in 2018 at age 84, was a proud disruptor and overall agent of chaos who was known for his quick litigiousness and his clashes with other industry notables. His most famous feud is probably the one over a classic “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.”

Ellison’s original script was heavily revised and rewritten by “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and others, prompting years of bad blood between Ellison and Roddenberry. As late as in 2009, Ellison had filed a lawsuit for residuals regarding the episode. Another notable court case was over James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi classic “The Terminator,” which Ellison argued was based on his previously-adapted story, “Soldier.” The case was ultimately settled and Ellison received an “inspired by” credit.  

Apart from bigger fish like “Star Trek” and “The Terminator,” Ellison was also known for suing comic book publishers, websites, and suchlike for reasons ranging from logical to “what the hell, man.” From a prospective filmmaker’s viewpoint, all of this would likely be plenty of reason to avoid adapting Ellison’s work, as opposed to more amenable authors. 

Of course, the thing about Harlan Ellison is that, while the adaptations of his published work are few and far between, his writing actually did make it to television surprisingly often. Ellison didn’t create exclusively for the printed page, after all. Instead, he started writing TV shows in 1963, and amassed credits that ranged from the crime comedy-drama “Burke’s Law” to “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”

Perhaps most notably, he contributed to J. Michael Straczynski’s epic sci-fi series “Babylon 5” as a conceptual consultant, occasional voice actor (as a still cantankerous but less murderously capable AI), and one small onscreen role. Ellison and Straczynski became such good friends that the latter became the executor of Ellison’s’ estate after the writer’s death, and Stracyznski even completed editing one of Ellison’s most controversial unfinished projects, “The Last Dangerous Visions.”

One reason why you might not bump into a lot of Ellison’s TV work, despite the amount of TV writing he actually did, is because many episodes he wrote — and one full series, “The Starlost” — aren’t credited to him. Whenever Ellison wasn’t satisfied with the finished product, he demanded to go under the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird, a pun that suggested his work was now worthless and “for the birds.”