Irish author John Banville has revealed his Man Booker Prize winning novel The Sea will be adapted for the screen and suggests Anthony Hopkins could make the perfect leading man.
Currently in Australia, Banville said the compelling read was perfect for a Hollywood blockbuster.
"The Sea is going to be made into a movie and I think I will be doing the script for it," said the 60-year-old.
"We have been thinking vaguely of Anthony Hopkins or someone like that. Michael Gambon, perhaps?
"We would need a big strong character to play Max Morden because he has a big personality."
The Sea is centres around Morden, a man haunted by death and a distant trauma that takes him back to the coastal town where he spent a holiday in his youth.
Writing film scripts is no easy feat, and Banville admits he has written a handful in the past with only minimal success.
Banville's first book to film, the 1984 romantic drama Reflections starring Gabriel Byrne, was a flop.
"It's going to be a huge challenge ... but anything that wins a Booker prize people will descend on," he said.
"I have written about half a dozen scripts, but for every hundred scripts written one movie is made.
"The writing is the easy part, though. All you have to do is the dialogue and all the bits in-between are done by the director."
Banville is critical of his writing and admits even after 14 successful novels he is only just finding his feet.
"I don't think any of them are nearly good enough," he said.
"They never live up to my expectations. When I finished The Sea I thought the publishers would look at each other in embarrassment and say `Let's wait until the next one'. It's hard to judge your own work."
In the early days Banville says he would write version after version of a novel before publishing.
His first included a collection of short stories, Long Lankin, followed by Nightspawn in 1971 and Birchwood in 1973.
"The first book I wrote, I had nine versions of it," he said.
"Now I go over and over the sentences until I get them right and then move onto the next. It's a snail-like process.
"Four to five chapters in a book will kill it dead so you have to get it near perfect before you publish."
Despite winning countless prizes over the years, Banville says they mean nothing.
"No matter how many books you have published or how many awards you have won, you think your books are going to be a terrible disaster. We never grow up as writers."
