Fans were shocked this week by the sudden death of Michael Crichton, the award-winning writer and producer who was best known as the godfather of the techno-thriller genre as well as for Hollywood's big-ticket film adaptations of his novels. For a large portion of the 1990s, a new Crichton movie was an annual event - starting with 1993's Jurassic Park, there was at least one movie based on a Crichton novel released every year until 1999, with the exception of 1996, which can be excused since that year saw the release of Twister, the big-budget tornado movie Crichton co-wrote with Anne-Marie Martin. In fact, every novel that Crichton has authored under his own name - early in his career, he wrote under the nom-de-plume John Lange - has been turned into a movie, with the exception of four of his last novels.

Those remaining novels are Airframe (released in 1996), Prey (2002), State of Fear (2004), and Next (2006). The only movie adaptation of a Crichton book since 1995's The Lost World has been the Richard Donner-directed version of his 1999 novel Timeframe, a movie that most people are still trying to forget. (If only time travel really existed to help us go back and save ten bucks and two hours of our life that we'll never get back.) Now that Crichton has passed away, it seems unlikely that Hollywood will leave his final, unfilmed works untouched. However, since the quality of his movie adaptations has varied WILDLY (looking at you, Congo), we think the movie industry owes it to Crichton - one of their top earners of the past 20 years - to find the perfect director for his last movies. As a service to Crichton fans and a tribute to a damn fine writer who died too soon, here are our picks for the filmmakers who should direct the movie versions of Crichton's four final novels.

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Airframe (1996)

What's It About: Casey Singleton, a quality assurance executive at Norton Aircraft, investigates a suspicious accident on one of their airliners that left three dead and over fifty injured. Struggling against aggressive investigative journalists and the corporate pressures surrounding a major business deal between Norton and China, Casey fights to uncover the truth behind the incident and explores the gray areas between human and mechanical error.

Who Should Direct: Billy Ray, director of Breach and Shattered Glass

Why: For starters, it helps that Ray co-wrote the screenplay for the Jodie Foster thriller Flightplan, which proves that he's already intimately familiar with air-safety procedures and the minutiae of airliner design. (One imagines that Ray had to comb over blueprints of jumbo jets to find new places for Foster to run around screaming, "Where's my daughter?!!") But, beyond Flightplan, the main reason that Ray would be PERFECT to direct an Airframe movie is that both of his directorial efforts, Breach and Shattered Glass, are all about how human error is subtly introduced into seemingly infallible systems - the upper echelon of the FBI and the fact-checking department of a major investigative magazine, respectively - and that's one of THE major themes of Crichton's novel. Plus both films are nuanced, fast-paced investigation films, which is exactly the tone and pace that any Airframe adaptation needs.

If He's Not Available: Steven Soderbergh excelled at showing the ins-and-outs of corporate investigations in Erin Brockovich, but one wonders if a). he'd be interested in Airframe and b). if Crichton's occasionally right-wing political bent would rub Soderbergh the wrong way.

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Prey (2002)

What's It About: Jack Forman, an artificial intelligence expert, discovers that something shady is going on at Xymos, the nano-technology company where his wife works. After a series of strange incidents, Jack learns that Xymos was manufacturing swarms of bacteria-like nano-robots for the Department of Defense and, unfortunately, the swarms have gone rogue like an Alaskan governor, exhibiting predatory tendencies and sentient hive-mind intelligence.

Who Should Direct: Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, directors of Microcosmos and Genesis.

Why: As French documentarians, Nuridsany and Pérennou might seem like odd choices to direct a Silicon Valley techo-thriller, but hear us out. It would be so, SO easy to deliver a cheesy, Sci-Fi Channel movie-of-the-week version of Prey. Get some cheap CGI, hire Dean Cain, and you've got a nano-bot version of a low-rent Irwin Allen movie or the made-for-TV Langoliers. So, if you want to do something a little different and a lot less derivative and crappy, why not turn to the two directors who know more about the "nano" world than anyone? Nuridsany and Pérennou's documentary Microcosmos is one of THE most visually stunning films of the last 30 years, a first-person look at the world of insects that uses high-tech, super-small cameras to place us right next to snails, spiders, and ladybugs as they go through their daily routine. It's live-action Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and Prey would be an infinitely more interesting film if the movie version actually took us inside the world of a nano-robot, rather than just portraying them as a murky cannibalistic swarm like the ants in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Nuridsany and Pérennou know "nano," and the editing prowess they display in Microcosmos and Genesis, finding drama in the most natural of settings, prove that they definitely grasp how to assemble an exciting narrative, so why not ditch the B-movie thrills and turn Prey into something smart, tense, and unique?

If They're Not Available: Shane Carruth, writer/director of the low-budget indie hit, Primer, is undeniably tech savvy and the paranoid atmosphere he created in his time-travel tale might be a great fit for something like Prey.

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State of Fear (1996)

What's It About: An environmentalist lawyer and an uber-rich philanthropist become suspicious that the donations they're making to a popular international environmental fund are actually being funneled to a radical eco-terrorist group, an organization bent on executing a series of seemingly "natural" disasters to make the general public more afraid of global warming. When the billionaire dies suspiciously, it's up to his trusty lawyer and a team of international secret agents to race across the globe to prevent the terrorists' eco-catastrophes.

Who Should Direct: Werner Herzog, director of Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World

Why: Critics had a field day with State of Fear, particularly since the book mirrors Crichton's somewhat controversial opinion that global warming cannot be proven and that certain elitist organizations are using flawed research to appease their funding sources. (Allegedly, Crichton's skepticism about climate change helped him strike up a friendship with George W. Bush.) So the big question is - how do you turn a State of Fear movie into anything other than an annoying anti-Al Gore screed? Answer: Give to Werner Herzog, a director who consistently challenges his audiences with the unusual and ambiguous without pandering to political correctness. We're not saying that Herzog is down with the GOP when it comes to global warming, but he knows how to show all sides of an argument - for example, his portrayal of Timothy Treadwell in 2005's Grizzly Man, in which Treadwell comes off variously as a committed activist or a deluded novice, all depending on your personal reading of the film. A director of State of Fear needs to be able show the natural world in all its glory and fury (as Herzog does in Encounters at the End of the World) and present us with unconventional portraits of familiar characters. A movie like State of Fear could be one big Red State cheerleading session unless you found a director smart enough to really show us all sides of every character - making the eco-terrorists believable and their corporate enemies plausible. And Herzog seems like the man to do it.

If He's Not Available: Well, if you DID just want a big Republican version of The Day After Tomorrow - where the Day After Tomorrow would be fine, sunny, and 70 degrees, if it wasn't for the stupid treehuggers - then we guess the GOP-friendly David Zucker, director of Ruthless People and the ultra-conservative An American Carol, would be a good choice to appeal to the Left Behind crowd.

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Next (2006)

What's It About: Crichton weaves together multiple plotlines all surrounding the ethics and legality of genetic research, using various stories to spotlight the murky grayness surrounding modern bio-ethics. In one tale, a man finds that BioGen, a genetics company, has stolen samples of his cellular material following his cancer treatment and, after the courts decide that BioGen owns Frank's genetic material - which they're using to make new medicines - the company targets other members of Frank's family for ominous-sounding "sample extraction." Another story has a BioGen researcher possibly stumbling onto a genetic cure for addiction and wondering whether to test his discovery further on humans. Lots of tales of corporate greed and "whoops, we probably should've tested that more."

Who Should Direct: Andrew Niccol, director of Gattaca and Lord of War

Why: It seems a little easy to suggest that the director of Gattaca is perfect to direct a movie about genetics research gone wrong, but sometimes, your first instincts are your best. It's safe to say that Niccol knows a thing or two about the ambiguity of bio-ethics - his first film Gattaca is a marvelous, eerily-plausible sci-fi tale of an average man trying to fulfill his dreams in a world where only those who were genetically-engineered from birth to succeed are allowed into the upper echelon of society. Plus Niccol wrote the much-lauded screenplay to Peter Weir's The Truman Show, a film about a man realizing that there's a shadowy, unreal presence lurking behind his day-to-day life, which has wonderful parallels to Crichton's story of the consequences of genetic research worming its way into the lives of innocent victims.

If He's Not Available: Fernando Meirelles, director of The Constant Gardener, did a wonderful job of showing how insidious, profit-driven medical research impacted the lives of innocent Africans. Maybe he could pull back the curtain on genetic research in the same way he did for pharmaceutical testing.

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But what do you think? Would Spielberg be the ideal choice to direct Prey? Can't believe that we forgot your favorite director? Have your own plans for the perfect Crichton adaptation?

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