[Note: This is actually a Usenet posting to rec.arts.sf.written, regarding the Wild Cards series.]
ARMAGEDDON RAG was optioned for film shortly after it came out in 1983, by a writer/producer named Phil DeGuere. He did several drafts of a screenplay, but never managed to convince a studio to greenlight the picture. Phil was tight with the Grateful Dead, and planned to film the big Nazgul concert scenes at Dead shows.
No movie ever came of it... but a couple of years later, CBS tabbed Phil to revive THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and he asked me to do a script.
So in a sense, the unmade RAG movie was responsible for my career in television and film.
[Note: This is actually a Usenet posting to rec.arts.sf.written, regarding the Wild Cards series.]
Ah... WILD CARDS was just sleeping.
And now we've woken up. The old books are being reissued, a new one (DEUCES DOWN) came out in hardcover a few months ago, another new one (FIVE CARD DRAW) is being written, a new role-playing game should be released in 2003, and we're exploring some interesting possibilities in TV and film.
Definitely not dead.
FWIW, I will admit that we stumbled badly with the jumpers, way back when. If Jove can nod, so can I. I do think we came back strong afterwards, with the Card Shark triad. Creatively (if not commercially), those were three of the strongest volumes WILD CARDS ever had... but switching from Bantam to Baen Books was a big mistake on our part.
The Card Sharks triad was very dark, I will concede. Darkness was the complaint I heard most often about the later WILD CARDS books.
DEUCES DOWN is much lighter.