I guess they are going to play up the romance? quite a bit. It’s been since the late 80’s that I read one of these abominations, so I don’t actually remember there being any, as I was 9. But I’m sure whatever does exist will get pushed to the Nth degree. MTV seems to have missed the point in a blatant attempt to capitalize on the success of “Game of Thrones”. “Game of Thrones” is not successful because it is a fantasy story, it is successful because it is precisely not the Heroes Journey described by Joseph Campbell. We’ve all seen the Heroes Journey done on a way bigger budget than MTV can provide with better source material than Shannara.
I wonder if the Tolkein estate will sue? Probably not, because you can always argue Heroes Journey has been told fifty billion times and no one holds the copyright. Anyways, I give it one season, maybe two.
Probably unwise to admit, but I liked the Seeker show. You had to watch it in the ‘Xena’ mindset, but I found Zedd amusing and Darken was well cast. And Kahlan was highly watchable. I was disappointed when it was canned before ever getting to the ‘main’ story. You’re right though, it only lightly followed the books (but the deviations were supposedly all green-lighted by Goodkind as he was involved in some not-insignificant way I believe).
In summary: when AMC or Showtime wants to do a big budget R rated series of The Black Company, or even Wheel of Time (assumes ruthless editing), I’ll allow myself to get excited.
Yeah, I read the first book as a kid, twigged to the realization that every character and scene was a 1-to-1 parallel with one from LotR, and never touched the series again. I wasn’t a picky reader, and ate up generic/derivative western fantasy (including dozens of D&D books), but the scale of the copying was a bridge too far even for me. Given how long and popular the series wound up getting, I’ve idly wondered a few times if I should give it another chance, if the first book was a novice aberration and he produced anything worthwhile after running out of material to steal and building up more writing experience. Doesn’t sound like it, though. And yeah, definitely not getting any hopes up for this series whatsoever, though there’s always an outside chance that the adaptation could take enough liberties to be better than the source material.
This reminds me of book clubs back in the day. Younger folks won’t remember, but we used to have bait and switch companies that would give you essentially free books for signing up, then rely on you being too lazy to cancel when they started shipping your monthly “subscription.”
To be honest, it worked out in my favor. Brooks was a miss, but I discovered Tim Powers.
The SF Book Club wasn’t a bad deal back in the day if you read enough to make it worthwhile. But I’m sure the annual recurring revenue was a great comfort to them, just like it is for Blizzard.
LOL, yeah. These bring back memories… bad memories. I think I was given this series as a birthday present and I made it 5 or 10 pages into the first one then gave them to my brother.
I went to the amazon page for the first book. Here’s a highlight from what is voted as the most helpful review. 1 star FWIW.
cringe when you notice that in every chapter in the last third of the book, the characters reflect on their journey thus far. Every chapter and every character, reflecting on events that you read only 100 pages ago and therefore don’t care to relive because you only read it 100 pages ago.
A friend of mine texted me that MTV was going to do a series based on Elfstones of Shannara. I felt the same way as many of you…MTV? Really? I did read like 9 or 10 books in the epic, and Elfstones was my favorite, but none of you mentioned anything about Elfstones or MTV starting with the second book in the original trilogy. Turns out that my friend just saw the Elfstones of Shannara picture on www.thehollywoodreporter.com and made an assumption. sigh
I admit I would like to see an Elfstones of Shannara show, but not really any other book, and certainly NOT by MTV. I almost would rather Syfy make it…
P.S. Met Terry Brooks once at a book signing. I thought he was a jerk.
Yeah, there’s nothing to “ruin”, it’s all potential upside.
I assume that nobody around here watches CW’s Reign, which is a bonkers teen-soap opera rendition based very loosely on Mary, Queen of Scots, complete with sexy teen hearththrob Nostradamus. It’s budget is probably closer to what you’ll get here (for example, the principals are in period costume, the extras are often in literal prom dresses). I assume that’s the mold that MTV will be chasing, with just a little bit extra Game of Thrones tossed in.
I haven’t watched MTV’s Teen Wolf, but I assume that would give some hints at direction and budget as well.
I’m actually a sucker for totally inappropriate music / setting pairings, so I hope they keep the standard MTV music placement style in this show.
Kingkiller would be interesting, and also capture the Harry Potter crowd to some degree.
I was going to mention Grossmans “The Magicians” as a candidate, but it looks like Syfy already has the rights to that and is planning a series. The Taltos novels might make an okay show, given a good lead. Then again, I thought Dresden would have done better than it did.
Hell, I’d take Feist’s Riftwars over Shanara, any day.
I met him in 1986 right after Magic Kingdom: For Sale - Sold was published. We were at a con and I’d missed him at his booth. Wandered around, ended up in the art gallery held in a different room, and there was a middle-aged man looking around by himself. Angled to where I could see his name tag, walked over and started a convo with him that lasted probably 15-20 minutes, and on his own initiative he offered to sign my books for me.
Really, Erikson’s Malazan books need to be picked up by someone with a lot of budget and very few moral restrictions. Maybe HBO after they wrap up GoT and are looking for a follow-up. It really deserves a good long-form treatment, though.
I honestly don’t see how Malazan would do well as a TV show or movie, at all. There’s too much going on, it’s not dialog driven, nor is it amenable to episodic treatment.
