Enough of Martin and Tolkien — there are other great books to adapt

I'm ok with them exploring additional lore that has not yet made it to the screen, but then again, I do <3 Tolkien.

 

Can’t stand Tolkien. He builds this beautiful world with great attention to detail and a rich history, then populates it with one dimensional characters who are basically cardboard cutouts.

He’s also wordy, pompous, and overblown. I can forgive the prosaic writing because literature as a whole has evolved since then, but using fifty words when ten would suffice is unforgivable.

And really, aren’t there already enough Tolkien adaptations? Two or three cartoons, six movies, and wasn’t there a short lived miniseries too? That’s more than enough. Give some other IPs a chance!

 

That's not how easy money works lol.

 

Fair point.

Still, the GoT adaptation on HBO is at least WAY better than the books. Forgot to mention that earlier.

 

I personally would love to see Glen Cook's "Black Company" made into a HBO series. Who would be Croaker? Lady? And he had some of the best, quirky mages in the Company.

 

Or a high production value Witcher adaptation, or a high production value Wheel of Time adaptation (by the guys who managed to redeem ASOIAF).

Or how about Brandon Sanderson? RA Salvatore? Pretty sure Salvatore has outsold Tolkien by now. Or Discworld? Man-Kzin Wars? Valdemar? Etc...

 

Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere movie rights were sold in 2016 actually!

DMG is already looking to make the Way of Kings according to the article.

https://www.tor.com/2016/10/27/bran...verse-movie-rights-sold-to-dmg-entertainment/

 

Selling the rights doesn’t guarantee that an adaptation is in the works though.

Production shops buy rights from authors in job lots, and then they sit on them until the license is about to revert by default due to age clauses, then they’ll throw together some slapdash half assed piece of garbage and call it a “pilot” which may or may not - depending on the original licensing deal - ever see the light of day.

The reason they do this is so that if another project fails for any reason at all, they’ve got a backlog of IPs they can draw from that also tick the boxes they were looking for on the original project. Or when some other shop takes a risk and succeeds, they’ve got something that they already paid bargain bin prices for that they can put together while saving a bundle up front.

After all, hookers and blow don’t exactly pay for themselves, yanno.

 

That is fair enough and true. Although they've done some half-decent movies so hopefully they won't waste the Cosmere. Considering how popular it is and how the latest book Oathbringer just came out, I can't imagine they wouldn't want to hope on the Roshar train pretty quickly.

 

You never can tell with Hollywood. They’ll either do it or they won’t and in almost no case will public opinion ever sway them.

Fox has given in twice that I can think of. That’s how we got Serenity (which was more of a giant FU to Whedon than anything else) and Deadpool (which wasn’t so much public opinion as it was Ryan Reynolds successfully holding studio execs to their promises with a side of leaked footage going viral and kicking off a buzz).

 

That's very true.

However, Sanderson was smart enough not to give them rights to everything. He kept some "standalones" and "other projects" so I understand MGM snagged up his "Snapshot" novella and there are a few others too.

Basically, they'd be definitely missing out on the gravy train if they ignored his most popular series. DMG I mean. I believe early this year, they were also looking for a director to start working on the Mistborn trilogy too.

 

I’ll cross my fingers but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

 

Same with some of the Spider-Man movies too. The Marvel vs Fox war is full of crappy tricks they’ve been pulling on each other like that. Marvel kills off Fox characters in the comics to kill royalties for Fox, Fox puts out crappy movies to drive down comic sales for Marvel.

It sucks for everyone involved - fans are getting tired of the BS, and both Marvel and Fox are bleeding money, and worse - reputation.

 

All good suggestions. I think Wheel of Time on HBO would be better than the books. Jordan really could've edited those books down a lot. And there's already a built-in audience of fans.

Last night I saw commercials on a new series on History Channel. Knightfall. Starts in December and is about the Templar Knights. I think HC did a pretty good job with Vikings, though I did have some issues with it.

One aside: Seeing the Knightfall commercial did upset me, because I was contemplating a fantasy series by that name. I thought I was so original and proud of myself for thinking up that name. And HistChan ruined it for me. Dammit.

 

Apparently someone is making Ringworld, so there's your Kzin.

 

I think you’re thinking of Discworld, maybe? That’s been in the works for awhile.

I’m not sure how they’d go about buying the rights to the Kzin universe actually, considering that it’s essentially a shared world between dozens of different authors.

 

Nope, Amazon is adapting Ringworld.