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The Prince Of Nothing series is optioned for TV!


redeagl

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Eärwa is certainly a middle eastern world ( excluding the Ancient Norsirai) but still it wouldn't translate well to it and after all it comes to money, non of the animes you mentioned had had even a fraction of GOT's success.

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11 minutes ago, redeagl said:

Earthsea was an epic fail. Guin Saga was a Japanese novel. Breserk is a manga. Western Epic fantasies doesn't translate well to this medium.

I disagree if only because very generic Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms-setting high Fantasy is one of the most popular recurrent anime settings.  Every year, the Japanese produce dozens of these shows, though most never become popular in the West.  Re:Zero, a currently popular anime, is a good example.  There just haven't been many - or any - attempts to do a direct adaption aside from Earthsea.

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2 hours ago, redeagl said:

Eärwa is certainly a middle eastern world ( excluding the Ancient Norsirai) but still it wouldn't translate well to it and after all it comes to money, non of the animes you mentioned had had even a fraction of GOT's success.

Berserk is certainly very successful. Not sure what you have against anime/animation in general. Or why your obsessed with money. Or why you think Bakker would be that popular.

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4 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I actually think a lot of western fantasy would be much better translated as an animation than via live action. It would solve all of the budget and practical issues that Game of Thrones has.

Animated shows have budgets too.and face all the same dramatic constraints of writing scripts, more severe dramatic constraints if you're limited to a 21 page Animation Script Versus A 55 Page HBO script

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10 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Animated shows have budgets too.and face all the same dramatic constraints of writing scripts, more severe dramatic constraints if you're limited to a 21 page Animation Script Versus A 55 Page HBO script

Yeah and a lot of times, in Japan, you don't get to have repeats. You crank that shit out no matter what. And sometimes it drives you insane(see: Evangelion)

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2 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

You can say that about almost any form of dramatized entertainment though.

My point was that animation may be a better medium for epic fantasy specifically, as it would be less expensive to animate some of the more fantastical elements and still have them blend seamlessly with the rest of the show, as opposed to what we have now with HBO blowing their entire CGI budget a few cool dragon scenes, and not being able to show the dire wolves for the whole rest of a season. They also wouldn't have to worry about flying an entire cast and crew out to some exotic or impractical location in order to convey the sense of a large world.

They don't show the dire wolves because forced perspective is required, and that's not easy to make look right if the dire wolves are supposed to be interacting with or attacking humans that are on a different z axis plane from the dog-actor. This is also why a of of the effects with the dire wolves are not that great. Additionally they can't use cgi because fur is more expensive to render than scales, and fur is tougher to green screen, so that's not a great solution. And that basically means it is not a choice between dragons and wolves in the cg line item of the budget because they can only do dragons with cg but they have other options with wolves, so these two are not in a real trade off of funds situation.  

TV shows are built on speed and volume of setups, animals and children slow both of those down, children because of labor laws, animals because they require high volume of takes, game of thrones pairs animals (that require special forced perspective setups) and kids together, double budget buster whammy. Ultimately, the show still has to shoot all its scenes and can only afford the time to be slowed down by one factor, not both. This means they have to chose between being slowed down by animals or being slowed down by kids, and they chose kids, rightly.

hbo can throw more money at the problem, but that doesn't change child labor law restrictions, which means they can't buy their way out of the problem and they can't just take the extra money and say "oh we will shoot more days with kids and animals now" because logistically they can't make their air dates if their shooting schedule is extended. They have contingency time built in to the schedule, but you don't want to burn that on non emergency situations.

and animation is expensive, animators are paid too, after all and complex action animation is more expensive than dialog animation, for example. Anime style of animation can be cheaper. Additionally, you have fewer monetization schema for an animation end product than you do with a live action end product. 

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22 minutes ago, Gronzag said:

Hopefully, this is BS and is never going to happen. Is Baker really that desperate for money that he is willing to let some losers take a dump on his magnum opus with some z production TV show?!



If making even a shitty tv show allowed Bakker the comfort to fully commit to finishing the series as he always intended, I'm all for.

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I can't imagine he's getting much for the option, unless there was a secret bidding war for the series we're all unaware of.  But I don't doubt he'd take even a z-grade Power Rangers production level TV show to get more exposure for the books.

Back to rank speculation, I know Lionsgate has been looking for new properties to produce, especially with their purchase of Starz and the hit their stock has taken on low market expectations despite revenue growth out of their TV portfolio (primarily thanks to Orange is the New Black and the piles of cash Netflix is throwing their way).  

Since Fantasy is in these days, Starz is a direct competitor with HBO and Orange is the New Black being tied up with whatever prior arrangements with Netflix, acquiring a bunch of cheap IP options to produce on Starz would be a sensible move for Lionsgate to make.

So, on those grounds, if Lionsgate is the purchaser, then I think production is a real possibility due to the Starz deal.  But if it's someone else, then it'll probably go sit in a catalogue indefinitely.

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13 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Berserk is certainly very successful. Not sure what you have against anime/animation in general. Or why your obsessed with money. Or why you think Bakker would be that popular.

1 I simply don't like Japanese Anime Art direction.

2 I am not obsessed with money but whoever bought the rights does want money out of this.

3 I am measuring it against GoT because whoever bought the rights wants to duplicate the GOT trick.

4 If the show had a good budget and was done good with heavy marketing then it will be popular.

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4 hours ago, Damned with the Wind said:

I can't imagine he's getting much for the option, unless there was a secret bidding war for the series we're all unaware of.  But I don't doubt he'd take even a z-grade Power Rangers production level TV show to get more exposure for the books.

Back to rank speculation, I know Lionsgate has been looking for new properties to produce, especially with their purchase of Starz and the hit their stock has taken on low market expectations despite revenue growth out of their TV portfolio (primarily thanks to Orange is the New Black and the piles of cash Netflix is throwing their way).  

Since Fantasy is in these days, Starz is a direct competitor with HBO and Orange is the New Black being tied up with whatever prior arrangements with Netflix, acquiring a bunch of cheap IP options to produce on Starz would be a sensible move for Lionsgate to make.

So, on those grounds, if Lionsgate is the purchaser, then I think production is a real possibility due to the Starz deal.  But if it's someone else, then it'll probably go sit in a catalogue indefinitely.

Lionsgate has picked up and is developing Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle as a TV show. It's unlikely they would double-dip into fantasy for something a lot less commercially appealing.

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All excellent examples of problems that could be solved or alleviated by animation.

It's does not solve the major problems: adult animation is a very niche, very small audience. To crossover you need either something funny (Family Guy, South Park etc) or very cheap (Archer). Anime works because the Japanese audiences tune into it in reasonably large numbers and it sells to enthusiastic collectors around the world. To make that work for PoN, you'd need to sell it to a Japanese production company, which doesn't seem likely. They couldn't make a deal work for Wheel of Time - the biggest-selling epic fantasy series since Tolkien - so for a much less well-known, less-commercial show it's again unlikely to happen.

This is not going to be an animated project. It'll most likely be a mid-budget cable show which has been thoroughly rewritten to remove most (but not all) of the sexual content and will focus on the gritty, edgy end of things. I wouldn't be surprised to see this going to AMC or Starz on that basis.

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11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Lionsgate has picked up and is developing Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle as a TV show. It's unlikely they would double-dip into fantasy for something a lot less commercially appealing.

It's does not solve the major problems: adult animation is a very niche, very small audience. To crossover you need either something funny (Family Guy, South Park etc) or very cheap (Archer). Anime works because the Japanese audiences tune into it in reasonably large numbers and it sells to enthusiastic collectors around the world. To make that work for PoN, you'd need to sell it to a Japanese production company, which doesn't seem likely. They couldn't make a deal work for Wheel of Time - the biggest-selling epic fantasy series since Tolkien - so for a much less well-known, less-commercial show it's again unlikely to happen.

This is not going to be an animated project. It'll most likely be a mid-budget cable show which has been thoroughly rewritten to remove most (but not all) of the sexual content and will focus on the gritty, edgy end of things. I wouldn't be surprised to see this going to AMC or Starz on that basis.

If it turned out to be a mid-budget show then it is a failure.Adapting TWP will probably need money even more than GoT S6 budget.I am sure that whoever bought the rights knows this.

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Potentially. HBO waste a lot of money on their shows. They've never had a very efficient pipeline in choosing the most cost-efficient way to spend money because their budgets mean they don't have to. Other shows on much less money have made a lot of not very much and ended up with shows that cost a lot less and don't look a huge lot less in quality (The Walking Dead, with rather less than half of GoT's budget, is a good example).

Starz, AMC and Showtime are all pretty good at getting more bang for their buck than HBO. Whether that's enough for a project like this or you really need that massive amount of investment remains to be seen.

I'm actually wondering if Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) is still involved. He wanted to make a film based on the books and worked for a while towards that end, but The Golden Compass bombing took him out of contention. More recently he's done a lot of more successful work, including writing Star Wars: Rogue One, which might have given him the heft to get this project back on the drawing board.

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33 minutes ago, redeagl said:

If it turned out to be a mid-budget show then it is a failure.Adapting TWP will probably need money even more than GoT S6 budget.I am sure that whoever bought the rights knows this.

Dunno why this is constantly thought to be the case. Few named characters who are all in the same locations at the same time. Almost no real constant special effects - unlike direwolves or dragons, there's nothing that whenever it is on screen needs fx. Battles don't need to be special - heck, one of the biggest battles has Kellhus and cnaiur watching from a hilltop far away from the action. About the most fx laden shot is akka in the library.

As far as a TV show adaptation it can be pretty cheap due to the fewer locations and fewer actors.

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There's the Inchoroi and Synthese, but they barely show up. The skin-spies will actually probably be the most involved creature fx. PoN is mostly humans whacking humans. There are some big fx flashbacks to the No-God and so on, but nothing that's too massive. The final assault on Shimeh is pretty massive though, with sorcerers flying through the air and wreaking havoc.

Location filming will be the limiting factor due to cost, but that depends where they base production and how they handle the logistics of it.

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