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The TV version of China Mieville's THE CITY AND THE CITY


Werthead

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3 hours ago, Zorral said:

This doesn't interest me at all.  If it was Perdido Street Station that was to be a series, I'd be there, wearing all enthusiasm!

I think we can comfortably say this is will never happen, unless it turns out that Bezos is a massive Mieville fan and orders Amazon to make an adaptation with a budget of $40 million per episode.

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4 hours ago, Zorral said:

This doesn't interest me at all.  If it was Perdido Street Station that was to be a series, I'd be there, wearing all enthusiasm!

Small steps, I'd say. See if this works and if popular enough they can consider bigger leaps. I know when I've asked where to start with Mieville a lot of people have said "The city and the city" is an easier entry point to his style.

34 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think we can comfortably say this is will never happen, unless it turns out that Bezos is a massive Mieville fan and orders Amazon to make an adaptation with a budget of $40 million per episode.

At this point I wonder whether people send him copies of their books in the hope he'll get a show greenlit? Maybe we need to send him some copies of "the first law" or something from Robin Hobb's "elderlings" series?

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I wonder why Hobb hasn’t been optioned. Farseer has to be the cheapest to adapt fantasy around. Mental magics, Viking type setting. Dragons don’t turn up until the second trilogy.

With Mieville, if you’re working up to PSS, it would have to be like the last one adapted. Kraken and King Rat are pretty easy, Embassytown would be doable.  Railsea and Un Lun Dun more challenging.  And all the Bas Lag books would need a lot of cash thrown at them.

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45 minutes ago, john said:

I wonder why Hobb hasn’t been optioned. Farseer has to be the cheapest to adapt fantasy around. Mental magics, Viking type setting. Dragons don’t turn up until the second trilogy.

With Mieville, if you’re working up to PSS, it would have to be like the last one adapted. Kraken and King Rat are pretty easy, Embassytown would be doable.  Railsea and Un Lun Dun more challenging.  And all the Bas Lag books would need a lot of cash thrown at them.


I suspect Hobb just moves too slowly for anyone to want to risk it.

The Bas-Lag books are technically easy to adapt- far more so than The City & The City actually- but, yes, expensive. Until recently I'd have said they're far more likely to see films than TV shows if it ever happened, but the production values are catching up.


 

 

21 hours ago, red snow said:

At this point I wonder whether people send him copies of their books in the hope he'll get a show greenlit? Maybe we need to send him some copies of "the first law" or something from Robin Hobb's "elderlings" series?


First Law should be a series of films directed by Matthew Vaughn.

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1 hour ago, john said:

I wonder why Hobb hasn’t been optioned. Farseer has to be the cheapest to adapt fantasy around. Mental magics, Viking type setting. Dragons don’t turn up until the second trilogy.

 

I'm halfway through the liveships and it feels like it would be such a good TV option. They'd have to splash out on the figurehead SFX but the rest wouldn't be too bad once they have the sets and the pacing seems well suited to TV. I think it'd be a better TV option. Farseer is also good but focuses heavily on a teenager as the lead and the third book is very trippy.

55 minutes ago, polishgenius said:


I suspect Hobb just moves too slowly for anyone to want to risk it.

The Bas-Lag books are technically easy to adapt- far more so than The City & The City actually- but, yes, expensive. Until recently I'd have said they're far more likely to see films than TV shows if it ever happened, but the production values are catching up.


 

 


First Law should be a series of films directed by Matthew Vaughn.

The BBC might be able to do a team up with netflix/amazon if it looks like there is a market for new weird on TV.

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Robin Hobb is very popular but her books are long, drawn-out and slow. Doing something like Liveships would be very expensive but Farseer would require someone bringing in an unusual pitch to make it work. If you adapted Farseer without the character introspection, you're going to be losing a lot of what sets the series apart, but the introspection and resulting slow pace could kill the project.

 

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First Law should be a series of films directed by Matthew Vaughn.

 

First Law is under an exploratory option, which means someone has paid Joe some money to do something with it as an early proof of concept. It's not even at the formal proper optioning stage. We only know about it because some doofus left the blinds open in their office in LA (apparently on the Sony lot, but it's not Sony) and someone walked past and snapped some pictures.

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5 hours ago, john said:

I wonder why Hobb hasn’t been optioned. Farseer has to be the cheapest to adapt fantasy around. Mental magics, Viking type setting. Dragons don’t turn up until the second trilogy.

With Mieville, if you’re working up to PSS, it would have to be like the last one adapted. Kraken and King Rat are pretty easy, Embassytown would be doable.  Railsea and Un Lun Dun more challenging.  And all the Bas Lag books would need a lot of cash thrown at them.

In addition to what others have said about Hobb, she is not particularly interested in a tv/film adaptation herself. I’m sure it could happen if she’s was offered the money but I doubt it’s something she would actively pursue 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I saw the first episode tonight at a special screening in London. It was excellent.

Although I was a bit worried the way they stumbled into the exposition at the start and the addition of Tyador's wife as a character, but then the way that worked was spectacular, so that won me over. David Morrissey is, of course, outstanding and the way they turn Liverpool and Manchester into the twin cities is amazing.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 27-3-2018 at 2:36 PM, red snow said:

I'll never understand BBC's shock tactics when it comes to announcing the launch of their shows. Surely they have a better knowledge of their schedules than just over a week?

 

LoL, shock tactics is the right word for it indeed. Stuff does come out, you have to give them that, they do produce at a good pace, with varying quality. But their advance notice is almost non-existent, it is comical.

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On 30/03/2018 at 10:46 PM, Calibandar said:

LoL, shock tactics is the right word for it indeed. Stuff does come out, you have to give them that, they do produce at a good pace, with varying quality. But their advance notice is almost non-existent, it is comical.

Yeah, it's almost like they'd rather we watch on iPlayer as there must be people miss the live premier of shows.

Hollywood could save a fortune of promotion costs with the BBC approach. Avengers infinity - out next week. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've just binge watched the whole thing and I really liked it.

David Morrissey does a great job. The other main cast members all do their share too.

Overall, I really enjoyed the way it looked and felt. I think they handled the whole unseeing thing as well as they possibly could have. The effects they chose work to show two different overlapping places and how people in the two places feel and react. But on top of that there is a lot of imagery and presentation which backs up this overlapping sensation, with reflection, shadowing, fractured images, odd angles, partial images etc. Good stuff.

 

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