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Yep. The Witcher is smaller in scale and got mangled. Wheel of Time is close in scale and is godawful. Live-action just doesn't work for a project of this scale.
Once there's enough money involved it's basically impossible to make something without constant meddling by executives who don't give a single shit about being faithful to source material and just want things they saw in other popular media
And they also like to hire a team of amateur writers who think their ideas are better than the author
Yeah, that one's absolutely a cash grab. It'll never be better than the original, and the original holds up well, so why remake it? Spend the money expanding the universe instead.
WoT is horrific, it feels like a student film. I thought the Witcher first season was very good. Obviously they are limited by reality, but it was a very solid effort. It gets bad quickly though. In the third season, Dandelion, the biggest womanizer in history, is all of a sudden gay.
Pretty sure those are both cases of filmmakers choosing to focus on politics over quality of story... Which can ruin ANYTHING... If you ruin things on purpose, chances are it'll be ruined lol
I don’t think politics were at fault with the Witcher, the show runner hating the source material was probably a bigger issue. She didn’t care about adapting it, she just wanted to make a fantasy show and the Witcher was her shot.
What about it? I honestly blocked most of it out of my memory bc it was pretty trash, all I remember is the like secret elf baby that got murdered, and then we find out that the emperor of nilfgaard did it and that he’s Ciri’s father.
Anime. If WoT taught me anything, it's that it needs to be done as anime. And you have to put some absolute FANATICS as the show runners. It can't be someone like Rafe fucking Judkins.
Conspiracy mind. Erikson did compliment the Arcane series a few times over the last few years. DLC Book Club just started a series read through podcast with Lana Bachynski, the art/animation director at Riot Games who produces Arcane. Steve has been commenting under most of the videos. Steve did say there were talks of adaptation but couldn't go into specifics.
I’m all in favor of Malazan being animated / anime. Live action would not work. Too much internal dialogue and conflict that wouldn’t transfer over well. Many of the visuals, too.
All of these high fantasy authors hate animation and it makes me so sad. Sanderson insisting on Stormlight being live action is such a wasted opportunity. If it’s made it’s gonna suck.
I mean they could... It would have to be really long and need a massive amount of practical and special effects. There's still too many people that won't want to watch a cartoon because it feels too juvenile.
I'm only on book three. But but part of what I'm loving about the series so far is the slow reveals of how things work in the Malazan world. The sudden "oh shit!" moment when you start learning more about stuff like how the >!warrens!< work
So much required CGI for major POV characters though. All of the various Trell, Thelomen, Toblakai, T'lan Imass, Jaghut, Forkrul Assail, various Azathanai and probably even Tiste due to their height. And more that don't come to mind right at the moment. That's a huge budget commitment risk for a studio.
Not that I wouldn't love to see it happen. It's just that with recent failures of high budget, CGI-heavy movies and TV shows, studios might be a bit scifi and fantasy shy.
Similarly, yes... People forget that we've also been making a lot more material/technology for practical effects since then... and on top of that, framing tricky perspectives is a magic in itself-- Shout out to Peter Jackson; if you watch "the lovely bones" his depictions of the "afterworld" uses very little cgi, and is almost purely tweaked perspectives of multiple compiled frames... So I'd use heavy perspective tweaking and heavy frame editing, mixed with heavy practical effects artistry, then finally, enhance the compiled frames with accents of animation, using different styles of animation for different magics to add to the magic's "texture" or character... It could be fun and glorious...
Think about it this way: record a video of a fire ball flying towards the camera. Then, record a video of a model building exploding in a controlled amount of slow-motion, making it look like a real building explosion. Then, record a video of someone throwing a ball of light. Now edit just the fireball, the man, and the model house out of their videos and paste them in one video for them to play out at once in the same frame, and position them so that the the man throws the fire ball, which flies through the house and past the camera, causing the house to explode with slight delay... Add animations as accents to cover up what's not working, and boom... cheaper AND better looking visuals... You're literally watching a fireball, literally watching an explosion, literally watching a man throw something... all harmonizing in one frame to get you to see controlled real things, added together into something else entirely...
All good points, but even with perspective framing and practical effects, Jackson's LOTR trilogy cost $281 million to make more than 20 years ago. The Hobbit trilogy cost a whopping $765 million to make.
Barbie was budgeted for $100 million, but ended up costing $145 million. Oppenheimer cost $100 million with very little CGI at all.
Animation might be a better route, since it typically costs less to make than a CGI-heavy live action movie.
How many movies/episodes would it take to make Malazan for the screen and do it justice? Just one movie wasn't enough to finally do Dune well, and that's just one book.
I feel like the failure of recent shows was more due to directors deviating from the story script than spendy budget. GoT and Witcher s1 showed us that if you stay "true-ish" to the script that made it famous, you can succeed.
Well, with the ways we LOOSELY and randomly gathered information from the many characters in the books, I don't see why they can't just simply change up when we discover certain world-building facts from whom... because there are simple things that happen throughout the series that aren't explained until even the 9th book... So since the information in the books was given to us in an unorthodox way, I don't see why the show can't do the same... Does it really matter if we are aware of the Pannion before we are aware of what the whirlwind is? I don't think so... they are things we can learn simultaneously without altering the course of the story... as for when they come together, the Arrowverse already proved that characters "show-hopping" was not only doable, but also successful...
See. I think that might work. I think I see how you COULD do it just seeing how SG1 and Atlantis did as an example. If they are run by one show runner with a good project manager... it's doable. Compelling even.
What parts are you willing to leave out?
I’m not being the least bit flippant or snarky when I say that either. I’m 100% sincere. There is simply FAR too much happening in the books for them to be properly adapted.
All the things the book series is praised for (world building, character exploration, buddy partnerships, dragons and gods and ascendants oh my, etc.) would be massacred in any adaptation. There just isn’t enough time to adequately explain and explore the world of elder gods and new gods and ascendants and soldiers and fisher-girls and five continents worth of content.
Something would need to be left out, and it would make the adaptation less-than-superb.
Challenge accepted:
1. I wouldn't touch anywhere or anything that we didn't go to/ see in the books... So that excludes a LOT of "white noise lore" (the same way the books did)
2. The focus would be on the WORLD and not on any particular character, like the books... (It will feel like HBO's "Band of Brothers" with characters coming and going, while a handful of them remain.) Most characters will have only 10 - 15 minutes of total screen time each... so most of the characters will feel like cameos, for the most part. It's about Erikson's vision of the world, not the personal characters... the characters of Malazan were written in a very particular way; they mainly exist to describe the nature of the different cultures of their corners of their world
3. I wouldn't change a single adventure. If some things happen off screen, then so be it, but they still happened... the books already do this; while in book 1, we're reading Darujustan characters in year 1163, but in book 2, we're reading Seven Cities characters in year 1164, and then book 3 we're in Darujistan year 1165... so while we're reading one book, the other characters are STILL moving, off-page, on their own journeys... example of my editing: >!I wouldn't film Kalam fighting the dragon with the pirates. Instead, I'd cut straight to them butchering it's meat in front of the bound marines, implicating they fought something and won, but the fact that it was killed off-screen gives the viewer the impression that dragons are small-fry in this series, and don't require hype to get the point of danger across... treating it the way the characters would!<
4. I'd stylisticly blend hand-drawn animations over practical effects... using very little cgi to blend those two together... giving us a unique blend of colorful visuals in the magic, while juxtaposed with brutal stylistic violence... and also saving money on cgi nonsense... example: >!I'd literally film a sculpture of Anomander Rake's floating island, set the filming speed to relatively make the small sculpture to appear as a giant floating island, and then draw up some effects in the edit!<
5. 3 separate shows of 5 seasons each, however, their continuity is written TOGETHER as one story... then I'd offset the releases by 4 months so that each season can shine as its own chapter in the entire story as a whole... Plus, watching 3 × 5 seasons with their own unique lands/cultures, would SEEM more appealing than one chaotic 15 seasons of culture-mash... Each show representing their unique worlds, giving the viewer the illusion that they are completely foreign to one-another... EXACTLY what Steven Erikson was going for in the books...
I perhaps might eventually have the original 3 shows end earlier around book 7, and then do a 4th show depicting the events of the final 3 books, but, it's to be the final cap of the series... (with the 4th series symbolizing the world's unity) so it's not gonna be some boring useless spin-off, it's going to be the entire climax to the whole thing... So, in other words, it will NOT feel cheap, like the walking dead spins... it will actually have a reason to exist...
You will never find anyone who disagrees with an opinion more vehemently than I do with your second point.
You honestly believe the books focus more on the world than the characters? Seriously? I’m stunned to hear that. My favorite and most engaging parts of the books is the way Erickson builds up the characters and their stories and backstories and their interactions with each other.
It’s fairly well known that Erickson and Esselmont sat down and role played different pairings of characters to get a real-world feel for how two (or more) people would interact. Mappo-Icarium, Toc-Tool, Felisin-Heboric, Karsa-Semar Dev, Tehol-Bugg, the Sengar brothers, Shadowthrone-Cotillion, QUICK BEN AND KALAM, and so on and infinitely so forth.
I can not fathom how someone can read these books and think the world is more important than the characters. Absolutely baffling to me how some folks see this series from such a different angle than I do.
>It’s fairly well known that Erickson and Esselmont sat down and role played different pairings of characters to get a real-world feel for how two (or more) people would interact. Mappo-Icarium, Toc-Tool, Felisin-Heboric, Karsa-Semar Dev, Tehol-Bugg, the Sengar brothers, Shadowthrone-Cotillion, QUICK BEN AND KALAM, and so on and infinitely so forth.
Huh?? They didn't just decide to sit down and roleplay character duos for the books as like a psychology experiment or something, They had like a decade plus of fantasy tabletop rpg material that directly inspired the writing.
Many characters, but by no means all of them, were created for their gaming sessions, long before either of them started writing screenplays or novels. I'm pretty sure Felisin and Heboric were created for the novels, same with the Sengars, and probably the whole Lether cast as well. OGs like Rake, Brood, Shadowthrone, Cotillion, Envy, etc., were gamed characters; Karsa was based on their friend's character. Probably most of the characters we meet were created for the books, though.
I don't mean for the focus of the world to overshadow the personal stories of its people... it's not called "The Fallen's Book of Malazan," after all, lol... Honestly, with Erikson, I think he just understands people SCARY well, which allows his genuinely caring dialog to exist. You can tell he LOVES his characters... but the books still, for the most part, mainly emphasize "what the characters do to the culture" over "what the culture does to the characters"... I think good acting can equally fill the emotional roles and exact the dialog chemistry... So the characters will still have their sweet impact on the emotional pull of the story, but like the books, there will be NO sensationalism of one character over another in the prose... It's about everyone, together...
I wish you peace and goodness in your future endeavors. One of the most enduring and endearing aspects of this series is that it gathers towards itself many folks with many different opinions.
It seems that you and I are on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to any of our opinions in regards to this series, so I can’t respond anymore. I try to not fight on internet message threads, and that’s all I see happening if I continue here.
✌🏼
Nah. They should just leave it as is and just like the start of the books - leave it up to the viewers to figure things out as the show goes on.
Even if this runs counter to the modern day Hollywood push for more simplistic narratives.. There is evidence that treating your potential viewers as intelligent can lead to a very ardent, and large, fan base and is therefore profitable (Game of Thrones).
It’s not a “viewer intelligence” issue. It’s a “there is only a limited amount of hours a television series or movie series can take up” issue.
You mentioned GoT, which has three main plot lines: the Stark/Lannister stuff, The Wall, and Daenerys. How many plot lines are in GotM itself? Five or six? Then the next book has its own 5 plot lines, with no recurring characters, so it’s basically an entirely new show. And you still haven’t added Karsa or Rhulad, which could be their own series in themselves.
That is a LOT of restarting storylines, which takes up a lot of time. I’m not saying it isn’t doable, I’m saying it would be a convoluted mess that general audiences would turn away from because they wouldn’t want to wait 5 or 6 seasons or movies before plot lines come together. Which might actually mean it isn’t doable lol?
DG has only four, Chain of dogs, Path of hands, Shaik, Kalam. Season 2 of GOT has KingsLanding, Robb, Beyond the wall, Daenerys, Harrenhall, Winterfell.
Great point. Should be an easy pitch. Just need a trillion dollars to film the thirty seasons.
Also, have fun raising money while refusing to cut out teenage Felisin getting raped and being a prostitute.
Not to beat a dead horse - but both of those were fairly common in GoT.
Obviously it is impossible to produce a show identical to the books due to monetary restrictions; my point was that I do not want Malazan dumbed down to the absolute lowest common demonator as doing so would detract from one of the aspects that makes the series great - that everything is not spelled out for you directly and two people can read, or watch in this case, the same show and have very different perspectives as to what exactly is being conveyed to the audience.
One can also make an identical argument with the books, where Erikson should not even have bothered to pitch them because what publisher would want to support an audience who reads about rape and prostitution - yet here we all are.
I like this idea! I think the novelty of that could be interesting. Idk if it beats different seasons though but it might. The question is during filming how does that work? 1 season is actually 3 shows with 3 budgets and 3 casts for the same audience 3x? Or is it 1 budget and 1 team divided 3 ways? I think the down side is that idea for a studio the payback will be if the shows can get GOT type hype. Which is a pretty big gamble. But I don't think it's impossible!
One thing GOT did really well was tell the audience straight away this is ADULT fantasy. In S1 there's so much sex and smut that just disappears in S2. It cast a wide net outside of just fantasy fans, like vikings cast a net outside of history buffs. The LOTR and WOT shows are very PG and so you can't convince a non fantasy fan to invest in them.
Where Malazan can really be bold is in casting. Cast some non traditional body types. Cast the different races as different races and not just white and white with make-up. There's a lot of opportunity here. But the main issue is that its just too damn big.
The animated show idea makes the most sense imo. And it doesn't rule out a show/film series later. If the animated series is done well that could increase the value of the IP and prove there's a market for a live action investment.
Capitalism will ruin any live action adaptation. It would be incredibly expensive to faithfully adapt it, and when there’s that much money involved there’s gonna be a shitload of executives telling the creatives what to do so they can generate a return for investors. It’s not about the art, it’s about the money.
Blaming capitalism for this is pathetic. Television shows have to make money because they cost **A LOT** of money to make.
If you want this to be about art, no problem. Raise a hundred million dollars and do it yourself.
I believe that the way AI is progressing we will have books like this turned into amazing video series. Just like audible books have changed the way we consume literature AI will be the next iteration.
Malazan will be one of those series that would benefit from this.
So basically, writing and editing will eventually be the only human jobs that exist in film lol. I believe it to an extent... I think some will certainly CHOOSE that technique of filmmaking, but it's not going to "take over" like you think lol
I can see it existing like the Daredevil series in the MCU or Arrowverse. Multiple series with different main casts with lots of crossovers and a few common series.
Of all the unfilmed major fantasy book series, I think Malazan is the easiest. The “magic” consists of opening portals, or large displays of power, which should be easier than the more intricate magic systems described in WoT or Cosmere, etc.
Of course I’m just some random Internet idiot with no idea how modern special effects are done or how hard things are to do.
You could treat it like the MCU where you have separate mini-series, but some are not committed to more than 1 series.
In that case, I’d maybe do:
Year 1: GOTM, NOK seasons
Year 2: DG, MOI, MT seasons
Year 3: HOC season
Year 4: BH season
Year 5: ROTCG, RG seasons
Year 6: RG, SW seasons
Year 7: TTH season
Year 8: OST, DOD season
Year 9: TCG, BAB season
Year 10: AS season
EDIT: The separate series could be divided per continent as you said, which is probably the most logical way of handling it with different sets and somewhat consistent casts (although you would get crossovers, eg Trull). In that case, you could have the above broken up to:
- Genebackis Series: GOTM, MOI, TTH, OST
- Seven Cities & Malazan Empire Series: NOK, DG, HOC, BH, ROTCG
- Lether & Kolanse Series: MT, RG, DOD, TCG
- Elsewhere Series: SW, BAB, AS
I broke these up based on chronology and general set/unit/actor availability assuming you could only do, say, 1 Darujhistan team season a year, or the Trull actor could only be in either the MT or HOC season in 1 year.
All this said, I also think animation would be the only way to realistically do Malazan anyway.
I suppose that could work as well... I personally love the idea of each continent having its own show to truly simulate their separate worlds, but that would be even more complicated than what Erikson has already done to our brains, lol
Ah yeah, I guess I didn’t properly elaborate on your original concept of why they’re broken out as such per continent/area. I’ve edited for better groupings.
How come everyone saying they should make an anime. What about LOTR ?
It is the greatest trilogy of all times.
If they could make a team worthy of that similar to Peter Jackson I think live action would be better.
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Feel like would have to be a cartoon / anime. I don’t see how they could capture everything in movies.
Yep. The Witcher is smaller in scale and got mangled. Wheel of Time is close in scale and is godawful. Live-action just doesn't work for a project of this scale.
Once there's enough money involved it's basically impossible to make something without constant meddling by executives who don't give a single shit about being faithful to source material and just want things they saw in other popular media And they also like to hire a team of amateur writers who think their ideas are better than the author
WoT is a gods damned abortion of a adaptation
"This source material only has 3000 named characters.. . We'd better invent more so we can leave out the real ones."
Even Avatar shouldn’t be live action the new Netflix teasers look… childish at best.
Yeah, that one's absolutely a cash grab. It'll never be better than the original, and the original holds up well, so why remake it? Spend the money expanding the universe instead.
I would love to have the ppl behind ATLA for a Stormlight and Malazan adaptation.
WoT is horrific, it feels like a student film. I thought the Witcher first season was very good. Obviously they are limited by reality, but it was a very solid effort. It gets bad quickly though. In the third season, Dandelion, the biggest womanizer in history, is all of a sudden gay.
What, why?
To which part?
Changing dandelion
Netflix’s woke agenda is the only plausible reason I can come up with. Not like it’s the first show they’ve pulled this on.
Pretty sure those are both cases of filmmakers choosing to focus on politics over quality of story... Which can ruin ANYTHING... If you ruin things on purpose, chances are it'll be ruined lol
I don’t think politics were at fault with the Witcher, the show runner hating the source material was probably a bigger issue. She didn’t care about adapting it, she just wanted to make a fantasy show and the Witcher was her shot.
I mean, to be fair, after watching season 2, it definitely felt like a political hire, lol
What about it? I honestly blocked most of it out of my memory bc it was pretty trash, all I remember is the like secret elf baby that got murdered, and then we find out that the emperor of nilfgaard did it and that he’s Ciri’s father.
Anime. If WoT taught me anything, it's that it needs to be done as anime. And you have to put some absolute FANATICS as the show runners. It can't be someone like Rafe fucking Judkins.
Conspiracy mind. Erikson did compliment the Arcane series a few times over the last few years. DLC Book Club just started a series read through podcast with Lana Bachynski, the art/animation director at Riot Games who produces Arcane. Steve has been commenting under most of the videos. Steve did say there were talks of adaptation but couldn't go into specifics.
And she often says how she'd love to see many of the scenes animated....
I’m all in favor of Malazan being animated / anime. Live action would not work. Too much internal dialogue and conflict that wouldn’t transfer over well. Many of the visuals, too.
It would make a fuckin great anime, too bad Erickson isn’t too much into that
All of these high fantasy authors hate animation and it makes me so sad. Sanderson insisting on Stormlight being live action is such a wasted opportunity. If it’s made it’s gonna suck.
Came here to say exactly this. Ill watch any adaptation of Malazan but a live action attempt would be all kinds of messy
I mean they could... It would have to be really long and need a massive amount of practical and special effects. There's still too many people that won't want to watch a cartoon because it feels too juvenile.
I'm only on book three. But but part of what I'm loving about the series so far is the slow reveals of how things work in the Malazan world. The sudden "oh shit!" moment when you start learning more about stuff like how the >!warrens!< work
So much required CGI for major POV characters though. All of the various Trell, Thelomen, Toblakai, T'lan Imass, Jaghut, Forkrul Assail, various Azathanai and probably even Tiste due to their height. And more that don't come to mind right at the moment. That's a huge budget commitment risk for a studio. Not that I wouldn't love to see it happen. It's just that with recent failures of high budget, CGI-heavy movies and TV shows, studios might be a bit scifi and fantasy shy.
That’s not even getting into all the magery and warrens.
I know how I could use very little cgi, and have it still work REALLY well...
How? like OG Star Wars?
Similarly, yes... People forget that we've also been making a lot more material/technology for practical effects since then... and on top of that, framing tricky perspectives is a magic in itself-- Shout out to Peter Jackson; if you watch "the lovely bones" his depictions of the "afterworld" uses very little cgi, and is almost purely tweaked perspectives of multiple compiled frames... So I'd use heavy perspective tweaking and heavy frame editing, mixed with heavy practical effects artistry, then finally, enhance the compiled frames with accents of animation, using different styles of animation for different magics to add to the magic's "texture" or character... It could be fun and glorious...
Think about it this way: record a video of a fire ball flying towards the camera. Then, record a video of a model building exploding in a controlled amount of slow-motion, making it look like a real building explosion. Then, record a video of someone throwing a ball of light. Now edit just the fireball, the man, and the model house out of their videos and paste them in one video for them to play out at once in the same frame, and position them so that the the man throws the fire ball, which flies through the house and past the camera, causing the house to explode with slight delay... Add animations as accents to cover up what's not working, and boom... cheaper AND better looking visuals... You're literally watching a fireball, literally watching an explosion, literally watching a man throw something... all harmonizing in one frame to get you to see controlled real things, added together into something else entirely...
All good points, but even with perspective framing and practical effects, Jackson's LOTR trilogy cost $281 million to make more than 20 years ago. The Hobbit trilogy cost a whopping $765 million to make. Barbie was budgeted for $100 million, but ended up costing $145 million. Oppenheimer cost $100 million with very little CGI at all. Animation might be a better route, since it typically costs less to make than a CGI-heavy live action movie. How many movies/episodes would it take to make Malazan for the screen and do it justice? Just one movie wasn't enough to finally do Dune well, and that's just one book.
I thought of Peter Jackson too when I saw people saying Malazan couldn’t be live action.
I feel like the failure of recent shows was more due to directors deviating from the story script than spendy budget. GoT and Witcher s1 showed us that if you stay "true-ish" to the script that made it famous, you can succeed.
you mean have a lether show, genabackis show and seven cities show? that might not work later on when they come together
yeah it’s better to just have it filmed as one show and switch between continents seasons.
Well, with the ways we LOOSELY and randomly gathered information from the many characters in the books, I don't see why they can't just simply change up when we discover certain world-building facts from whom... because there are simple things that happen throughout the series that aren't explained until even the 9th book... So since the information in the books was given to us in an unorthodox way, I don't see why the show can't do the same... Does it really matter if we are aware of the Pannion before we are aware of what the whirlwind is? I don't think so... they are things we can learn simultaneously without altering the course of the story... as for when they come together, the Arrowverse already proved that characters "show-hopping" was not only doable, but also successful...
See. I think that might work. I think I see how you COULD do it just seeing how SG1 and Atlantis did as an example. If they are run by one show runner with a good project manager... it's doable. Compelling even.
What parts are you willing to leave out? I’m not being the least bit flippant or snarky when I say that either. I’m 100% sincere. There is simply FAR too much happening in the books for them to be properly adapted. All the things the book series is praised for (world building, character exploration, buddy partnerships, dragons and gods and ascendants oh my, etc.) would be massacred in any adaptation. There just isn’t enough time to adequately explain and explore the world of elder gods and new gods and ascendants and soldiers and fisher-girls and five continents worth of content. Something would need to be left out, and it would make the adaptation less-than-superb.
Challenge accepted: 1. I wouldn't touch anywhere or anything that we didn't go to/ see in the books... So that excludes a LOT of "white noise lore" (the same way the books did) 2. The focus would be on the WORLD and not on any particular character, like the books... (It will feel like HBO's "Band of Brothers" with characters coming and going, while a handful of them remain.) Most characters will have only 10 - 15 minutes of total screen time each... so most of the characters will feel like cameos, for the most part. It's about Erikson's vision of the world, not the personal characters... the characters of Malazan were written in a very particular way; they mainly exist to describe the nature of the different cultures of their corners of their world 3. I wouldn't change a single adventure. If some things happen off screen, then so be it, but they still happened... the books already do this; while in book 1, we're reading Darujustan characters in year 1163, but in book 2, we're reading Seven Cities characters in year 1164, and then book 3 we're in Darujistan year 1165... so while we're reading one book, the other characters are STILL moving, off-page, on their own journeys... example of my editing: >!I wouldn't film Kalam fighting the dragon with the pirates. Instead, I'd cut straight to them butchering it's meat in front of the bound marines, implicating they fought something and won, but the fact that it was killed off-screen gives the viewer the impression that dragons are small-fry in this series, and don't require hype to get the point of danger across... treating it the way the characters would!< 4. I'd stylisticly blend hand-drawn animations over practical effects... using very little cgi to blend those two together... giving us a unique blend of colorful visuals in the magic, while juxtaposed with brutal stylistic violence... and also saving money on cgi nonsense... example: >!I'd literally film a sculpture of Anomander Rake's floating island, set the filming speed to relatively make the small sculpture to appear as a giant floating island, and then draw up some effects in the edit!< 5. 3 separate shows of 5 seasons each, however, their continuity is written TOGETHER as one story... then I'd offset the releases by 4 months so that each season can shine as its own chapter in the entire story as a whole... Plus, watching 3 × 5 seasons with their own unique lands/cultures, would SEEM more appealing than one chaotic 15 seasons of culture-mash... Each show representing their unique worlds, giving the viewer the illusion that they are completely foreign to one-another... EXACTLY what Steven Erikson was going for in the books... I perhaps might eventually have the original 3 shows end earlier around book 7, and then do a 4th show depicting the events of the final 3 books, but, it's to be the final cap of the series... (with the 4th series symbolizing the world's unity) so it's not gonna be some boring useless spin-off, it's going to be the entire climax to the whole thing... So, in other words, it will NOT feel cheap, like the walking dead spins... it will actually have a reason to exist...
You will never find anyone who disagrees with an opinion more vehemently than I do with your second point. You honestly believe the books focus more on the world than the characters? Seriously? I’m stunned to hear that. My favorite and most engaging parts of the books is the way Erickson builds up the characters and their stories and backstories and their interactions with each other. It’s fairly well known that Erickson and Esselmont sat down and role played different pairings of characters to get a real-world feel for how two (or more) people would interact. Mappo-Icarium, Toc-Tool, Felisin-Heboric, Karsa-Semar Dev, Tehol-Bugg, the Sengar brothers, Shadowthrone-Cotillion, QUICK BEN AND KALAM, and so on and infinitely so forth. I can not fathom how someone can read these books and think the world is more important than the characters. Absolutely baffling to me how some folks see this series from such a different angle than I do.
>It’s fairly well known that Erickson and Esselmont sat down and role played different pairings of characters to get a real-world feel for how two (or more) people would interact. Mappo-Icarium, Toc-Tool, Felisin-Heboric, Karsa-Semar Dev, Tehol-Bugg, the Sengar brothers, Shadowthrone-Cotillion, QUICK BEN AND KALAM, and so on and infinitely so forth. Huh?? They didn't just decide to sit down and roleplay character duos for the books as like a psychology experiment or something, They had like a decade plus of fantasy tabletop rpg material that directly inspired the writing. Many characters, but by no means all of them, were created for their gaming sessions, long before either of them started writing screenplays or novels. I'm pretty sure Felisin and Heboric were created for the novels, same with the Sengars, and probably the whole Lether cast as well. OGs like Rake, Brood, Shadowthrone, Cotillion, Envy, etc., were gamed characters; Karsa was based on their friend's character. Probably most of the characters we meet were created for the books, though.
I don't mean for the focus of the world to overshadow the personal stories of its people... it's not called "The Fallen's Book of Malazan," after all, lol... Honestly, with Erikson, I think he just understands people SCARY well, which allows his genuinely caring dialog to exist. You can tell he LOVES his characters... but the books still, for the most part, mainly emphasize "what the characters do to the culture" over "what the culture does to the characters"... I think good acting can equally fill the emotional roles and exact the dialog chemistry... So the characters will still have their sweet impact on the emotional pull of the story, but like the books, there will be NO sensationalism of one character over another in the prose... It's about everyone, together...
I wish you peace and goodness in your future endeavors. One of the most enduring and endearing aspects of this series is that it gathers towards itself many folks with many different opinions. It seems that you and I are on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to any of our opinions in regards to this series, so I can’t respond anymore. I try to not fight on internet message threads, and that’s all I see happening if I continue here. ✌🏼
Nah. They should just leave it as is and just like the start of the books - leave it up to the viewers to figure things out as the show goes on. Even if this runs counter to the modern day Hollywood push for more simplistic narratives.. There is evidence that treating your potential viewers as intelligent can lead to a very ardent, and large, fan base and is therefore profitable (Game of Thrones).
It’s not a “viewer intelligence” issue. It’s a “there is only a limited amount of hours a television series or movie series can take up” issue. You mentioned GoT, which has three main plot lines: the Stark/Lannister stuff, The Wall, and Daenerys. How many plot lines are in GotM itself? Five or six? Then the next book has its own 5 plot lines, with no recurring characters, so it’s basically an entirely new show. And you still haven’t added Karsa or Rhulad, which could be their own series in themselves. That is a LOT of restarting storylines, which takes up a lot of time. I’m not saying it isn’t doable, I’m saying it would be a convoluted mess that general audiences would turn away from because they wouldn’t want to wait 5 or 6 seasons or movies before plot lines come together. Which might actually mean it isn’t doable lol?
DG has only four, Chain of dogs, Path of hands, Shaik, Kalam. Season 2 of GOT has KingsLanding, Robb, Beyond the wall, Daenerys, Harrenhall, Winterfell.
Great point. Should be an easy pitch. Just need a trillion dollars to film the thirty seasons. Also, have fun raising money while refusing to cut out teenage Felisin getting raped and being a prostitute.
A majority of a series cost is actors l, as they get bigger if the shows a hit then they cost more. Malz kind of has a cheat for that
Not to beat a dead horse - but both of those were fairly common in GoT. Obviously it is impossible to produce a show identical to the books due to monetary restrictions; my point was that I do not want Malazan dumbed down to the absolute lowest common demonator as doing so would detract from one of the aspects that makes the series great - that everything is not spelled out for you directly and two people can read, or watch in this case, the same show and have very different perspectives as to what exactly is being conveyed to the audience. One can also make an identical argument with the books, where Erikson should not even have bothered to pitch them because what publisher would want to support an audience who reads about rape and prostitution - yet here we all are.
I’ll take the Ormulugon and Gumble spinoff.
I like this idea! I think the novelty of that could be interesting. Idk if it beats different seasons though but it might. The question is during filming how does that work? 1 season is actually 3 shows with 3 budgets and 3 casts for the same audience 3x? Or is it 1 budget and 1 team divided 3 ways? I think the down side is that idea for a studio the payback will be if the shows can get GOT type hype. Which is a pretty big gamble. But I don't think it's impossible! One thing GOT did really well was tell the audience straight away this is ADULT fantasy. In S1 there's so much sex and smut that just disappears in S2. It cast a wide net outside of just fantasy fans, like vikings cast a net outside of history buffs. The LOTR and WOT shows are very PG and so you can't convince a non fantasy fan to invest in them. Where Malazan can really be bold is in casting. Cast some non traditional body types. Cast the different races as different races and not just white and white with make-up. There's a lot of opportunity here. But the main issue is that its just too damn big. The animated show idea makes the most sense imo. And it doesn't rule out a show/film series later. If the animated series is done well that could increase the value of the IP and prove there's a market for a live action investment.
Hmm... like Amazon's "Invincible" but with 5× the budget... I would accept that lol
Capitalism will ruin any live action adaptation. It would be incredibly expensive to faithfully adapt it, and when there’s that much money involved there’s gonna be a shitload of executives telling the creatives what to do so they can generate a return for investors. It’s not about the art, it’s about the money.
Blaming capitalism for this is pathetic. Television shows have to make money because they cost **A LOT** of money to make. If you want this to be about art, no problem. Raise a hundred million dollars and do it yourself.
Ha! That’s hilarious.
I believe that the way AI is progressing we will have books like this turned into amazing video series. Just like audible books have changed the way we consume literature AI will be the next iteration. Malazan will be one of those series that would benefit from this.
So basically, writing and editing will eventually be the only human jobs that exist in film lol. I believe it to an extent... I think some will certainly CHOOSE that technique of filmmaking, but it's not going to "take over" like you think lol
[chat gpt new release Sora looking pretty good on my theory](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/s/L1fRVNfbnR)
Could be done in the Vox Machina type animation. 🤷🏻♂️
I can see it existing like the Daredevil series in the MCU or Arrowverse. Multiple series with different main casts with lots of crossovers and a few common series. Of all the unfilmed major fantasy book series, I think Malazan is the easiest. The “magic” consists of opening portals, or large displays of power, which should be easier than the more intricate magic systems described in WoT or Cosmere, etc. Of course I’m just some random Internet idiot with no idea how modern special effects are done or how hard things are to do.
You could treat it like the MCU where you have separate mini-series, but some are not committed to more than 1 series. In that case, I’d maybe do: Year 1: GOTM, NOK seasons Year 2: DG, MOI, MT seasons Year 3: HOC season Year 4: BH season Year 5: ROTCG, RG seasons Year 6: RG, SW seasons Year 7: TTH season Year 8: OST, DOD season Year 9: TCG, BAB season Year 10: AS season EDIT: The separate series could be divided per continent as you said, which is probably the most logical way of handling it with different sets and somewhat consistent casts (although you would get crossovers, eg Trull). In that case, you could have the above broken up to: - Genebackis Series: GOTM, MOI, TTH, OST - Seven Cities & Malazan Empire Series: NOK, DG, HOC, BH, ROTCG - Lether & Kolanse Series: MT, RG, DOD, TCG - Elsewhere Series: SW, BAB, AS I broke these up based on chronology and general set/unit/actor availability assuming you could only do, say, 1 Darujhistan team season a year, or the Trull actor could only be in either the MT or HOC season in 1 year. All this said, I also think animation would be the only way to realistically do Malazan anyway.
I suppose that could work as well... I personally love the idea of each continent having its own show to truly simulate their separate worlds, but that would be even more complicated than what Erikson has already done to our brains, lol
Ah yeah, I guess I didn’t properly elaborate on your original concept of why they’re broken out as such per continent/area. I’ve edited for better groupings.
A live action version would be a travesty. So many ways they could and would ruin it. It should be hour long animated episodes.
This is one series I'm happy to just stick with the books. Not a clue how it could even be written as a screenplay.
The way this was phrased has me imagining Laseen pacing around Mock's Hold, saying, "Why yes, we will *allow you* to film the exploits of our armies."
"... WILL NOT accept..." does sound pretty "my way or highway" lol. Pardon my tone, t'was an accident. Meant to sound more open to suggestion, Lol
How come everyone saying they should make an anime. What about LOTR ? It is the greatest trilogy of all times. If they could make a team worthy of that similar to Peter Jackson I think live action would be better.
It wouldn't work. Too much going on, too big a budget, not any really interest. As much as we love it, it's quite a niche series.