The Daily Wire is adapting Stephen Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle into a seven-episode series titled The Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of Merlin, marking the conservative media company’s first venture into fantasy programming.
Lawhead knew there was a good chance the third book would be the last, so it had to do too many things at once: Conclude the Taliesin–Merlin mythic arc, provide emotional closure in case the series died (which it did), and soft-launch the Arthurian legend in case his publisher gave him the green light. These objectives were in conflict.
Arthur was just presented as complete instead of developed as character, because something had to go.
I'm hoping the TV series does well enough to justify telling Arthur's story the way Stephen Lawhead wanted to originally.
Really sharp analysis of why Lawhead's multi-generational structure is both a risk and an opportunity. The point about character-driven dialogue scenes being cheaper than CGI spectacle is somthing more studios should consider, especially when the source material leans into internal conflict. I've always thought the best adaptations happen when budget constraints force creative focus on what matters. The family-freindly angle might be the real differentiator here.
They'd have to get better writers, and slim the writing teams. I suspect that an unfortunate side effect of the writers strike getting more writers in the room is we have the problems that come with too many inputs, and too many differing views to reconcile instead of a singular vision.
Hope the they can pull this off, I remember reading the books back in the late 80s and loved them! If the series is successful maybe they'll put it out on DVD? I can't afford yet another monthly subscription :(
The material in the first two books is solid.
Arthur is kind of a problem.
Epic fantasy wasn't as big in a pre-Jordan world.
Lawhead knew there was a good chance the third book would be the last, so it had to do too many things at once: Conclude the Taliesin–Merlin mythic arc, provide emotional closure in case the series died (which it did), and soft-launch the Arthurian legend in case his publisher gave him the green light. These objectives were in conflict.
Arthur was just presented as complete instead of developed as character, because something had to go.
I'm hoping the TV series does well enough to justify telling Arthur's story the way Stephen Lawhead wanted to originally.
Really sharp analysis of why Lawhead's multi-generational structure is both a risk and an opportunity. The point about character-driven dialogue scenes being cheaper than CGI spectacle is somthing more studios should consider, especially when the source material leans into internal conflict. I've always thought the best adaptations happen when budget constraints force creative focus on what matters. The family-freindly angle might be the real differentiator here.
They'd have to get better writers, and slim the writing teams. I suspect that an unfortunate side effect of the writers strike getting more writers in the room is we have the problems that come with too many inputs, and too many differing views to reconcile instead of a singular vision.
Hope the they can pull this off, I remember reading the books back in the late 80s and loved them! If the series is successful maybe they'll put it out on DVD? I can't afford yet another monthly subscription :(
Sounds like it's their victory to lose!
For the sake of the stories if nothing else, hopefully the series is good enough to put hunger for the books in people.
It's always been a strange art, adaptation.