[Mythodikal]

Hey all,

First off, it seems like a spoilers title isn't needed in this thread, but just in case ****SPOILERS*** of a few books anyway.

Second, if this post is supposed to be somewhere else, sorry about that, I looked around and didn't see anything so I thought I would start a thread...

There are two elements that brought this topic to mind for me, the first being all of the talk about what the first season of the upcoming Wheel of Time series on Amazon is going to entail. All I'll say that might be a potential ***spoiler*** for that series is that the content from book to book is pretty straight line. We all know that the MBotF series is not at all that way! So that made me think, where this other series is so worried about whether the 2nd book is going to be part of the 1st season, or all of it.... how would you break up the MBotF for a TV series?

First, and easiest answer is that I think that Gardens of the Moon is a fine stand alone first season. It was originally created as a screen play after all.

Obviously the second season is where things start getting complicated... I originally thought that I had it all sorted with the simple idea of combining Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice and it was just that simple, divide them over 2 seasons. Then I thought about it further... If you do the back and forth of the two over two seasons, then you still kind of end up with the End of the Chain of the Dogs and Black Coral at the end of the 3rd season. Because of that time frame I was thinking that those two super important books could be split into three seasons. That would mean that season 2 through 4 would encompass those two books. I see season 2 as a lot of the first half of MoI with an introduction into seven cities. I see season 2 ending with the end of the siege of Capustan. Season 3 would have some of the politics of the march of the Genebakis allies, with some of the great back stories of many of the characters but would mostly focus on seven cities and the Chain of the Dogs.

Season 4 would be mostly focused MoI, of which I would want to finish with Black Coral. With that said, I would want to get into House of Chains a bit.

Season 5 I would want to start to get into Midnight Tides with the big finale being the final battle at Shaiks camp.

Season 6 is where things get tricky,,, I would want a large portion of the story to be focused on the taking of Letharas by the Edur, but I think the Bonehunters and Yghatan might be the best finale. Game of Thrones definitely set a precendent that you can do back to back finales so they could go back and forth.

Season 7 I think we flesh out the Letheri situation, the Rhulad champions situation, you do the last half of the Bonehunters, and maybe you start to bring Darujhistan into the picture. I see you likely cutting a lot of the Awl story, and a lot of the fringe stories about whats going on in Lether. Finale would be the whole battle in Malaz City.

Season 8. Depending on how much you are able to get of the Letheras situation in, maybe you do the first couple of episodes building the Toll the Hounds story line, but bring back the Letheras story line with a half season big episode of the big invasion by the Malazans, or like mentioned before have a 2 episode finale focusing on different things. One being Beak and the taking of Letheras then the next episode finishing with the joining of powers in Darujhistan that absolutely killed at the end of Toll the Hounds.

Before I get into season 9 & 10... well you have probably noticed I haven't included anything about the Tiste Andii story line... Well that is because it is sooo boring! That story line could be brought into the final two seasons, along with many of the other story lines that totally miss any entertaining mark. The whole Shore story line was really good... once it got there. Nimander and his crew, OK, once it got there. Surkhorlat, once she got there, OK.

There is a lot of potential of where it could all go. There is so so so so so so so much that could be cut, especially in the later seasons (I mean books). But I think this is an interesting look of how I could see any potential seasons working out.

I would love to hear your thoughts!

[Tsundoku]

What about the ICE stuff? Especially RotCG?

You'd definitely have to set the timeline in stone, otherwise it gets beyond most TV audiences unless you have massive captions like "X Years/moths/days/hours ago". It can be done, but you'd really have to trim the fat from the books to suit a screenplay. Even over multiple 10-12 x 1 hour episode seasons. Hell, that may be too short unless you start cutting out stuff which may be innocuous at the time but more relevant in later seasons.

I think we had a similar thread a while back and from what I recall a lot of people thought it may do better as a properly done Western-style animated series. Ie no anime/BESM.
Personally I'd like to see the bunch who did Avatar/Legend of Korra/Dragon Prince have a go. Maybe a "proof of concept" short film?

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 13 February 2020 - 09:26 AM

[Kanese S's]

 Tsundoku, on 13 February 2020 - 09:20 AM, said:

What about the ICE stuff? Especially RotCG?

You'd definitely have to set the timeline in stone, otherwise it gets beyond most TV audiences unless you have massive captions like "X Years/moths/days/hours ago". It can be done, but you'd really have to trim the fat from the books to suit a screenplay. Even over multiple 10-12 x 1 hour episode seasons. Hell, that may be too short unless you start cutting out stuff which may be innocuous at the time but more relevant in later seasons.

I think we had a similar thread a while back and from what I recall a lot of people thought it may do better as a properly done Western-style animated series. Ie no anime/BESM.
Personally I'd like to see the bunch who did Avatar/Legend of Korra/Dragon Prince have a go. Maybe a "proof of concept" short film?

I think at the very least that you are correct, RotCG needs to be included. I would want all the parallel ICE stuff included.

[Werthead]

I'm intrigued by the idea that Erikson said was on the cards a couple of years back: a series which focuses on Tavore and we follow what she was doing in the lead-up to the Bonehunters forming in HoC, then we follow her (and more or less only her, and the Bonehunters) storyline through the rest of the books.

For a focused narrative - which TV badly needs and the MALAZAN books don't have, at all - that would work, although it would still be very expensive. You're also losing a lot of set-up work from the other books, assuming those events still happen off-screen.

I don't think it would have gotten to the screen for reasons of cost, but it's an interesting approach.