With the success of the Game of Thrones TV show, television studios have been optioning and piloting a number of our favourite fantasy novel series over the last few years. The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss, the Shannara books by Terry Brooks, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, to name but a few. And now it seems Hollywood too has caught the bug, because it wasjust announced that the hugely popular Dragonriders of Pern series has been picked up by movie giants Warner Bros.
Details are thin to say the least, but what we’ve heard is that ‘development of a movie franchise based on the sci-fi series “Dragonriders of Pern.” has begun’. Warner Bros have optioned the 22-volume book series from the estate of American-Irish author Anne McCaffrey, who died in 2011.
For those unfamiliar, the books are set in a pre-industrial society with intelligent firebreathing dragons and their riders teaming to fight a rogue planet that attacks the world of Pern. The riders have a telepathic bond with their dragons, formed by Impression at the dragon’s hatching. The books take place over a period of over 2,500 years and McCaffrey was very good with jumping forwards and backwards across her timeline in a way that really built the story. Although they have a very fantasy-like beginning, Sci-Fi elements quickly seep into them as the series progresses.
So far there is no producer tied to the project, but it has been revealed that Drew Crevello and Julia Spiro are overseeing the project for the studio. If these guys sound familiar, they should, they were behind the launch of the “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” franchises.
We’re not sure if this is going to go anywhere at this point; these books have been talked about as possibly becoming movies / television series for a long, long time. From what we can tell, options or pilots have been announced in 1995, 1996, 2002, 2006 and 2011 – with nothing notable coming out of them yet. Who knows though, there are certainly the kind of things that would make it a cool Game of Thrones / Lord of the Rings style movie. Epic story-lines, intelligent dragons, romance, evil overlords, struggles for control. So, yeah, if ever there was a time to launch this kind of series – it is now! Bring me my dragons!
