Glen Cook’s classic fantasy series, The Black Company, has largely flown under the radar in the 19 years since its ostensible conclusion with Soldiers Live (published in 2000). But with the recent publication of a new “interquel,” Port of Shadows, and the announcement one year ago that Eliza Dushku was planning to produce and star in a potential TV adaptation, The Black Company is seeing a resurgence. (It’s unclear how reliable the source is, but according to IMDB, the show is listed in pre-production as of April 2019.)
The series generally regarded as a sort of godfather to the now-popular grimdark subgenre, The Black Company could make for an ideal follow-up in the wake of HBO’s adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Like George R. R. Martin’s bestselling series, The Black Company takes a distinctive approach to a traditional fantasy world. Good and evil aren’t clear-cut; the blurred spaces between are constant battlegrounds of personal morality and larger stakes and ambitions, with the mercenaries of the eponymous Company often caught in the midst of bigger personalities and powers.
Unlike A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, however, The Black Company keeps the focus on a more limited cast and rarely spends time outside of more than one or two locations at once. This more focused approach would be ideal for a TV series, giving the writers more time to dig into the varied and colorful personalities of the Company, rather than jumping all over the world with shorter scenes featuring a huge cast.
The Black Company also gives audiences a chance to grasp some of the realities of war, of being a soldier, that we could all benefit from understanding. As author and veteran Myke Cole wrote in a recent essay, soldiers “try and they fail, just like we do. But it is in the fact that they do not always fail that we can draw inspiration.” Glen Cook, too, is a veteran, and he strove to write an authentic portrayal of a soldier’s life. The popularity of his books among service members is testament to his success.
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Annals of the Black Company
The Black Company, given the proper treatment, is a perfect opportunity for audiences to connect with the lives of soldiers, perhaps getting the barest glimpse into what it means to be isolated into a community of brothers (and sisters) with the sole purpose of advancing war. The members of the Company, like many real-world veterans returning from overseas theaters, struggle to assimilate into normal culture. They find solace in those who understand them, and do not expect to be treated as heroes. Rather, the mercenaries of the Black Company are, across the board, fallible humans, trying to find their way in a difficult moral landscape.
It is this aspect of grimdark that is likely the key to its popularity. Readers and viewers want characters they can relate to—not perfect kings and princes and heroes, but everyday men and women who make mistakes, and rise above them.
The Black Company is full of such characters. Whether it’s the enigmatic Raven—a man built upon mistakes and regrets—or the Captain himself, torn between duty to his brothers and upholding the honor of the Company, sympathetic characters abound. Then, of course, there’s the colorful wizard duo of Goblin and One-Eye: best friends perpetually at loggerheads, masters of pranks and all manner of skullduggery. When the world is beating down on the Company, these two can always be counted on to lighten the mood.
Additionally, with the option to frame the story through the Annals (as in the books themselves), a Black Company TV series can draw the characters out in a closer, more intimate manner. With Croaker serving as the lens through which everything is filtered, audiences will get to know this main character on a deeper level than is possible in more traditional TV storytelling.
As Game of Thrones has proven (along with other HBO offerings, like Deadwood), a largely character-driven story with shades of morality can develop an ardent following. Perhaps more importantly, Cook’s series tells a wholly different kind of story from A Song of Ice and Fire and the other big-time epic fantasy series also in line for screen adaptations, like The Wheel of Time, The Kingkiller Chronicle, and Brandon Sanderson’s various works. That unique element will help The Black Company stand out in what appears to be an increasingly crowded SFF TV adaptation landscape.
Given the proper budget and the spectacle present in the source material, The Black Company has all the makings of a worthy successor to Game of Thrones in the genre TV canon.
Drew McCaffrey lives in Fort Collins, CO, where he is spoiled by all the amazing craft beer. He co-hosts the Inking Out Loud podcast, covering science fiction and fantasy books (and some of that Colorado craft beer). You can find him on Twitter, talking about books and writing, but mostly just getting worked up about the New York Rangers.
I bought an omnibus of the first 10 books on Kindle for $40. I just started book 6. I would love to see this turned into a tv series, but as always I would want the plot to follow the books as closely as possible and that just never seems to happen. I’m not sure if I would care about a tv series that was called The Black Company but had very little in common with the characters or plot from the books.
I remember going through the lot of the published novels in a span of a couple of years while reading other stuff in parallel, and really enjoying them. The world-building was really interesting and the focus on a merc outfit in a fantasy world was a cool p.o.v. we don’t often see. I remember feeling like I was reading a fantasy version of a mixture of “Catch-22”, “M.A.S.H.” and “The Things They Carried.” If they stay true to the books, this could be a very good TV show.
Dont ruin the book by shitty screen play do it right take your time with it.
If they don’t get Croaker right the show is doomed.
I have read and re-read The Black Company ever since it’s first publication. It is one of my favorite military fantasy series, I think that Cook really caught the attitude of the “common soldier” so well (and this really comes out in the audiobooks narrated by Marc Vietor; as with the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Maturin books narrated by Simon Vance, I have often noticed new things about very familiar tales due to the narrator!).
I am in the middle of another re-read, due to the publication of “Port of Shadows”. I just finished “Shadows Linger” and once again the Black Castle–shudders!!! Shudders!!! So good.
I really hope this series can pull it off.
I actually got referred to Cook’s series by Steven Erikson, mostly because the idea for Malazan being a military fantasy was inspired by The Black Company. The novels could be a lot of fun to see adapted into either a film or series assuming they do it well.
Loved these books. I also fell into them via Erikson. Not sure how I feel about a TV version but I liked them well enough that I’d definitely watch. Much like A Song of Ice and Fire, if done right (even with its inevitable flaws) it could be really entertaining.
It will be great as long as they don’t go changing the story too much or changing who and what the characters are. They are not even kinda PC.
Croaker and the gang are my first true fantasy loves. I’ve moved on to other epic fantasy but I always return to The Black Company. I’ve made my mother read the entire series and my son and I just finished the first book on Audible. I’m very excited about this series and I hope they do the story justice. I can’t wait to see The Lady, The Ten Who Were Taken, the carpets, spells, and the Barrowlands . I would love to see The Plain of Fear and the Windwhales someday…. the talking Menhirs and Toadkiller Dog too!
I don’t know how many times I’ve read these books, or how many times I’ve wished I could just run away and join the Black Company. (Yeah, I know it would suck, but so has my life on those occasions.) I really hope they do a good job with this.
The show isn’t happening at the moment. A couple of producers optioning it doesn’t mean much unless they have a network or streaming service funding it, and both Goyer and Dushku are a lot way from the peak of their profile when they could get these projects looked at.
Black Company will be very expensive, rivalling if not exceeding GoT, and I don’t see any of the major studios or networks funding it until at least The Witcher, WoT and His Dark Materials air and they can judge how post-GoT fantasy is doing.
I just looked and I don’t see it listed as an upcoming project in IMDB any longer under Eliza Dushku. I wonder if it’s no longer in the works. I’ve been a fan of the series for decades. When I think of dark fantasy, this series is foremost.
They shouldn’t touch it. Source material is already far past what a tv show can portray, i.e. GoT.
Leave my baby alone
I am for as close to the books as possible except for one change I would make and it would be in the first episode. I never agreed with it in the book and it irked me throughout my readin gthe books. Don’t kill Mercy or atleast not in the first episode like Cook did in the first book. He was an interestimg character we never got to know because he was killed early on. He was a perfect character for Robert Carlyle to play.