Author Lev Grossman best sums up the latest exciting news about his book series The Magicians in a tweet yesterday:
And here’s what it is. A tweet five years in the making: Magicians pilot is greenlit
We had previously reported that The Magicians would be coming to Syfy, but now it’s official!
Deadline’s latest report doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know: After an earlier version of the pilot didn’t get picked up by Fox in 2012, producers Michael London and Janice Williams brought on new writers. With a retooled script by Sera Gamble (Supernatural) and John McNamara (Lois & Clark), they shopped it around to other networks. (Interestingly, Deadline mentions that this second pilot might start earlier in the series than the Fox project did.)
Syfy further developed the pilot; as Grossman wrote on his blog in April, the project was still technically in development. Now that it’s greenlit, we’re excited to see it join Syfy’s roster of scripted shows, including Ascension (premiering in November) and the 2015 projects 12 Monkeys, The Killjoys, and The Expanse.
Ugh. Having given up watching other SyFy shows, this does not fill me with hope.
I was going to post a comment about how sci-fi will probably turn it into an urban fantasy with sexy but angsty teenagers, then I checked the wikipedia entry. No surprise then why this got multiple shots at a pilot.
I want to be excited, but I struggle to envision a way that this could be done well. I suppose half a season at Brakebills and half in Fillory? Or just save Fillory for the last couple of episodes to make this more cost effective?
I could see a series that puts off all of the Fillory stuff for CW-style debauchery at magic college.
My favorite chapter was the trip to Brakebills South and all that happened there. I don’t guess that would make it in. It would be neat to see a game of welters (the Brakebills equivalent of Quidditch).
In my head, Jesse Eisenberg was Quentin and Dakota Fanning was Alice but they’ve aged out plus are well out of Syfy’s price range. Maybe AnnaSophia Robb as Alice?
Christoph Waltz would be great as that character that I won’t spoil, but again $.
I always envisioned Julia as looking like this girl I went out with in college. I bet they could get her to play that part.
I find myself strangely concerned that they get Penny right.
Yeah, I’ll watch it though.
Excited but pensive, for more than a couple of reasons. No way it could have been good on Fox, so now we’re left looking at SyFy, whose record is uneven… BUT unlike the scenarios for silly escapist fluff like Dominion and Defiance, at least the source material here actually has some weight to it.
The other worry is Brakebills vs. Fillory. Very different types of stories; do it in the same order the book(s) took and you risk alienating viewers when pretty much the entire path of the story takes a sharp left turn.
And finally… ** spoiler alert**
Well, we know how the second book ends. Is Grossman planning on any further continuation of the characters? If not, it’s going to be a hard draw for fans of the books, knowing that there’s nothing even close to a happy ending in sight.
Well, we know how the second book ends. Is Grossman planning on any further continuation of the characters?
Yes – he’s said that there is a third book to come, “The Magicians’ Land”.
In fact (quick check) it’s out in hardback next month!
I’m excited, but Quentyn is a hard charater to pull off, moreso in a medium like television. He’s basically an ass, but slightly sympathetic. But you should be more sympathetic to everyone else around him.
Count me a cautiously optimistic.