With the Hobbit trilogy keeping the fantasy flames alight at the box office and Game Of Thrones going great guns on the small screen, other companies are searching for sword and sorcery stories to adapt and hopefully hit their own goldmine. MTV is pinning its hopes on Terry Brooks’ massive-selling Shannara books, with a team including Jon Favreau and writers Al Gough and Miles Millar involved{
The production team, which includes Brooks albeit most likely in a similar advisory fashion to George R.R. Martin on Thrones, have an order to generate scripts for a show that, if the ideas are approved, would skip the usual pilot stage and go straight to series.
While the books began in 1977 with The Sword Of Shannara and have since encompassed various trilogies and even a prequel, the TV team are looking at kicking off the first season with The Elfstones Of Shannara, which hit in 1982 and was the title that made the novel series famous.
Set thousands of years after the fall of our civilization, the books find the world back in a medieval fantasy state, and focus on the Shannara family, empowered with ancient magic, whose adventures shape the world they live in.
"I believe we have formed the perfect team to bring Shannara to life onscreen," Brooks said. "The adaptation of these books is very important to me, and I believe we are on the right track in our endeavour to create an epic television series that both new and old fans of the books will love."
Of course, it’s not the first time someone has had the idea to adapt Brooks’ most famous work: Warners bought the rights back in 2007 with the aim to have something to fill the void once the Potter films finished. Weirdly, the studios’ plan was also to start with the second book, and TV might be a more natural home for such a sprawling tale.