"The Shannara Chronicles" canceled, being shopped to other networks for season 3

[yallerdawg]

Absent GoT for all of 2018, if you like epic fantasy fiction on the small screen it's getting to be slim pickings. CW and others are doing super hero comic books and some graphic novels (Walking Dead), but epic book-based fantasy - I don't count Outlander which is another kind of "fantasy" - is struggling to find viewership and ratings. Syfy is often a home for this kind of fiction series, but has a shaky record on renewing. Syfy's Season 3 The Magicians has just started another epic quest and is really well done, and Freeform's Beyond (which is in the tradition but not derived from book series) is just starting up.

For fans, let's hope The Shannara Chronicles and this genre continue to find a home.



Source: Entertainment Weekly, by Shirley Li

The fantasy of the Four Realms has come to an end — on Spike, at least.

The network, which picked up The Shannara Chronicles after its first season aired on MTV in 2016, has canceled the series based on Terry Brooks’ best-selling books after two seasons, EW has confirmed. The fantasy drama was one of Spike’s two scripted series debuts in 2017 — the other being The Mist — and both have been dropped ahead of the network’s transformation into Viacom’s general entertainment Paramount Network.

Still, the cancellation may not be the end of the road for Wil (Austin Butler), Eretria (Ivana Baquero), Allanon (Manu Bennett), and the series’ sprawling cast of colorful characters. EW has confirmed that Sonar Entertainment, the studio behind The Shannara Chronicles, has begun shopping the series to potential other networks, including streaming outlets that may want to capitalize on the series’ epic scope.

Created by Al Gough and Miles Millar, and executive produced by the pair along with Jon Favreau, Jonathan Liebesman, and Dan Farah, The Shannara Chronicles starred Butler, Baquero, Bennett, as well as season 2’s new cast members Vanessa Morgan, Malese Jow, and Gentry White.

http://ew.com/tv/2018/01/17/shannara-chronicles-canceled/

[FSogol]

1. Good riddance, The Shannara Chronicles is really, really awful.

I watched the 1st season, but could only make it about 3 episodes into the 2nd.

[yallerdawg]

2. Admittedly, this is a genre for the die-hard fan.

Lot of history here, too.

How Terry Brooks Saved Epic Fantasy

And helped me fall in love with Tolkien’s world.

Terry Brooks gets a bad rap
.
The Sword of Shannara, the debut novel from American novelist Terry Brooks, was released in 1977 into an SF literary ecosystem that looks very different than it does today: there was no Harry Potter, no Game of Thrones, and Peter Jackson was only just discovering Tolkien’s work as a pubescent teen. Readers were still riding Science Fiction’s new wave, and Fantasy looked like little more than a fading fad in the barren landscape left behind by Frodo’s departure to the Undying Lands.

Frodo may have lived, but fantasy was effectively dead.

Frodo's dead.

That is, until Lester del Rey, famed science fiction author and editor, plucked a young upstart writer out of law school and published his debut novel. The writer’s name was Terry Brooks, his novel was called The Sword of Shannara, and — alongside Stephen R. Donaldson’s subversive Thomas Covenant series — it saved epic fantasy. It was also, by all intents and purposes of its editor, a shameless ripoff of Lord of the Rings.

More at: https://medium.com/a-dribble-of-ink/how-terry-brooks-saved-epic-fantasy-8af7084f94a3


Sad reminder - Game of Thrones is off the air until April 2019 according to Maisie Williams.

https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/911472/Game-of-Thrones-season-8-leak-Maisie-Williams-Arya-Stark

[FSogol]

3. Why can't they film some of Jack Vance's novels?

At least he was original and you could understand character's motivations.

[yallerdawg]

4. I don't know.

It's like they'll make a movie based on Stephen King's Costco shopping list, but Dean Koontz movies are few and far between.

[MuseRider]

5. I read those books years ago,

I loved them. I watched the first and second shows of the first season and never understood one thing about it. I saw nothing of the characters I had grown to love nor the story. It was all just like everything else now. It may have gotten better but I did not care to watch another second of it. Those books deserved better, not to mention Terry Brooks who I enjoy as an author. If he was involved in this show his idea of the books changed drastically.

[yallerdawg]

6. I read the first few, starting with "The Sword of Shannara."

Long time ago.

Lots of trilogies, like "Dune," "Thomas Covenant," "Foundation," Castaneda's "Don Juan," Orson Scott Card's "Ender."

Then I find out there are many, many, many more books in each series!

The "Shannara Chronicles" is based on books I never even heard of, descendants of the original characters. But I had the entertaining gist of the stories so it was familiar AND new! I liked it!