It’s been approximately 1640 days since I finished reading “The Wise Man’s Fear”, the second book in Patrick Rothfuss bestselling epic fantasy trilogy, The Kingkiller Chronicle. 1640 days and still no third and final book in sight. In case you were wondering, no I didn’t actually keep track of the days (that’s why the internet’s there), but it sometimes feels like I have since I’ve been waiting so long for news of the final chapter in this brilliant story. But while “The Days of Stone” is still about as real as Nick’s ginger soul, there has been a development. A movie, TV and video game development, to be more specific.
Variety is reporting that Lionsgate have acquired the movie, TV and video game rights to Rothfuss’ fantasy creation, and are wasting no time in putting them to use, kicking off developments in all three mediums immediately. There’s no mention of whether the movies, TV series or video games will be interlinked or separate entities, but given Hollywood’s current fervor for shared universes I would not be surprised to hear that it’s all overlapping.
The Kingkiller Chronicle is set in the fantasy world known as Temerant, and is essentially the autobiography of Kvothe (that’s pronounced quoth, by the way) a famous magician, musician, swordsman and adventurer who is rumoured to have killed a famous king, sending the land into war, before disappearing from public. When an anonymous innkeeper saves a traveling scribe from spider-like creatures, the scribe realizes that the innkeeper is in fact the mythical Kvothe who has been hiding in plain sight all along, and convinces Kvothe to let him pen his life story.
Over the course of the next three days – with each day corresponding to a book – Kvothe tells his tale about how he went from living in a poor traveling troupe of musicians to studying magic at the legendary University and eventually become the world-renowned adventurer. It’s a story filled with all kinds of fantastic mythology, strange creatures, dashing heroics, a very different magic system call “Sympathy” and a genuinely moving love story.
There’s a lot of story to tell, which would certainly make it better suited to a TV series rather than a movie series, and in fact Twentieth Century Fox had been trying to develop a TV series adaptation since 2013 already, but to no avail. Hopefully Lionsgate has better luck. Their Motion Picture Group Co-President Erik Feig certainly has high hopes for the franchise.
“Pat Rothfuss’s imaginative storytelling, the spellbinding character Kvothe, and the vivid world of Temerant in The Kingkiller Chronicle series have a passionate and savvy fanbase and the potential to reach an even broader audience in adaptation. It is rare that a property comes along with a world so rich and multilayered that it lends itself to exploration across film, television and video game audiences at the same time.”
With the first two books – “The Name of the Wind” and “The Wise Man’s Fear” – topping the New York Times Best Seller list and having sold, along with three novellas set in the same world, over 10 million copies, there’s most definitely a market to make this a success.
Last Updated: October 2, 2015
GooseZA
October 5, 2015 at 15:17
I really enjoyed these books. Can’t wait for the third.