The Temeraire series from author Naomi Novik began in 2006 and takes place in the ever-entertaining world of alternate history in which fictional stories and events are constructed around actual historical happenings. The series takes place during the Napoleonic Wars that ran from 1803 to 1815, but adds to it the existence of dragons who are manned and used in combat. So far, there have been five Temeraire books, with a ending being aimed for at nine books.
For a while now, Lord of the Rings trilogy director Peter Jackson has had the Temeraire series as a potential project for him, but there has not been many updates. Recently, Jackson spoke to Ain’t It Cool News and spoke on the topic, which included information on how it may unfold, though it is way too early for any of it to be definite. With the series expected to be around nine books, it’s obviously very difficult to compact it all into one or more feature films. Because of this, Jackson thinks that the mini-series format, much like HBO does so well with titles like Band of Brothers could be a fair option, though it is always changing and would need to be researched further.
Click on over to read Peter Jackson’s current thoughts on the possibilities, and head over to AICN for more on the topic and a much longer interview in the new future.
I can’t see any degree of common sense in trying to mount them one at a time as feature films. To me the stories, having read the first ones, already work as this continuing, on-going saga, so I’m thinking “Is there a marketplace out there yet for a large budget mini-series?”
I guess you’d think of things like HBO and you’d think of Band of Brothers and that sort of thing, but it’d be different than that. The market’s changing so much, TV networks are changing, so I’m thinking is there actually a market out there that’d give us the budget to do this properly and allow us to shoot this as a 6, 7 or 8 part series where we have freedom, we have great production values and are able to tackle it as the epic saga that it deserves.
I just can’t see doing one expensive movie and if that’s successful you get to do another one, but if the second one isn’t quite as good maybe there’ll never be a third one… I just don’t see that fitting with the property at all.
Again, this is all just speculative speaking as he ponders the best gameplan for when the time comes to begin this project. It is the best strategy for the adaptation of a large amount of content such as this though, and it would indeed be pretty awesome to get a mini-series with a great alternate-history.
Mini-series, yes.
On TV… eh, why not online?
I would love if more projects were just put up online. Dr. Horrible, The Guild, and others are proof you can make bank simply online, ignoring the middle man studio all together.
Putting it online also helps alleviate many costs. Then when online purchases of X series does go well, you can consider putting it out in some packaged set, which the money garnered from the online sales can go towards.