I think it's even worse than that. They buy the brand of the IP and toss the rest. All they want is brand recognition to lure people in and create marketing fluff. They don't want the core fans, they're too small a group in their eyes. They want the people who have heard the title but probably never bothered to read it. There are even darker patterns like the seemingly purposeful hostility to actual fans, deliberately trying to create a media firestorm over "racist fans" and positioning themselves as the heroes who are modernizing and redeeming the outdated material so it appeals to all audiences. And they don't have competent writers because they're cheap, they don't have competent writers because they hire based on nepotism and clout. There are plenty of cheap, competent writers out there trying to make it. There are even plenty to choose from who love these foundational fantasy series and would remain true to them. They'll never be hired for one of these projects.
Indie TV is coming for them. There are already stirrings of fan made short series whose production quality can stand toe to toe with most of the AA dreck available now. Many of these are made by a single person with a vision and the 3D modelling and animation skills necessary. Their main limitation is in acting talent but style transfer will quickly put that in their hands.
> There are even darker patterns like the seemingly purposeful hostility to actual fans, deliberately trying to create a media firestorm over "racist fans" and positioning themselves as the heroes who are modernizing and redeeming the outdated material so it appeals to all audiences
I don't buy it. There are no "darker patterns" just a lot of out of touch LA / NYC writers, and marketing execs who need to sell whatever dogshit is being released this week.
They could still create a new story set in the same universe if they only wanted it for the brand recognition.
Just put the setting 100yrs after the last book and suddenly you can have a society innit that fights against gender roles etc.
Ive stopped watching TV the series in the second episode but I'm pretty sure I could've kept watching if they hadn't butchered the original story so much.
No they can’t because they need to be seen as the “official adaptation”. Something similar doesn’t get the same PR/marketing blitz appeal.
I work in the industry and the above poster is mostly right. Executives buy IP for the sake of association marketing “Watch the adaptation of the best seller series”.
BUT the industry suffers from a dearth of competence. If you work in the visual arts or make creative work in some way you would be familiar with the process of ‘uglification’ where a client with no creative taste gets to destroy the work of a brilliant creative through an avalanche of notes and changes. The creative might want to protect their work but depending on your ability to protect it, they might not.
‘Uglification’ happens in the film/TV industry all the time. People with little knowledge of film history call the shots and they have terrible taste. The result is they hire bad writers, bad directors and produce poor output. And that uglification pipeline is how adaptations get destroyed.
In example:
Executive who doesn’t know anything about “Wheel of Time” owns rights. He hires a writer who doesn’t know anything either. Writer reads the book, doesn’t like it, decides to use it as a platform to write whatever he wants plus he also needs the money. He gives it “a modern spin”, executive likes it. Executive then hires hot advertising director who’s no good but is hot in LA. Director hates the books, thinks it’s dumb but sees it as his big opportunity to break through into narrative film. Everyone involved now doesn’t care about the original books at all, and thus they will do whatever they fancy.
It goes on and on and what you get at the end is mush. Unless someone at the helm - director, writer or executive - is absolutely resolute that he wants a good adaptation, nothing accurate will come out of it.
Indie TV is coming for them. There are already stirrings of fan made short series whose production quality can stand toe to toe with most of the AA dreck available now. Many of these are made by a single person with a vision and the 3D modelling and animation skills necessary. Their main limitation is in acting talent but style transfer will quickly put that in their hands.