Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword is being developed for TV
Coming to a screen near you?
Lev Grossman's novel The Magicians was a breakout hit when it came out in bookstores in 2009, and in 2016, the Syfy channel picked it up for an adaptation, which ended up running for five seasons through 2020. Now, it looks like we'll get another adaptation of Grossman's novels: his forthcoming novel The Bright Sword.
Grossman has been working on the book for years: he first announced it back in 2016, describing it as a take on "what a King Arthur story might look like now, in this millennium," and he finally announced that he was done announced that he was done last year. I've been looking forward to the novel for years, and as I noted in my July book list, it's a phenomenal read, an amazing take on the legend of King Arthur, his knights, and his legacy. It's also earned a considerable amount of critical praise from just about every outlet under the sun: it's going to be big when it lands next week.
According to Deadline, Lionsgate Television and 3 Arts Entertainment have scooped up the rights to adapt the book as a series, and they're currently hunting for a showrunner to develop the project to a series. Erwin Stoff (Edge of Tomorrow, Kings, Julia) has been tapped as an executive producer. He and Grossman apparently worked together on an adaptation of Grossman's YA novel The Silver Arrow, which was ultimately not picked up. (Shame, it and its sequel The Golden Swift are excellent books.)
A studio snapping up the rights for a hot book aren't anything new in Hollywood, and it's not a surefire indication that this particular project will see the light of day, especially with all of the turmoil that we're seeing in streaming services and the financial health of some of the bigger studios. Indeed, Grossman had been attached to a really cool-sounding space opera project called The Heavens at Amazon, but that seems to have stalled, and it's going to become a graphic novel at some point.
Hopefully, it'll work out: the book does have an episodic feel to it, and if they can pull it off, it's a rich, interesting story that delves into a whole cast of fascinating characters and landscapes to explore. It felt like a story that would be ripe for a streaming series.