Eragon Could Become Disney’s Game of Thrones
The in-development adaptation is Disney best chance for a high-fantasy IP. Let's dive in.
It was just announced recently that Disney is moving forward with the Eragon show. It will be based on the first book of The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, and should serve as a “second chance” to the fans, who’ve been dreaming of this reboot for 20 years, since the release of the Eragon movie all the way back in 2006. That movie was such a disappointment for everyone, and this is the chance to finally get a proper adaptation of this epic story.
We also have the showrunners – Todd Harthan and Todd Helbing, and both of them are pretty great. Todd Harthan is currently working on the mega hit High Potential, and he was also involved in The Resident, Psych and Rosewood. I’m actually more excited for Todd Helbing. Not only was he involved in Spartacus, Black Sails and The Flash, he also created Superman & Lois. It’s one of the greatest comic book shows in recent memory, and perhaps the best live action Superman story ever told. Above everything, that show featured phenomenal visual effects, with some of them actually having movie-quality to them. What’s even more impressive is the fact that they had a TV budget (higher than most TV shows but still a TV budget and not a streaming show budget), and they still pulled off these amazing visual effects. A show like Eragon will definitely need someone who can create top notch visual effects on a reasonable budget. Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2, 500 Days of Summer, High Potential) also joined the show as an executive producer.
This show could potentially become Disney’s Game of Thrones. It has politics, incredible world-building, great characters, epic battles, cool magic system, and of course, dragons. I really hope that Disney will commit to the dark tone of the books, because there are some dark scenes in these books that I can’t stop wondering how (and if) Disney will adapt them. I know that lots of people like to call the first book “a Star Wars rip-off”, but as long as they focus on what makes this story different – the unique world of Alagaësia, Eragon and Saphira’s incredible relationship – that adaptation should be fine.
I have two wishes. First, I want Disney to give this a proper budget. Even with a showrunner who knows how to handle visual effects, this show will still need a pretty high budget, especially thanks to the dragons. Second, we need longer episodes. I love the Percy Jackson show (especially season 2, which was excellent), but my only complaint was the short episodes, some of them were even barely above 30 minutes. An Eragon show will need long episodes, with at least 45-60 minutes per episode. They should learn from His Dark Materials, another adaptation of a popular fantasy book series, which was also a “second chance” to the fans after the failed Golden Compass movie. Season 2 actually had 7 episodes with a runtime of around 40-50 minutes per episode because of the Covid, but seasons 1 & 3 had 8 episodes each, and they had a runtime between 50-60 minutes. Not only that, this show had amazing visual effects (you have a digital animal in almost every scene), despite the fact that the budget wasn’t as big as Game of Thrones.
I actually have a great tip for Disney – hire directors who worked on the Ahsoka show. That show actually brought the fantasy side of Star Wars to life, and it was beautiful. Season 1 had some amazing fantasy scenes, thanks to directors Steph Green, Peter Ramsey, Jennifer Getzinger, Geeta Patel and Rick Famuyiwa. They should direct some episodes of the Eragon show, that’s for sure. We still have a long way to go, but as of now, the Eragon show seems in good hands, can’t wait for the casting news.
