As some of you may be aware, MTV is adapting the Shannara series, author Terry Brooks’ long-running collection of books detailing the goings-on in the fantastical Four Lands, for television. The first season of the show, called The Shannara Chronicles, will cover the events of The Elfstones of Shannara, the second of many books Brooks wrote in the series. Originally published in 1982, Elfstones tells the story of an Elven army’s attempt to fight off a horde of Demons invading the Four Lands, and of a couple heroes trying to banish the Demons for good.
Other than the fact that it’s in the fantasy genre, this doesn’t terribly like Game of Thrones. It sounds a lot more like The Lord of the Rings, what with the Elves and the straightforward heroics. Still, Brooks must have been hearing a lot of people compare his work to that of George R.R. Martin’s, as he got pretty touchy when Entertainment Weekly brought up Game of Thrones during a recent interview.
"Entertainment Weekly: Is the series a straight adaptation of Elfstones, similar to how Game of Thrones is adapted?Terry Brooks: Don’t mention Game of Thrones to me. We were saying, “We don’t want to go that route.” That’s not what the Shannara books are. They’re a family-oriented fantasy and always have been. That’s been one of the strong selling points. Anyone from 10 years of age up that has the reading skills can read these books. We’ve always talked about it as a family drama that anyone can watch. I thought of it as a straight adaptation. I told Al and Miles early on, “I know you’re going to have to make changes. Just hold the bones of the story together.”"
What’s funny is that EW didn’t draw any comparisons between the content of Game of Thrones and The Shannara Chronicles—it just asked whether MTV would adapt the Shannara series for television as faithfully as HBO adapted A Song of Ice and Fire (major departures from the source material in the last couple of seasons notwithstanding). Brooks got around to answering that question eventually, but not before pointing out how “family-oriented” the Shannara books are. It just seems like he’s protesting a bit too much. Are executives at MTV pressuring the Shannara producers to include some Thrones-style gratuitous nudity or something?
Brooks does have a point, of course. The Elfstones of Shannara tells far more of a traditional fantasy story than anything from the Song of Ice and Fire series, so we should expect the television adaptation to be very different from Game of Thrones.
At the same time, we don’t have to kid ourselves. The first book in the Shannara series was published in 1977, nearly two decades before Martin’s A Game of Thrones was first released. And yet, it’s is only being adapted for television now. It seems pretty clear that MTV saw the success of Game of Thrones and decided to get in on it by snapping up its own fantasy series. (I’m sure less cynical interpretations exist, but that’s how it looks to me.) That doesn’t mean that The Chronicles of Shanarra won’t be good, or that it won’t be different from Game of Thrones, but comparisons are inevitable.
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