Outlander takes aim at rival show Game of Thrones, plus an update on the Indian GoT remake
By Dan Selcke
Among the current crop of shows that have taken cues from Game of Thrones, Starz’s Outlander has been one of the most successful.* The series will return for a second go-round on April 9, a few weeks before Game of Thrones returns for its new season, and a recently released teaser positions Outlander as an alternative to HBO’s hit. Watch:
“Forget winter. Spring is coming.” Message received, Outlander.
The ratings for Outlander’s first season were well below those for Game of Thrones’ fifth (and its first, actually), but the Starz show has gotten good press, and its audience could grow as the show goes on. George R.R. Martin is friends with Diana Gabaldon, the author of the novels on which Outlander is based, and I imagine they wouldn’t be averse to a little friendly competition. You do you, Outlander.
In other news, we’ve been wondering for a while when we were going to get an update on the purported Indian remake of Game of Thrones, currently titled Rani Mahal. It’s been a year since we heard anything substantive about it, but at the time, Sony Entertainment TV had gone so far as to cast actors in some of the prominent roles (that’s Anita Hassanandani, who was cast as Cersei Lannister, above), so we figured there would be follow-up reports.
But then everything went dead, and India Forums may know why. According to the publication, producer Vikas Gupta scored a gig as the head of Hindi language television channel &TV. Because the Rani Mahal production is so massive, it doesn’t want to move forward without Gupta’s guidance, and is planning to roll out when he’s done with his “assignment.”
As to when that could be, we don’t know. The project seems stalled, so there’s no telling when or if we’ll ever to see Daenerys Targaryen and dragons break into a musical number…assuming that’s even the kind of show it would be. My exposure to anything even resembling popular Indian entertainment is extremely limited.
*To clarify, I don’t mean that Outlander is a knockoff of Game of Thrones, but that it probably wouldn’t exist if Thrones hadn’t shown the TV industry that historically-tinged fantasy shows could be hits (see also The Bastard Executioner and Of Kings and Prophets.)