Would The Kingkiller Chronicle work as an animated series?

It’s no secret that The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss is one of the most successful fantasy series of the modern age. And in this age, the name of the game is screen adaptations.

Lionsgate Television has been developing a TV series that would serve as a prequel to the books, but although it has such successful creatives as Lin-Manuel Miranda and Rothfuss himself attached to the production, the show is currently shopping for a new home after Showtime decided to pass on it. Lionsgate is also making a series of movies based on the actual books themselves, but news has been quite slow for some time now and we’re not sure what’s happening with them.

One fan decided to animate one a great scene from The Name of the Wind, the first book in Rothfuss’ promised trilogy. Kvothe and his pals at the University have a run-in with the priggish Ambrose, and Kvothe taps into an ability he didn’t know he had:

It’s a story board-style animation, made for practice and so creator Ethan Becker could demonstrate to others how to use certain tools, as explained more thoroughly in a behind-the-scenes video). But it still gives us a pretty good idea of what an animated Kingkiller Chronicle show might feel like.

Pretty cool, right? I have to say that seeing this world in animation really did feel like a good fit, and I could totally see it working as a well-developed anime series. The art style seems very much in line with a lot of the officially sanctioned Kingkiller art, like the drawings in The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

That being said, I alsocan’t help but wonder if making a full animated Kingkiller series would be doing complete justice to the story. Not that there aren’t incredible works of animated storytelling, but would an animated Kingkiller show stand in the same space as something like Game of Thrones or His Dark Materials? I’m not so sure.

But with how thin the news has been on Lionsgate’s show and movies, for now we’ll just have to content ourselves with this glimpse of Temerant. It was certainly enough to give this writer some goosebumps!

What do you think? Would The Kingkiller Chronicle work as an animated series? Or is live action the way to go for Kvothe and company?

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