Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: HRL, Kingkiller Chronicles, lin-manuel miranda, lionsgate, Name of the Wind, Pat Rothfuss, Patrick Rothfuss, sam raimi, showtime
Lionsgate's 'Kingkiller Chronicles' May Get Sam Raimi as Director
The highly anticipated adaptations (both film and TV series) based on Pat Rothfuss's "The Kingkiller Chronicles" may have found the perfect director.
Maybe you'll recall back in 2016 when Lin-Manuel Miranda was brought in to serve as creative producer and musical mastermind of both a feature film and TV series for Lionsgate, with Rothfuss a part of the team, too. (And Miranda has an option to be involved in future stage productions, because WHY NOT?)
Variety is reporting today that Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Spider-Man) is in talks to direct the film version for Lionsgate. Lindsey Beer (Transformers: The Last Knight) is writing the script, which will be based on the first book in the Kingkiller saga, "The Name of the Wind".
In an interview with Slate, Miranda spoke a bit about how big of a fan of "Kingkiller Chronicles" he is, and how it influenced a portion of "Hamilton":
SLATE: I know you've said "The Story of Tonight" from Hamilton was partly influenced by a passage in The Name of the Wind, but are there other ways you've drawn inspiration from the books?
Lin: I'm glad you noticed that passage. That's exactly what I was chasing. The melody I used for "The Story of Tonight" is a melody I wrote when I was 16, 17 years old. I wanted it—even if it was just for me—to feel like youthful idealism. And that was a melody I wrote for a group of friends that used to sing together—it was a doo-wop group—and I'd write songs for us to sing. So I stole that melody from myself, who was way more idealistic than the present-day me, because I wanted it to have that feel. The other thing I think fans of Hamilton and Pat's book see in common is that Kvothe is brilliant, but he also fucks up a lot. We're not deifying either of these guys. Pat shows us all of Kvothe's faults. He accomplishes great things and he also messes up great things, and it comes from the same place. He shares that with my version of Hamilton, who believes he can write his way out of anything, and he really can't. It's this sort of brilliance and impatience with this bedrock of insecurity underneath that Hamilton and Kvothe both share.
The TV series will appear at some point on Showtime, and will be set in the generation before "The Name of the Wind", sort of a backstory filler for the film. (not in a bad way, just an additional story to help audiences fall into the lush world Rothfuss created)
Robert Lawrence will produce for film and television.
Not much more is known about the project(s) yet as far as casting goes. We'll let you know when any of this firms up as far as negotiations and confirmations of involvement.