Did you discover the books because of the TV Show?

[Dina]

Exactly the same happened to me 

[wesfanemt333]

A friend of ours from out of state left "Dead Beat" at our place.  I read that book to pieces(literally, it's binding broke and it's in two parts)  That's what got me started on the Dresden Files.  I now own all the books, although some of them have disappeared on me, and the tv series on DVD.

[SabreTooth]

i came to know about them in Suvudu Cage Match 2010, back where the cage matches used to be fun.
anyways i really like the books...mostly.

[thezalord]

I picked Storm Front up from the library on a whim and fell in love about half way through the book. Coincidently whilst I was reading Storm Front I was flicking channels and came across the TV show on Sky before that I didn't know there was a TV show needless to say I was a little disappointed but I do like the TV show as a stand alone away from the books. 

[Oddball]

watched the show looked for the books been hooked ever since

[Cooleo]

I like the TV show a lot got it on dvd. So I started buying the comics which where ok the art could of been better. Then I got the first book. Stormfront got me hooked. Took me about a year to read them all and cant wait till the next one comes out.

[Fatlazicat]

I actually discovered the books through the book club I participate in at my job. Our October book was Storm Front. Appropriate right? I will be honest...at first glance it did not look interesting at all. But, I finally broke down and started to read it. I finished the book in one day because I couldnt put it down. From that day on, I have become obsessed with the Dresden Files and cannot live without them. I tell EVERYONE to read them! I then learned that there had been a tv series but it had sadly been cancelled after the first season. It is my dream that it will make a comback someday. I'll be just as obsessed with that

[Dafixershideout]

This is exactly how I discovered the series.  After reading the books and short stories, it's a little bit hard to watch but I still enjoy it.

[gaurav_garg]

Welcome. I'm just curious as to the numbers of board members who "found Jim" because of the TV show.

I happened to come across the show by chance and had almost passed it. While I was not impressed with the show itself, I am glad I looked it up on Wikipedia and followed the links to the books. My local library did the rest! The books are right up there for me, enjoying the flawed chareters and the intricate patterns of politics that seem to spill over  in the world of supernatural. Yesterday, I finished reading "Proven Guilty" and couldn't stop smiling and crying through the book.

God Bless Mr. Butcher for bringing these flawed charerters to life.

[Quantus]

Fatlazicat,

     From what I have read here on the forum, the TV series left a lot to be desired. I would suggest reading through the comments before investing in the DVD. If they ever do bring the show back, I hope they are more faithful to the text.

     A theatrical series based on the existing books, if it is true to the text, might be something of interest. The Charmed series had a good run, but the prosthetics and CGI for Dresdenverse creatures and the Nevernever might be prohibitively expensive for television.

     If Jim gets involved in a new TV or movie production, it will take away from the time that he has to write the books. Since Cold Days is about the mid-point of the book series, he may not want to spread himself too thin. I am a 1951 model  , so I might have to come back as a ghost to finish reading the series!

All the episodes are available to stream free on Hulu, give em a look there.  It was not a bad series by any means, it was just did not have a whole lot in common with the books. 
Such as (TV show Spoilers):

(click to show/hide)

Bob is the ghost of a dead wizard that walked around
Ancient Mai is a Dragon
Morgan is a youngish black man
Justin's last name was Morningway, and was harry's uncle, and was killed by harry using thaumaturgy in his 30's
Justin wasnt very dead
Skinwalkers were not nearly as scary powerful
He drove a Jeep (purely a production choice, its easier to film around an open jeep rather than needing several cutaway VW Bugs)
He used a rune carved hokey stick and drum stick, rather than a staff and rod
Murphy was named Katherine (this was because there actually is a Karrin Murphy on the Chicago police force, so they had to change it)
Murphy had a daughter

[habu987]

A theatrical series based on the existing books, if it is true to the text, might be something of interest. The Charmed series had a good run, but the prosthetics and CGI for Dresdenverse creatures and the Nevernever might be prohibitively expensive for television.

I'm not sure if that's a real argument against a new take on the show anymore.  Sure, back in 2007 it would have been quite expensive, but look at how the technology has advanced since then.  You've got shows like Grimm that rely pretty heavily on CGI and prosthetics, and I think they do a pretty darn good job of it.  Sure, it doesn't always look lifelike, but none of it looks so cheesy that it turns you off.  And then you've got shows like Once Upon a Time and Warehouse 13 that rely extensively on green screens (although I think the former show generally does a better job with the screen work than the latter, but it also has a bigger budget).  And those are just the shows off the top of my head that really utilize heavy CGI and prosthetics.

I think the technical limitations are far less constricting than they were even just four or five years ago.  That being said, I think that if The Dresden Files 2.0 was filmed as a low budget show, it'd look the part.  Given a decent to large budget, it could look very good.

Just my $.02.

[AcornArmy]

I think the technical limitations are far less constricting than they were even just four or five years ago.  That being said, I think that if The Dresden Files 2.0 was filmed as a low budget show, it'd look the part.  Given a decent to large budget, it could look very good.

I think they could manage it, too. I'd just very much hope that they'd follow something a lot more like the way Game of Thrones is being done for HBO, rather than the way they handled the original material in the first show. GoT tries to stay very close to the books, and as such, they're pretty much as good as the books are. They did ten episodes to tell the story of the first book in the series. The Dresden show made one episode approximating Storm Front. And for the rest of the show, they seemed to be trying for a monster-of-the-week thing. Why bother using source material as good as the Dresden Files if you're just going to ignore almost all of it?

So, if they try to make another Dresden TV show, I hope they match it a lot more closely to the books, rather than following the creep-of-the-week format.

[Mr. Death]

All the episodes are available to stream free on Hulu, give em a look there.  It was not a bad series by any means, it was just did not have a whole lot in common with the books. 
Such as (TV show Spoilers):

(click to show/hide)

Bob is the ghost of a dead wizard that walked around
Ancient Mai is a Dragon
Morgan is a youngish black man
Justin's last name was Morningway, and was harry's uncle, and was killed by harry using thaumaturgy in his 30's
Justin wasnt very dead
Skinwalkers were not nearly as scary powerful
He drove a Jeep (purely a production choice, its easier to film around an open jeep rather than needing several cutaway VW Bugs)
He used a rune carved hokey stick and drum stick, rather than a staff and rod
Murphy was named Katherine (this was because there actually is a Karrin Murphy on the Chicago police force, so they had to change it)
Murphy had a daughter

Minor quibbles: It's never confirmed what Ancient Mai is, and she's Constanza Murphy, not Katherine.

[Quantus]

Minor quibbles: It's never confirmed what Ancient Mai is, and she's Constanza Murphy, not Katherine.

Ah, sorry, it went from Karrin to to Connie, not to Katherine; My bad.  As for Ancient Mai, it was /heavily/ implied, and when she was loosing control of her face she was blurring reptilian.

[habu987]

I think they could manage it, too. I'd just very much hope that they'd follow something a lot more like the way Game of Thrones is being done for HBO, rather than the way they handled the original material in the first show. GoT tries to stay very close to the books, and as such, they're pretty much as good as the books are. They did ten episodes to tell the story of the first book in the series. The Dresden show made one episode approximating Storm Front. And for the rest of the show, they seemed to be trying for a monster-of-the-week thing. Why bother using source material as good as the Dresden Files if you're just going to ignore almost all of it?

So, if they try to make another Dresden TV show, I hope they match it a lot more closely to the books, rather than following the creep-of-the-week format.

At some point last year, we had a big discussion on how we'd approach the show if we were starting over from scratch.  Don't remember which thread that was in or if it's still around.  Anyway, my idea would be to have HBO or one of the other premium networks do the show as a season of 10-12 one hour long episodes.  The first season could contain the first three books, the second season could possibly cover the next three, but after that it'd cover two books per season, giving each book a solid 5-6 hours of screen time.  These books aren't nearly as long as GRRM's, so they wouldn't need a full season per book, as squeeifying as that would be.  If the books got the premium network treatment in that general format, I think it would most likely be a phenomenal production.

Alternatively, if a regular network picked it up for a ~20 episode a season schedule, they could do three books a season.  Provided a decent budget, that could also be quite a good production.  I absolutely agree that they'd need to follow the books, though, none of that random monster of the week crap.  You know, I don't mind if they make some slight creative changes to the stories to make them work better on screen.  Like changing Murph's first name.  No problemo.  Heck, they even can add in or drop some ancillary characters or locations and it doesn't bother me.  Just when it gets to changing around entire settings, characters, and storylines, that's when I lay down and throw a spectacular hissy fit.

Ooh, if they wanted to torture us and force us to surround the network HQ with barrels of tar and bundles of feathers, they could turn it into a half hour sitcom and have it be told from Harry's POV a la How I Met Your Mother, except it would be Maggie sitting on the couch and the show would be called How I Killed Your Mother.  'Course, that would only cover the first half of the series, up through Changes, but hey, it's an idea.