lot of Netflix series immediately start psychology and angst as main topics with not enough action to show depth of main character as the bad ass hero. and dresden files needs its constant action and witty banter to keep plot going as lot of times its like 24 series where harry is against the clock to beat the bad guys. so we dont have time to delve harry's 13 year old trauma for half a season before ending simple day worth of action.
I understand your concern...however Dresden Files actually does have a lot of psychology, and does spend a fair amount of time on his childhood past. I agree that they would have to be careful; rarely does the pacing and lines in books translate well into screen and stage. That is why so many changes happen to the source material and yet I think the best remakes tend to not stray far - but when they do they make appropriate and clever choices about what works and what does not. I think it would be worth having Jim as a consultant, maybe even a writer time to time (like George RR Martin).
Bigger budgets would be better. I'd still be happy with either. However, there are definitely some hurdles to getting it right.
Chronologically, it makes the most sense to do one season per book, since most of the books are a year-ish apart from one another. The problem with that is that it stretches some of the books out longer than would be viable for a series. Can you imagine Storm Front dissected into twelfths? A lot of stuff would need to be added for padding.
The alternative would be to condense multiple books into each season. The problem there is the giant gap between the events of each book mentioned previously.
A possible solution for the seasons that would otherwise be light on content would be to throw in the stuff from the Short Stories and Graphic Novels. For instance, make Storm Front into a season, but throw in things like flashbacks to a Restoration of Faith and Welcome to the Jungle.
The biggest transition from pages to screen would be the narration. You would to translate the vast amounts of non-event, non-interaction, non-dialogue content to the viewer. In the books, so much information is directly narrated to the reader about how spells work, the nature of the supernatural players, relationships of previously met characters, etc. How do you convey all that without just making info dumps on the viewer and throwing flashbacks at them willy nilly? Or do you convey it? Maybe it's better to leave more of it unsaid.
Much as I'd love to see the Dresden Files, a Netflix Original Series, or similar, I'm skeptical of them taking the time to do it right.
I think unfortunately due to the sheer amount of content and the way episodes work these days some people and events would have to be amalgamated. I hope not too much, but it would take someone much more experienced and clever to figure that out. I think 2 books a season is fine... but most shows barely have 3 seasons before people start losing interest (and risk losing budgets) I think you would have to trim the fat and end up almost with 3 a season (works out to about 6-7 seasons and a movie trilogy for the BAT?) Even GoT is only in up to it's 8th and final season - and while it has grown its budget it admittedly isn't the groundbreaking show it started out as.
The info dumps would be tricky - but some shows handle that better than others. I am skeptical too but I have hope that it could really work.
The major problem with CGI is organics. Spaceships, buildings, cars, armor suits, weapons and full-time bodied costumes are great. But anything requiring organic material, be it skin, faces, animals, or plants, and it looks fake.
AC and other sci-fi shows can get away with no organic CGI, but I don't know that Dresden could. Especially on a limited budget. There's so much in Dresden that would require quality CGI or quality costuming with CGI features that it might be cost-prohibitive.
I absolutely agree. It never ages well either - more prosthetics, less CGI is always better (just ask George Lucas!). Perhaps an interaction with WETA would be required.
The hardest thing of all, as was found in the original attempt, is actually the magic. Harry cuts loose all the time, but even in Star Wars, Harry Potter and the LOTR etc they even have limits on how often they throw magic around. Probably a clever workaround would be more physical fights, and maybe some Heroes-esque CGI. I am not the biggest fan of that, but they did manage to show a lot of powers each episode.
What Urban Fantasy movie?
Also I think DF ticks enough demographics, I think they would be fine.
I really do think however we as fans need to become more vocal - it won't happen without a push, and it certainly won't get the budget it needs without a big vocal message. Realistically, GoT was quite niche but amongst fanbases they were quite large. And we are not. So we really would have to make a lot of noise.
