While I’m personally still waiting for the Wheel of Time to be made into a series of movies or episodic TV shows, the Shannara Chronicles based on Terry Brooks amazing series – the Sword of Shannara is definitely a good placeholder!
The Sword of Shannara’s events take place 2000 years in our future after a nuclear war wiped out the majority of humanity. Due to the massive damage from the bombs, not only was the landscape itself drastically changed but due to the excess radiation, mankind mutated into races that we’re more familiar with from myths and legends. While elves themselves returned to Earth from their hiding, man is now present as Dwarves, Gnomes and Trolls.
In this new world, magic has been rediscovered but science and technology has been lost.
Hopefully this show is done better than the quite horrible Legend of the Seeker. While I never enjoyed that book as much as I did Shannara, it was still awful to see what they did to/with the story there as it definitely deserved a lot more. Fortunately Game of Thrones has raised the bar for the fantasy genre quite significantly since that time though and here’s hoping the directors, actors and writers have paid attention!
