Top New Fantasy Shows to Replace 'Game of Thrones'

1. 'Lord of the Rings'—Amazon

One Stream to Rule Them All

It is a simple and true enough statement that if there was no original Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy, there would be no Game of Thrones to follow in its wake. LOTR presented epic fantasy on the big screen (for the first time) in a way that was critically and commercially successful to a degree not seen until the rise of GOT. But why go back to this franchise when the films have already been made, including Jackson's less successful take on The Hobbit, they did not need to be that long!

Amazon has stepped up and are promising potential, the most expensive TV series of all time. Amazon executive Jennifer Salke, has confirmed that the new series will not retell the story from the original trilogy, but could feature some of the characters from it. The plan is to create new stories based on Tolkien’s many appendices and short stories.

The early signs are promising in that Salke has met with Tolkien’s estate and reportedly paid $250 million just for the rights contact without even taking into account production costs. Tolkien’s son Christopher had been a critic of the original film trilogy saying they gutted the book and made an action film for 15-25 year olds. The fact that the rights issue has been sorted out is a major first step as there had been issues between Peter Jackson and Tolkiens estate for years since the movies came out.

While Jackson has already ruled out any involvement himself, Amazon is still having conversations with him and it would be a mistake to exclude him from the process completely, though the previously mentioned legal issues may curtail his involvement.

The deal with Tolkien’s estate is rumoured to be for five seasons of TV and a potential spinoff and costs could rise to as much as $1 billion for the show, that said the original trilogy only cost $281 and went on to make almost $3 billion worldwide. When you look at the figures you can see why Amazon is willing to spend so much on the project.

Amazon has announced two writers for the show JD Payne & Patrick McKay who are relative newcomers to the industry. Payne's only current credit was according to the IMDB, an uncredited writer on Star Trek Beyond. He has written the next still untitled Star Trek sequel and is also credited from the writers room for Godzilla vs Kong, Patrick Mckay’s IMDB credits are exactly the same as Paynes. So while not not well known yet, remember who had heard of David Benioff and DB Weiss before Game of Thrones.

Some of the original actors have flatly refused to appear like Andy Serkis while others such as Ian McKellen have stated that he is Gandalf and all they need to do is ask him to return.

Production details are scant at the moment and rumours are the first season will take two years to make with an expected debut in 2021.

2. Untitled 'Game of Thrones' Prequel Working Title: 'The Long Night'—HBO

At one point, there were up to five different Game of Thrones projects commissioned by HBO who would be insane to not want to continue within the world that has brought them the most acclaim and profit bar none. Scripts were delivered and pitches were made and the initial winner seems to be a prequel set thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of years before the events of current show. The working title for the green lit series is The Long Night, which as avid readers will know deals with the first war between the white walkers and living people of Westeros, although George RR Martin has announced that four other spin offs are in various states of development.

Jane Goldman has been confirmed as the show runner which is a very strong choice as she has a great body of work behind her already. She first came to prominence writing and working with Matthew Vaughan on films such as Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men First Class & The Kingsmen films. She also wrote The Woman in Black, The Limehouse Golem and Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children. Hopefully she can persuade old pal Matthew Vaughan to come aboard and direct a few episodes of the new show.

While little is still officially known about the show, die hard Thrones fans have been scouring the internet and beginning to piece together some details, potential casting lists for untitled HBO projects have been circulating as well as current Thrones locations being tied up past the current shows end dates. Part of the success of Thrones has been down to its many varied locations worldwide where bases have been established for multiple seasons that have ensured quality and kept costs down as much as is possible with this type of show.

I like the idea of setting the new show thousands of years away from the main GOT timeline as it enables the new story and actors time to establish themselves while still using the iconography and locations that will be recognisable to Thrones fans, and of course with epic fantasy whats to stop the odd character from Thrones turning up at a later point.

All we do know is production his ramping up right at this moment and initial suggestions that HBO would want to capitalise on the final season of Thrones and beat Amazon's Lord of the Rings show to the punch.

'The Witcher'—Netflix

Netflix is looking for its own fantasy epic to complete with Amazon and HBO and they are pooling their resources into The Witcher. Based on a series on novels by Polish writer Andrzej Sapowski and a very successful video game franchise, The Witcher is definitely more adult orientated than some of its potential rivals.

The story follows Gerald of Rivia a "witcher," essentially a monster hunter, who is trained at a young age to develop supernatural powers. The books follow Geralt (and his trusty horse Roach) as he ventures through the lands battling monsters and bedding different women.

Having played the excellent, Witcher Three Wild Hunt myself for years, I'm very excited by this development, as the books and games lend themselves very well to a long form series format.

Superfan Henry Cavill has apparently walked away from DC to take on the role of Geralt and filming is already underway on the eight episode first season, with an expected debut on Netflix next year. I have previously written about Cavill's casting and the earlier development of the show here.

Further casting has just been announced with most of the fans happy with the relativelyunknown cast.

'The Wheel of Time'—Amazon

That Other Epic Fantasy Story:

Robert Jordans monstrous 14 volume saga that took a massive 22 years to complete is one of the corner stone texts of the epic fantasy genre. Indeed Jordan passed away before completing his intended 12th and final volume, luckily for fans who had invested over twenty years in the series Brandon Sanderson was able to complete Jordans final book from his extensive notes and finally bring the saga to a close with the support of Jordans estate.

The main plot is based around Rand al'Thor who many believe to be the Dragon Reborn, Moiraine an Aes Sedai is dispatched to find Rand and see if he is the one. The rest of the plot gets increasingly more and more dense as Rand continues on his journey to learn how his powers work and eventually fight the Dark One.

That is a rudimentary description of the plot as The Wheel of Time then splinters from the main characters from the first book into their own journeys and parallel narratives. Each time, getting deeper and deeper into the lore. In fact for many fans, Jordan fell into the most common trope of a fantasy author—in that he spent too much time describing every small element of the world he had created and the quality of the later books dipped. There is a widely held view that the final books (co-authored by Sanderson) ended the series on a strong note and it is debatable if this was down to Jordan having the ending planned out way in advance. Or was it Sanderson's influence?

It is the very definition of a flawed masterpiece and therefore I do not think the book's fans will be too disheartened with the inevitable changes to the text that this adaption will bring. It is strange though that Amazon has commissioned this at the same time they are making the Lord of the Rings which is on track to be the most expensive TV show of all time—and to be successful, The Wheel of Time needs a massive budget as well.

The other key issue to the shows success is the sheer amount of material to adapt, you cannot even use the Game of Thrones method where each book is adapted into a season as that would still take us to 14 years for one show.

There is little other information at the moment on the show and I would not be surprised to see Amazon develop the show, but hold off on production for a few years until they can gage the success of Lord of The Rings.