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5 Fantasy Epics Peter Jackson Should Tackle Now that The Hobbit is Over
After some riddles-in-the-dark, Cumberbatch-dragon-action, and a lot of meandering around, The Hobbit trilogy finally concluded with last month’s release of The Battle of the Five Armies. Director Peter Jackson also says he’s not going to return to Middle-Earth ever again, not even to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, but that doesn’t mean he won’t return to epic fantasy (Or sci-fi, either, as he might direct Ready Player One). Conventional wisdom tells us that The Hobbit should not have been a trilogy since you can actually read the book faster than watching all three movies. With that in mind, here are some fantasy series which are actually big enough justify the long-running time of a Peter Jackson movie.
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Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quintet (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters,and An Acceptable Time)
Starting with the release of the time-hoping, space-traveling A Wrinkle in Time, the adventures of the Wallace family didn’t end there. Madeline L’Engle wrote four more books chronicling the adventures of the inter-dimensional siblings. Though adaptations have been attempted of A Wrinkle in Time, these works are homaged in film and television more than actually depicted. Jackson knows how to work with unlikely heroes like Frodo and Bilbo, so why not Charles Wallace and Meg?
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Lev Grossman’s The Magicians
Already in development at the SyFy channel as an ongoing series, Lev Grossman’s meta-fantasy novels are actually perfect for Peter Jackson’s sensibilities. Because so much of The Magicians references classic fantasy (Narnia!) it’s totally in Peter Jackson’s wheel house. Though we’ll likely never see a big-screen adaptation of The Magicians, that doesn’t mean PJ can’t direct a few of the episodes. He’s been threatening to direct some Doctor Who episodes for ages!
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Larry Niven’s The Magic Goes Away
A fantasy novel by Larry Niven, this underrated book series helps to explain how certain forces of magic are managed in a specific fantasy world. Unlike something like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, Niven’s book isn’t near as iconic, meaning Jackson could actually have a lot of freedom with this one. There’s also Warlocks, which are sort of due their comeback. When’s the last time somebody called somebody a Warlock in a movie?
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Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time
If PJ is looking for length, the Robert Jordan (and later Brandon Sanderson) series The Wheel of Time can’t really be beat. With 14 books in the series, and a fan-following arguably more excited and loyal than Tolkien and Harry Potter fans combined, this series is a no-brainer for someone like Peter Jackson. The audio book for the final installment alone—A Memory of Light—is 41 hours long. Perfect for Peter Jackson. The only thing is, they’d need to get some excellent fan consultation to help write the screenplay, which would probably begin and end with Wheel of Time expert Leigh Butler.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Yeah. I know. These have already been adapted into a few films, but those movies are really not so great. In an alternate dimension, Peter Jackson bringing contemporary versions of Greek Gods to life seems to make perfect sense. Author Rick Riordan is so cool that even if PJ didn’t want to redo Percy Jackson, there’s always his Heroes of Olympus series. Memorable, touching, and a classy mash-up of Harry Potter and ancient Greek Myth. What more could you want?
This post originally appeared on The MindHut.