Terry Brooks' Shannara series to be filmed?

07 August 2007

Gerard Wood

There’s been some noise on the web recently about the purchase by Warner Bros of the film rights to Terry Brook’s Shannara series. Digging a little deeper it seems that Terry Brooks has optioned the rights for the series to Warner Bros until 2010, giving the studio three years to come up with the goods. The Elfstones of Shannara, the second novel in the series, has been proposed as the first movie, and is, according to Terry, the best place to start adapting his Shannara novels.

A script by Eldon Thompson has been purchased by the studio, although the indication is that this is considered a starting point rather than a finished product. It’s expected that the movie will go into production in 2008, but as Terry’s website wisely stresses, optioning a novel for filming does not mean that it will ever be produced.

In terms of fantasy book sales, Terry Brooks is apparently second only to J.K. Rowling. Back in the day when Terry sold his first novel, The Sword of Shannara (published in 1977), you could pick up a first edition, first print for about US$10. If you were fortunate enough to do so, you might be pleased to learn that it can now fetch upward of US$1000! Not a bad investment.