[adrotate banner=”1″]Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern has been optioned (again!) for the silver screen, this time by Warner Brothers, who are in a desperate search for a new megafranchise to make money off of in the wake of Harry Potter being long gone (and the new Potter-less Rowling films a gamble), and with The Hobbit wrapping up with no Similarion in sight. Thus, options are getting thrown about like wild pitches at a drunken softball game! Warners optioned all 22 books, which (as those of us who read the books because we were dorks know) covers 2500 years of time on planet Pern, meaning they can potentially restart the franchise every three movies or so with whole new casts! Brilliant!
Some Dragonriders of Pern info for the few of you who don’t know and are too lazy to highlight the title and rightclick for the Google search: Dragonriders of Pern takes place on the planet Pern, which is occasionally threatened by a rogue planet called the Red Star, whose irregular orbit causes it to drag destructive creatures known as Thread with it that fall on Pern and devour all organic matter it touches until they die. The Thread threatens all living creatures with destructing, but luckily they are easily destroyed by fire. Pern also has natural tiny flying lizards that breath flames (called dragonets) and bang, zoom, genetic manipulation later, suddenly we got huge dragons that people ride and burn the Thread up with.
Of course, the dragons have psychic bonds, there are different colors of dragons, occasionally the Thread doesn’t fall when it’s supposed to and people begin resenting the dragonriders, and other planet intrigue happens. The series has a lot of trilogies and other work that could be set all over Pern history.
Thanks to movies and big budgets and Game of Thrones, this is probably the best time for Dragonriders of Pern to get optioned, and the best time for it to get turned into an actual film. Here’s hoping for some awesome dragonriding and fighting and cool things being cool. Because that would be cool! If you’ve paid attention over the years, you’ve heard this franchise get optioned numerous times. But I have a feeling about this option…
Never fear, Warners is still hedging their bets on old school franchises, including forming a Harry Potter Global Franchise Development team that’s based in both London and Burbank. It’s called HPGFD, because, of course it is! It’s all about studios and brands leveraging every dollar out of your bank account and into theirs!