Robert Kirkman wants the Chronicles of Amber to be the next Game of Thrones
The Walking Dead creator is developing the 10-book series for TV
The crew behind Game Of Thrones has run out of books to adapt and is rapidly running out of story to tell, which means there’s a new kind of power gap coming. Instead of contenders in Westeros fighting for the Iron Throne, we’re about to see contenders on cable fighting to fill the attention gap Game Of Thrones leaves behind after its final season. Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman has a possible solution: Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles Of Amber, a classic 10-book fantasy series that could potentially keep TV viewers up to their necks in squabbling, murderous siblings for at least the next decade. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kirkman and business partner Dave Alpert have acquired the rights to Zelazny’s series for their company Skybound Entertainment, which manages Kirkman comic series like The Walking Dead and Invincible, and recently moved into producing with the TV adaptation of Kirkman’s Outcast books.
Zelazny’s Chronicles Of Amber, written between 1970 and 1991, have some notable things in common with George R.R. Martin’s Game Of Thrones novels. The series, starting with 1970’s Nine Princes In Amber, is an episodic, epic story about a sprawling family of power-hungry schemers using magic, intrigue, and alliances to vie for control of Amber, one of two “true worlds” that’s spawned an infinite number of “shadow” universes with widely varying physical laws. (The other true world, the Courts of Chaos, is a sort of evil opposite.) The first five books follow Corwin, a Prince of Amber, while the second five books follow his son Merlin. The series evolved considerably in tone and content over the course of 20 years — the Corwin books start as lone-fantasy-hero novels with a touch of hard-bitten detective story (much like the Dresden Files books), and turn into an epic war story, while the Merlin books are more about a cosmic hacker on a quest, trying to reshape reality. There’s certainly a lot there for a long-running TV show to dig into, as Corwin’s family members battle each other and the Courts of Chaos for control.
 |
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber) |