Well, add another one to the ever-growing pile! Stephen King’s fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon, which has connections to The Dark Tower and The Stand, is finally going to be adapted.
Deadline reports 1984’s The Eyes of the Dragon will be adapted into a pilot.
Unlike King’s Dark Tower series (which will soon live at Amazon) and The Stand (headed to CBS All Access in the US), this one is going to Hulu in the US along with the anthology series Castle Rock. Castle Rock aired on FOX Showcase in Australia, which makes the channel a likely candidate to host The Eyes of the Dragon as well.
The trade writes that Seth Grahame-Smith (The LEGO Batman Movie) will write the pilot and serve as showrunner. “I am so excited to be working in the world of Stephen King with Hulu, which has such a terrific track record with Stephen King adaptations,” Grahame-Smith told Deadline.
“The goal for this series is to feel unlike any Stephen King adaptation before, with this rich underlying source material, and the only true fantasy book he wrote that has kings and swords and princesses. We will honour the spirit of the book and the legacy.”
Unlike Game of Thrones, which is spread out over many lands and features families battling for domination, The Eyes of the Dragon is much more focused. The plot, as you probably guessed, takes place in a medieval setting, and focuses on the realm of Delain and its royal family. Though all seems well at first, the king’s magician, Flagg (that name sound familiar?), is up to a lot of no good, and he’s a very patient adversary.
The story is, of course, a departure for the horror-heavy King. Oddly enough, that’s what made me read the book when I found it among his works in my high school library. “Dragon” definitely stands out when you’re looking at his collected works on a shelf.
Syfy was planning to adapt the book back in 2012 as a film or mini-series but that never came to fruition. Here’s hoping the magic aligns this time.