Stepping out of the big screen’s shadow
If a feature film fails to meet expectations on the big screen, could it successfully transition to television? Shadowhunters shines a light on this new trend. When BBC1 last year unveiled plans to adapt Philip Pullman’s celebrated novel trilogy His Dark Materials, it was not forgotten that this was once a series that had big-screen ambitions. The Golden Compass, based on Northern Lights – the first book in Pullman’s trilogy – received mixed reviews when it was released in 2007 and failed to set the box office alight. The sequels never materialised. However, announcing the BBC project and his partnership with producer Bad Wolf, Pullman himself noted the promise TV now offers to complex stories that film often cannot. “In recent years we’ve seen the way that long stories on television, whether adaptations or originals, can reach depths of characterisation and heights of suspense by taking the time for events to make their proper impact and for consequences to unravel.” The path of Pullman’s novels to TV follows that of Shadowhunters, a new fantasy drama now showing on Freeform, the US cable channel recently rebranded from ABC Family. Opening on January 12 to 1.82 million total viewers – marking the channel’s biggest series debut for two years – Shadowhunters is based on the bestselling young-adult book series The Mortal Instruments, which is written by Cassandra Clare and once also had a future on the big screen. A movie called The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, based on the first of six books in the series, was released in 2013, with plans for … Continue reading Stepping out of the big screen’s shadow
