It was 20 years ago when a young author by the name of Christopher Paolini hit it big with his fantasy young adult novel series, The Inheritance Cycle. The first novel “Eragon” was published in 2002 right before the young adult genre hit it apex. While Eragon was later adapted into a movie by the same name in 2006, the world hasn’t seen much of the franchise outside of some additional novels and a collection of short stories. Thanks to Disney+, The Inheritance Cycle is going to begin anew as an exclusive series.
Paolini will be a co-writer for the series, with Bert Salke serving as an executive producer. Fittingly enough, Salke is already working as a producer on another young adult series adaptation- Percy Jackson. Beyond this, it’s too soon to know much more about the project until we hear more from Disney.
The 2006 film adaptation of “Eragon” did seemingly well enough at the box-office, making more than double its production budget of $100 million. Perhaps this wasn’t as much as was anticipated though considering the success of the “Harry Potter” franchise and the idea of diminishing returns.
Critics certainly didn’t much appreciate the project, pretty much savaging it. Then again, a story about dragon riders fighting back against the evil King Galbatorix, doesn’t exactly seem tailor-made for critics. (Galbatorix was portrayed in the film by John Malkovich.) He suffers without his stone; as seen in the clip below.
As you might recall from things like “The Hunger Games,” “The Maze Runner,” “The Giver,” “Divergent,” and several other novels we didn’t mention, the YA genre became a little overwhelming for a while there, enough so to where none of the other novels in The Inheritance Cycle were adapted. With things cooled down and streaming services with their original series are the new craze, maybe this is Eragon’s chance to get back into the limelight.
Really the only big question now is if the popularity of Eragon is still strong enough for the series to be successful. It’s not really old enough to be nostalgic, nor is it recent enough to be fresh in people’s minds and memories. Disney+ certainly has the resources though to get the star power behind it that could give it a chance to succeed. If they could just get Malkovich back, well, it would be worth seeing just for that. After all, we wouldn’t want to prolong his suffering.
We expect to hear more about this and other Disney projects during D23 later this year.
