The impact of the Amazon/Tolkien deal on the WHEEL OF TIME TV show

The news broke last night that Amazon are in talks with Warner Brothers about making a big-budget TV series based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, despite the perception that Peter Jackson's movie trilogy is too recent and a remake at this time is unnecessary. What's been less reported is how this will impact on Sony's TV version of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels, which were widely expected would end up at Amazon.

To rewind, in April 2017 it was confirmed that Sony TV had optioned the rights to The Wheel of Time in a complex deal involving the Robert Jordan Estate (aka the Bandersnatch Group) and Red Eagle Entertainment. A few months earlier it was heavily rumoured that Amazon were seriously considering making the series, as Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos is a huge fan of SF and fantasy in general (he had a cameo in the latest Star Trek movie, Beyond) and - apparently - Wheel of Time is one of his favourite book series. Amazon also recently reorganised their TV production division, cancelling several smaller shows and Bezos mandating the acquisition of a big-budget SFF project to compete with Game of Thrones on HBO. Wheel of Time was a no-brainer for this treatment.

However, seven months after Sony confirmed it had optioned the book rights, no production partner has been confirmed. Although not completely unusual - many years between optioning a property and greenlighting it is not unheard of - it was expected that studios would move quickly to snatch up the rights to a property that could comfortably go toe-to-toe with Game of Thrones in terms of epic scenes, number of characters and scale. Now it appears we know why there's been radio silence: Warner Brothers have been (quietly) shopping around their new Lord of the Rings TV project around at the same time. Although studios appear to be dubious about making a new LotR screen project so soon after Jackson's film series, they are also weighing carefully the benefits of picking up a much more well-known franchise which would get a lot of viewers from the off.

This leaves The Wheel of Time TV project in an awkward place. WoT was - comfortably - the biggest and most successful epic fantasy series not currently under an option, so it had a degree of brand value in the marketplace. With Middle-earth in play, that is no longer the case and the problems of adapting Wheel - its immense visual effects requirements, high budget and the challenges of adapting 14 books totalling 4 million words (eight times the length of Lord of the Rings) in a reasonable timeframe - may have come into greater focus.

It's worth looking now at the channels and broadcasters who may be in the running to adapt WoT and see how likely they are to follow through:

Amazon

Amazon are in deep discussion with Warner Brothers over the LotR TV show and Jeff Bezos is a noted fan of the books. He is personally involved in negotiations. They are clearly taking this approach very seriously. However, they have not committed yet. WB are asking for an astonishing amount of money up-front (totalling a third of a billion dollars) and are not bringing anything new to the table. Only The Lord of the Rings is on offer, with perhaps a possibility of The Hobbit as well, but none of Tolkien's other Middle-earth books are included in the deal, so no new material can be brought to the screen that hasn't been adapted previously. Although the deal is tempting, Amazon will likely have to weight up the benefits of the brand name and value versus the likely criticisms they will get for not going for a more original project.

If Amazon passes on LotR I could see them picking up WoT. This is a new project (for the screen) but also one that will last easily six or seven seasons (at least) and they can cross-market the show with the books and other merchandise. Amazon also appear to be the only company in the running who can stump up the significant budget that Wheel of Time will require. However, I strongly suspect that they will be more inclined to go with LotR if they can make the finances work.

HBO

HBO have already shot down the LotR project, citing their ongoing commitment to Game of Thrones and its in-development spin-offs. I think we can comfortably say that if they're not going to pick up LotR, they're not going to pick up Wheel of Time either. HBO are now 100% out of the picture.

Showtime

Showtime have committed to Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle prequel TV show. Until this project succeeds or fails, Showtime are also unlikely to seriously consider Wheel of Time.

AMC

Sony and AMC have an excellent prior relationship from Breaking Bad and I suspect AMC will be seriously considering the advantages of adapting Wheel of Time to add to their enviable SFF programming, which currently includes The Walking Dead and Preacher. However, AMC's preferred business model has them making shows for a very, very low budget and just making them look impressive, allowing them to maximise profits. They have already faced heavy criticism for the shoestring budget that The Walking Dead is made under, despite the show's massive global success. It is unlikely that AMC would give The Wheel of Time the $6-7 million per episode budget it will need as a minimal starting point. Still, AMC may still be in the picture if they can be persuaded to loosen the pursestrings.

Starz

Starz are also enjoying a spectacular surge in genre programming, with both Outlander and American Gods doing very well. Wheel of Time would be an enviable addition to their lineup, and Starz certainly are prepared to spend more money than AMC. They may be tempted to take another look at Wheel of Time if Amazon are now out of the picture.

FX

FX have been quietly building a slate of excellent shows recently, including Fargo, Legion, American Horror Story, Archer, The Americans and Atlanta. A high-budget, high-profile fantasy show is precisely what they are missing, and they also aired Red Eagle's proof-of-concept Wheel of Time pilot thing a couple of years ago, for which they received a lot of interest from viewers.

CBS

I'd previously dismissed CBS as being a likely home for the show, since their budgets for network shows are pretty small. Since then, however, they've launched the CBS All Access platform and achieved significant success with Star Trek: Discovery, which has a budget of $7 million per episode. If CBS wish to maintain momentum with the All Access project they will need another high-profile killer app, and Wheel of Time could well be it.

SyFy

SyFy has achieved some success with the TV show The Expanse, but has recently cancelled several shows and their bandwidth for making lots of big-budget shows at once is limited. I consider SyFy to have only an outside shot at the moment.

Netflix

Netflix would seem like a very probability on the list. They have developed a portfolio of shows, but they don't yet have an epic fantasy show to go toe-to-toe with GoT. It would seem likely that they would be interested. However, Netflix have gotten into significant debt to deliver their current slate of of shows and have axed expensive series such as Sense8 and House of Cards (it was widely reported that the sixth season would be the final one even before they axed Kevin Spacey) in favour of much cheaper programming, such as GLOW and American Vandal. Although Netflix's overall programming budget is increasing, the amount they are willing to pay per-show is definitely decreasing (although they have noted this may increase again, and certainly Stranger Things is not a cheap show to make). Wheel of Time would likely remain of interest to them, however, and if they decide a new high-profile show is needed they would likely stump up more money.

ETA: Netflix are developing a TV series based on The Witcher video games and books by Andrzej Sapkowksi, which likely would reduce their interest in another top-tier fantasy show.

Conclusion

The Amazon/LotR discussions are troubling to Wheel of Time fans as they would seem to shut down the most logical pairing of network and project. However, other networks remain in play. I would say at the moment that Starz, AMC and FX may now all be more likelier destinations for the project, with CBS All Access and Netflix as outsider players. If Amazon choose not to proceed with LotR, I suspect they would also take another look at Wheel of Time.

More concerning will be oversaturation of the market: if, by 2021 or thereabouts, we have a Kingkiller Chronicle TV show, a GoTspin-off (or two), a Lord of the Rings TV series and additional seasons of Shannara and American Gods all on air at the same time, it might be felt that further fantasy series would be redundant. As usual, time will tell.

Tolkien Estate and Warner Brothers to collaborate on a new LORD OF THE RINGS TV series

In a surprising and unexpected move, the Tolkien Estate and Warner Brothers are teaming up to to produce a television series based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings.

The news comes fourteen years after Peter Jackson completed his epic movie trilogy for New Line Cinema (now owned by Warner Brothers) and just three years after he completed a prequel trilogy, based on The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy grossed just under $3 billion at the box office (and considerably more in merchandising sales) and considerable critical acclaim, including seventeen Oscars. The Hobbit trilogy, despite a much more mixed critical reception, actually made slightly more money at the box office but off the back of twice the budget, so was less profitable (although this is relative; WB were very happy with $2.3 billion in profit).

However, the Tolkien Estate was unhappy with the movies, with Christopher Tolkien feeling they were special-effects-focused and lacking the soul of the books (although this was before he'd watched them). The Estate was also unhappy with how their legal rights were respected. They ended up fighting at least three legal battles against the studio, the first to secure the correct share of the profits, the second to clear up the rights to The Hobbit and the third to resolve whether the original deal in the 1960s granted the movie producers the rights to make gambling tie-ins, when this was not part of the original deal.

The new deal is said to be enormous, with an up-front rights fee of $250 million and a guaranteed per-season budget of between $100 and $150 million, which would exceed the record-setting $100 million budget of Game of Thrones in its last three seasons. For this reason only three studios are in the running: HBO, Netflix and Amazon. HBO apparently took a brief look, but turned down the deal, feeling it would conflict with their plans to expand their Game of Thrones franchise (although the idea of a fresh Lord of the Rings adaptation, possibly with noted Tolkien fan George R.R. Martin in an advisory role for HBO, is intriguing). Netflix are still in the running but they are currently looking to strip back some of their excess spending in the face of a mounting debt bill, which would not be compatible with this project.

Instead, Amazon seem to be the most likely studio to pick up the deal. Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, is personally involved in negotiations and they come just after he mandated the need for a massive, high-profile show to directly compete with Game of Thrones. Bezos, a fan of science fiction and fantasy, is believed to have been eyeing the Wheel of Time TV series in development at Sony, of which he is also reportedly a major fan, but obviously a Middle-earth TV show would have a far higher profile. Amazon TV also have the money to afford to pay the enormous rights and not be too badly damaged if the show tanks.

The reported involvement of the Tolkien Estate is surprising, although it has been suggested that it might be Saul Zaentz's Middle-earth Enterprises (who have held the TV and film rights to both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings since the late 1960s) that's involved rather than the Estate directly. This would explain why apparently only The Lord of the Rings is currently in play, possibly with an expansion to include The Hobbit. The rights to the other Middle-earth books, namely The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Children of Hurin and Beren and Luthien, firmly remain with the Tolkien Estate and are apparently not up for discussion in the current deal.

Given the immense popularity of the Tolkien books and the boost it would give Amazon, it's likely that this deal will go through. The only stumbling block will be the perception that this is far too soon after Peter Jackson movie universe was completed and a TV series launched in ten years might be a better proposition. It's also likely that a TV project of this magnitude will require a heavy-hitting showrunner and creative force to be involved, and unless there is it may founder for a lack of creative talent.

More damaging is the possible impact on Sony's Wheel of Time project, which seemed a natural fit at Amazon and would require the resources that only really Amazon can offer. If Amazon can take up this Middle-earth deal, it  may dramatically reduce the likelihood of the Wheel of Time adaptation continuing, at least in the short term.

New BOOKS OF BABEL cover art

Orbit Books have unveiled the cover art for their big-label editions of Josiah Bancroft's Books of Babel fantasy series.

The new edition uses the same cover art (by Ian Leino) for Senlin Ascends as on the self-published edition, with a new typeface and a cover blurb from Mark Lawrence (who has been championing Bancroft for the last couple of years).

Book 2, Arm of the Sphinx, has a new cover design. The arm and fist of the original cover design has been combined with the Tower of Babel from the first book.

The mass-market editions of Senlin Ascends (UK, USA) and Arm of the Sphinx (UK, USA) will be published in January and April 2018 respectively. The third novel, The Hod King, should (hopefully) get it's first release in late 2018, followed by the fourth and concluding volume in the series some time later.

Creative Assembly unveil TOTAL WAR schedule for the next few years

Since 2000, British developers Creative Assembly have been cranking out games in their Total War series of strategy wargames. The Total War games feature a grand strategy layer, where you expand your empire, develop cities, assemble armies, research upgrades and new technology and then move those armies around into enemy territory. When battle results, the game switches to a 3D battle map where you can take direct control of your armies.

To date there have been eleven games in the series (Shogun, Medieval, Rome, Medieval II, Empire, Napoleon, Shogun II, Rome II, Attila, Warhammer and Warhammer II), nine major expansions and hordes of smaller DLC. The franchise has sold over 20 million copies and even spawned a BBC television series, Time Commanders, featuring players testing their wits against one another in battle whilst historical experts advise them (and are usually completely ignored).

Most recently, the series has taken a surprising ahistorical swing towards fantasy. Although the series has always played fast and loose with history - it's far more "inspired by" the historical events than setting out to painstakingly recreate them - the move into the Warhammer fantasy universe from Games Workshop was unexpected. It's also been an immense success, with both Warhammer games selling excellently and getting superb reviews. Total War: Warhammer II was released a few weeks ago to immense acclaim and the Mortal Empires expansion (which merges the strategy maps from Warhammer I and II into one super-campaign) was released this week.

CA have set out reassure fans of their historical games that they are being catered to as well, with three historical warfare games in development. CA's development slate currently looks like this:

Untitled Expansion for Previous Game
This should be formally announced shortly, but CA are working on a further expansion for the "biggest historical game they have ever done", one of their older titles. As well as featuring a new campaign, this expansion will update and revise the base game as well, possibly with better graphics and features. Although some fans are speculating this is a further expansion for Rome II or Shogun II, it may be an update and expansion for Empire: Total War. Released in 2009, Empire was the first game to use the current Warscape Engine and was infamously bugged on release (and some bugs remain in current versions of the game). Fixing Empire's remaining problems and upgrading the graphics would be a welcome move, as would adding a more focused campaign like the title's stand-alone Napoleon spin-off. This will be the next Total War game, likely to be released in 2018.

Warhammer III
CA's Warhammer series was always going to be a trilogy and the third game will likely expand the map eastwards. Among the most likely new factions are the Chaos Dwarves, Ogre Kingdoms, Tomb Kings and Daemons of Chaos. It's possible this game will expand on the forces of Chaos in general, and may even incorporate the End Times events (presumably with the player having to the option to change the outcome, otherwise the game would be a major downer). Given the eighteen-month wait between Warhammer and Warhammer II, the earliest we can expect this is probably mid-2019.

Total War Saga
CA are working on a series of "smaller-focused" games like Napoleon and Attila, with the banner title of Total War Sagas. These games will still be Total War games but will have a relatively narrow focus. The first game in this sequence will be set in Ireland (CA begrudgingly admitted it after their "obscure" screenshot turned out to be readily identifiable) and will likely revolve around both internal Irish clan warfare and the arrival of Viking invaders. I'd expect this game in 2019.

Untitled Next Full-On Historical Game
CA have confirmed that the next historical game is in full development and they are working on urban battles (after complaints about the pared-down and underwhelming sieges in the Warhammer games). Although they have decided, after years of prevaricating, they will do further sequels in the future (making a Medieval III near-inevitable for the mid-2020s), this game will be set in an all-new era that the series has not visited before. I wouldn't expect to see this game until 2020.

As for the possibilities, the most likely one is China. The base game could be set in the Warring States period and DLC could then add in the Three Kingdoms, An Lushan and Jin-Song periods, as well as potentially the Mongol invasion, conflicts with ancient Korea and later periods. China has been completely left untouched by the Total War franchise, which is a bit odd given its suitability to the franchise, so this seems the most likely possibility. India and the South and Central American empires are possible, but some of the other ideas mooted (Ancient Greece and Persia, the Wars of the Roses) overlap heavily with already-published Total War games and don't match the "whole new setting" description.

An additional possibility, after the fantasy team has finished with the Warhammer trilogy, is that there will be more fantasy games. Strong candidates for this treatment would be, of course, A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth mythos. There are already excellent mods for Medieval II (the last game in the series to allow in-depth mods) for these settings, but seeing official versions would be quite intriguing.

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock

The Twelve Colonies of Kobol have constructed robotic servitors, the Cylons, to work as servants, soldiers...and slaves. The Cylons have rebelled, constructed a significant fleet and launched a series of attacks against the divided Colonies. The Colonial Fleet has been constructed to meet the threat, but they continue to bicker amongst themselves. It falls to the officers of the Fleet to lead the defence of the Twelve Colonies against a remorseless and relentless foe.

The rebooted Battlestar Galactica TV series ran for four seasons, a mini-series and two TV movies between 2003 and 2009. A remake of a cheesy late 1970s show, it featured (for the first two-and-a-bit seasons anyway) outstanding acting, superb and nuanced writing and some fantastic, spectacular space battles. It's surprising that we haven't seen a video game based on the series before, given its gritty complexity and the fact that the mythos are rich in different possibilities for gameplay, not to mention there's a very well-received board game based on the series already. The only previous official game for the setting was a low-key Facebook MMO.

It's therefore a bit random to see an official video game show up eight years after the TV show ended, although the fact it's from a tiny Australian studio and a small British publisher with limited budgets may explain that. Normally you wouldn't be expecting much from a game developed in apparently a small period of time (it was announced less than a year ago), on clearly a very tight budget, from niche companies. It's thus a pleasure to say that Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is excellent, a hybrid of XCOM and Homeworld with a great storyline and lots of excellent adherence to the established lore whilst bringing in new ideas.

Deadlock is a two-tier game with a grand strategic layer and a tactical combat mode. The strategy layer shows a map of the Twelve Colonies on which you can build new ships, assemble new fleets, research new ships and weapons and make sure you're keeping the Colonies happy (leave a Colony under attack for too long and they'll withdraw from the Articles of Colonisation, along with their funding, a bit like XCOM). When one of your fleets meets a Cylon force, the game shifts to a Homeworld-style 3D battle map. You move your ships, launch fighters, select what weapons to use and can distribute power on each ship, boosting weapons power or hardening your computer systems to stop the Cylons hacking them. You can also recruit Colonial officers and level them up, which grants you special abilities in battle (such as being able to better resist Cylon infiltration squads if you give your commander the Marine Tactics specialisation) and allows you to bring more ships to an engagement.

The space battles are fought using the WEGO system, where both sides give orders and then the orders unfold simultaneously. This means you not only have to choose what to do, you have to take into account what the enemy may do on their side and anticipate accordingly. Each ship on each side has different capabilities, armour, speed and defences and as the campaign continues you have to learn the best way of using your ships and their abilities. Early battles, fought with the speedy, missile-laden but lightly-armoured Manticore-class gunboats and the more formidable Adamant-class frigates, tend to be fast and furious. Later battles, fought with Jupiter-class battlestars (like the Galactica) against Cylon basestars, are slower, more strategic and have many more options, with you having to decide to close to close range to use your railguns or stand off at long range and exchange missile barrages, timing when to use a flak barrage to take down an enemy missile volley whilst not blowing up your own ordinance or fighters by accident.

Slightly disappointingly, there isn't an open, Total War-style campaign where you can go from a lowly starting fleet to outright victory at your own pace; the game only covers the first few months of the Cylon War (out of twelve years), so ends with a major strategic victory, not the outright defeat of the enemy. Instead the game has a series of important "story" missions, which unlock new units and technology. You can choose to delay these missions to take on optional side-battles and build up more resources but the war doesn't move on until you do the campaign missions. Rushing these missions is a bad idea (particularly in the early game, where you want to start building up multiple fleets as early as possible) since you'll get overwhelmed quickly, so there's a strong judgement call to be made in when to trigger the next story mission and ramp up the difficulty and when to hold back to stockpile more tylium ore and requisition points for later developments. This is more like XCOM and works pretty well, but does reduce the scope for replayability.


The game's storyline is excellent, matching what we know of the lore whilst also introducing new elements. The presentation is slick - the graphical interface is very true to the TV show, the strategy map uses a big table and models just like the battle planning on the TV show and the Bear McCreary-ish music is outstanding - but there are moments when the lack of budget shines through. The voice acting is variable and the dialogue can be a little hammy. The late-game introduction of a Cylon character also feels a bit random, although it does change things up when battles are threatening to get a bit repetitive.

There are a few other niggles. Having to manually launch each Viper squadron from each ship can be a bit mind-numbing, especially when you get to the late game when you might have eight or nine squadrons in battle. A command to order all of your fighters around as one unit would be welcome (something Black Lab Games are looking at for a future patch). There's also occasional difficulty spikes which the game doesn't do a very good job of explaining or advising on how to overcome them. I kept getting annihilated when the missile-spamming basestars showed up until I realised that the flak cannons on battlestars can shoot down missiles as well as Cylon Raiders. It also feels like targeting and firing missiles and selecting which ship to focus fire on all involve at least one or two more mouse clicks than should be really necessary. As a turn-based game, none of these are critical issues and all commands in the game have keyboard shortcuts which make things a lot smoother.

Ultimately, Deadlock is both a great strategy game and a great BSG game, with lots of authentic flavour. Far superior to last year's Warhammer 40,000 space game (Battlefleet Gothic: Armada), Deadlock may in fact be the finest space tactics game since Homeworld 2's release fourteen years ago.

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock (****) is that most welcome of games, a title that arrived with little fanfare and turns out to be excellent. The tactics are fiendish and compelling, the strategic layer adds some extra freedom to the game, the presentation is first-rate and the story is well-done. Some questionable voice acting and a few UI niggles do make the game slightly more labourious to play than it should be, but so far the developers have done a good job of patching out issues based on feedback so these may improve. The game ends with ten years of the war left to fight, and I would more than welcome an expansion or sequel further exploring this time period.

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is available on PC now via Steam. Versions for the PlayStation 4 and X-Box One should follow in the next few weeks.

2016's best game now out on console

2016's best video game - okay, one of 2016's best video games - has now been released on X-Box and PS4 (with a special mode to take advantage of the PS4 Pro's extra features).

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is an isometric stealth game where the player has to guide a team of mismatched comrades in carrying out missions for the Shogun during Japan's Edo period. A combination of tactics, stealth, combat and puzzles guides the player through a good 30 hours of so of clever and well-written gameplay.

I gave the PC version of the game a full five-star review last year and spent some time a few months ago replaying the game from the start, which I rarely do with titles. It remains a remarkable and enjoyable experience. By all reports, the console versions do a good job of translating the game to those platforms.

Atlas of Ice and Fire: Mapping George R.R. Martin's World

As hopefully everyone is aware, I also blog at Atlas of Ice and Fire, where I'm mapping the history, geography and narrative of A Song of Ice and Fire (and throwing in some stuff for other fantasy series as well).

Today I completed the "Geographic Maps" section of the Atlas, 25 maps which cover the known world from the Lonely Light in the Sunset Sea to the island of Ulos in the Saffron Straits beyond even Asshai, a full seven thousand miles to the east. We cover a similar distance from the frozen northern polar region beyond the Lands of Always Winter down to the steaming equatorial jungles of Sothoryos and Ulthos.

This has been quite a project, a full year or so in the making following the completion of the earlier "Historical Maps" section. Next up - probably after a break of a few weeks or a couple of months - will be the "Narrative Maps" covering the events of the novels themselves.

I also blog over on Patreon, where I'm currently producing the "Cities of Fantasy" series. Today's article is on the city of Asshai from A Song of Ice and Fire, but I've also covered cities from other book series and video games. The Cities of Fantasy articles are reprinted on the Wertzone after one month, but you can get early access by signing up to my Patreon feed.

Once again, thanks to all my readers who make this all worthwhile.

JV Jones completes new urban fantasy novel

Author JV Jones has completed her first novel in six years. Sorry Jones is an urban fantasy thriller featuring a new character getting into supernatural hijinks on the American West Coast.

The new novel is short by Jones's standards, clocking in at 100,000 words or so. Jones has written the novel in just a few months, driven by her early success on Patreon. Originally, it seems that her plan had been to get straight into completing the partially-finished fifth Sword of Shadows novel, Endlords, but upon attempting that she found that her writing skills needed some honing before returning to her fantasy series. This is the project she undertook to do just that.

It remains to be seen if Tor or another publisher will pick up the new novel. But this is encouraging news given that Jones (who has suffered a major relationship crisis and a series bereavement during the past few years) had not written much that she was happy with in over half a decade, and her experiment with both Patreon and this new novel seem to have succeeded in recharging the creative batteries. In addition, Jones notes on her Patreon that writing the new book has already provided insights on how to complete Endlords, such as abandoning her previous strict practice of writing in chronological order in order to skip "difficult" chapters and double back to finish them later, rather than being simply logjammed for weeks on end on single chapters, which was apparently a major problem on Endlords.

Hopefully we'll see this new novel in 2018 and Endlords in the not-too-distant future.

ETA: Julie drops by in the comments to confirm that Endlords will be the penultimate book in the series.

Stranger Things 2

Halloween, 1984. A year has passed since a young girl named "Eleven" escaped from Hawkins Labs into the outside world and unleashed chaos in her wake. Will Byers has been rescued from the mysterious realm known as the Upside Down, but is still suffering the consequences of his time there. The disappearance of Barbara Holland has also had unforeseen ramifications. The arrival of strangers in Hawkins coincides with a resurgence in activity from the Upside Down...and the beginning of an even larger, graver threat to the town.

Stranger Things came out of nowhere last year to become one of Netflix's biggest-ever hits, a show that was both an indulgence in 1980s nostalgia but also remembered to tell a really good, interesting and brilliantly-characterised story at the same time. The renewal for a second season was both welcome, because this world is compelling and deserves more exploration, but also worrying, because Stranger Things had a story with a well-defined beginning, middle and end, and artificially introducing another mystery in the town might feel like a tacked-on move.

Fortunately, it doesn't. After a slightly haphazard start, Stranger Things 2 (the official name of the season, denoting that this is a proper sequel, not just a continuation of the first season) soon matches and, in some areas, outstrips its forebear. The Duffer Brothers made it clear that for this season they wanted to make a sequel along the lines of Aliens or Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a story with bigger stakes, more action and a larger threat, but also more compelling characters and greater emotional resonance. They bring in some new characters, expand the world further with more information about the Upside Down and the experimental subjects at Hawkins Labs (giving rise to a very good one-episode side-story set in Chicago) and also up the stakes in a massive way.

This increase in scale does not come at the expense of characterisation. In fact, the multi-pronged threat faced by Hawkins results in the characters splitting up into smaller teams to deal with what initially appear to be unrelated storylines. Nancy and Jonathan team up to find justice for Barb, Dustin and Steve join forces to tackle a new creature issue and Mike devotes his time to helping Will overcome his issues from the Upside Down. A bit like Lord of the Rings - or the later part of Aliens - the team is forced to split up only to rejoin forces later on for the grand finale...and it's a massive finale, with huge ramifications for the world.

The show's cultural touchstones continue, with more classic 1980s tunes being referenced, movies like Ghostbusters and The Terminator being namechecked and scenes being included which homage everything from Poltergeist to Aliens to The Goonies. The new castmembers include several shot-outs to the period, most notably the addition of Sean Astin (The Goonies, Lord of the Rings) and Paul Reiser (Aliens), albeit with both playing very well-rounded and interesting characters.

On the negative side of things, Stranger Things 2 does start to overdo it with the CGI. Season 1 made a point of not just being set in the 1980s, but even aping the style of a 1980s movie, with minimal CGI and the use of practical effects wherever possible. The second season has no truck with this, and CGI is used quite extensively. A lot of the time it's of the highest quality and the creature scenes would be difficult to do without it, but some CG establishing shots feel unnecessary. In particular, the use of CG to create school corridors in the Upside Down version of Hawkins feels a like a bit mid-2000s video game.

Still, that's a very minor complaint. Stranger Things 2 (*****) gives us greater insight into the existing characters, introduces interesting new faces and expands the world and scale of events whilst not selling out the show's heart and soul. The biggest question when the season ends is "now what?", because I can't see the third season getting bigger still. We'll have to wait until 2019 to find out the answer to that question. In the meantime, Stranger Things 2 is available to stream on Netflix worldwide.

Showtime picks up KINGKILLER CHRONICLE prequel TV series

Showtime have confirmed they are developing a prequel television series to Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle novel trilogy. Lionsgate undertook a complex multimedia option on the series a couple of years ago, but picked up momentum a few months back when Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) was attached as a producer and musical director.

The plan seems to be for writer Lindsey Beer to adapt the three novels - The Name of the Wind (2007), The Wise Man's Fear (2011) and the still-unpublished The Doors of Stone (forthcoming, still) - as big-budget motion pictures, with a TV series intersecting the events of the novels but focusing on other elements of the story to be produced by John Rogers (Leverage). Miranda will produce and work on songs and other elements for both projects.

It sounds like the TV show will, at least initially, take the form of a prequel set a generation before the events of The Name of the Wind and will follow other characters through the world of Temerant. This plan gives Rothfuss additional time to complete the much-delayed third and concluding novel in the trilogy and reduces the chances of the adaptation running out of source material before it's done (as recently experienced by Game of Thrones).

The plan also encompasses video games, but no announcements have been made with regard to this part of the franchise.