It’s been four years since it was first announced that Disney was developing a TV series based on Christoper Paolini’s The Inheritance Cycle, so you’d be forgiven if you had completely forgotten about it, as I had. However, it seems Eragon is still in development at Disney+ and has taken a major step forward with the announcement of a creative team.
Who is Taking Charge of the Eragon TV Series?
Todd Harthan (High Potential) will co-create the Eragon TV series with Paolini and will serve as co-showrunner alongside Todd Helning (Superman & Lois). Additionally, Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) has signed on as an executive producer. A writers room for the series opened late last year.
What’s It All About?
The Inheritance Cycle tells the story of a young farm boy named Eragon who discovers an egg that hatches into a dragon he names Saphira. Through their bond and the help of his mentor Brom, Eragon learns to be a Dragon Rider, an ancient order that had long been thought to be wiped out by the evil king Galbatorix. Eragon and Saphira set out to overthrow Galbatorix and free the land of Alagaësia from his tyranny.
Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was just a teenager, but the fantasy novel later exploded in popularity and became a best-seller. Naturally, Hollywood came calling, and 20th Century Fox acquired the rights to the novel, but unfortunately, the resulting adaptation was met with scathing reviews. Although Paolini has written several more installments of what became known as The Inheritance Cycle, the failure of the first film spelled doom for any potential sequels.
In the twenty years (good lord) since the release of the first movie, fans have been eager for Eragon to receive a proper adaptation, and this won’t be the first fantasy series that Disney has given a second chance to. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson franchise was rebooted as a TV series on the streaming service several years ago and has been received far more favourably than the two Fox movies, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters.
