Warner Bros apparently hired an author, Sarah Cornwell, to direct their upcoming Dragonriders of Pern Movie. Dragonflight is the first novel in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders series of novels that spanned 22 books and 4 and a half decades of her life.
Borys Kit for the Hollywood reporter says:
Cornwell’s debut novel, What I Had Before You, was published in January 2014 and was a multi-generational coming-of-age drama. Her screenwriting work has won her a Humanitas Student Drama Fellowship. She is now adapting Demon Camp for Montecito Pictures, and she did a page one rewrite of The Forest for David Goyer and Lava Bear.
While I’m really pleased to see another woman rising in the movie industry ranks, I’m concerned that Sarah Cornwall’s directorial debut, a big leap from writing, will be this iconic movie.
I just hope they don’t massacre this movie like the TV series that went into development hell. In the TV series, they planned to mashup up the timelines so Jaxxom was a teenager when Lessa was starting her adventures and it was going to be very Xena in style of language and just general style. While Xena was great for the 1990s, the Dragonrider TV series was intended for production in the 2000s. Plus forcing Xena-style into Pern is just plain wrong. Wikipedia has a very brief run-down of prior book-to-screen adaptation attempts.
If they get this series of movies right, it’ll be fabulous. If they get it wrong, the fans will hunt them down and give the makers a great big swirlie.
