Disney Is Really Trying To Make Eragon Happen
It didn’t work in 2006, why should it work now?
Having a “dragon phase” is often a rite of passage for the book-loving child. For those who grew up in the early 2000s, that usually took one of thre forms: either you got really into the faux-reference book Dragonology, you got really into the How to Train your Dragon, or you got really into Eragon.
How to Train Your Dragon has now been successfully adapted multiple times, so Disney is trying its hand at another part of this holy trinity. However, an attempt has already been made — and it went awfully.
According to Deadline, Disney is officially making a live-action series based on Eragon, the first book in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle series. The series has been in the works since 2022, but now a creative team is on board including High Potential showrunner Todd Harthan as co-creator and co-showrunner, with Superman & Lois’ Todd Helbing sharing showrunner duties.
Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon at the age of 15. Now, it could be Disney+’s next big thing.
Eragon is very much a young adult series, and it was even written by a young adult — Paolini began writing it after graduating homeschooling at the age of 15. It was a big hit with young readers, but criticism always boiled down to one thing: it’s derivative, borrowing elements from The Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Earthsea, and other fantasy worlds.
The story follows a young boy named Eragon who finds a strange stone that turns out to be a dragon egg. Out from the egg hatches Saphira, a magnificent blue dragon who shares a telepathic link with Eragon. Unfortunately, the evil King Galbatorix will stop at nothing to capture Saphira. It’s the classic tale of a young hero plucked from obscurity, but it’s hard not to see the parallels to other series, especially Star Wars — Eragon is motivated to flee his home when his farmer uncle is murdered, and he escapes with an old man who holds the secrets to an ancient order. The Dragon-riders, not the Jedi.
Despite the derivative elements, the first book was adapted into a movie in 2006, directed by prolific visual effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier. (To this day, it’s his only foray into directing.) The movie starred Ed Speelers as Eragon alongside Jeremy Irons, Robert Carlyle, and John Malkovich, with Rachel Weisz providing the voice for Saphira the dragon.
Eragon failed to impress in a post-Lord-of-the-Rings world.
Much like the book, the movie adaptation was popular with audiences but was lambasted by critics, currently sitting at an abysmal 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. “An interminable Jackson-Tolkienian fantasy for boys, whose enjoyment levels will be in direct relation to testicle-height,” Peter Bradshaw said in his review for The Guardian. “John Malkovich finds his loopy, nostril-flaring form as the wicked tyrant and Jeremy Irons, playing the boy's wise mentor, is visibly thinking about his fee.”
Eragon was supposed to be the first movie in a series, but that obviously didn’t come to pass. But if a movie adaptation couldn’t work, why would a TV series be any different? How could a story that borrows so heavily from Star Wars co-exist on the same streaming service as that entire franchise?
Perhaps this series will veer from the source material and breathe new life into the story after 20 years, but currently, the precedence makes the era of Eragon look like an era gone.
