The only thing I’m arguing here is that this shouldn’t follow the books exactly.

Like, this series is 20 books each a year apart.

Usually when books are made into tv/movies they change shit, and everyone hates it. This time I think it’s acceptable.

I think we’re arguing 2 different points here.

 

I think Butcher had a good point about Marster's being too old. He's in his fifties now and Dresden is supposed to be like 26 or so at the beginning of the first book. Marsters should definitely be playing something... If nothing else, he should voice Bob the skull.

 

For sure, Marster's definitely too old to fit Dresden, but damnit he's already Dresden in all the ways that matter anyway.

 

I would not be mad if he played every single role. Just dress him up in drag for Mab. But yeah. If we could de-age the dude, he'd be great.

 

Problem is, the books are connected, if you change the plot in earlier episodes/ seasons you might screw up your future.
Followed by half cooked plots, abandoned plot lines and fans rage.

 

I’ll just quote myself here, since all I seem to be doing is repeating myself.

It should follow the plot, but having a tv series be 20 bad weekends would just be weird imo.

 

Honestly, there's plenty of room in the series' structure for more episodes. Even in the books, it's not uncommon for Dresden to make off-hand mentions about other cases he worked on, or for us to get short stories featuring things that are not directly relevant to the over-arching series plot, but would make great one-episode "filler", for lack of a better term, in a serialized show.

In my view, the only real way to do a Dresden TV show would be for the overarching series plot to take a back seat to the monster-of-the-week serialized shit, as that's where Dresden as a series really shines. I'm mildly concerned they're gonna abandon the standbys of serialized TV shows in favor of what the Netflix shows do, where they basically film a 12 hour movie and break it into mostly-arbitrary chunks and dump that all out at once. It would miss a fantastic opportunity for a long-running serialized show about Dresden being a magical PI.

 

I agree with all of this. I think the procedural aspect would be fantastic to start with. But I could see it departing from that as shit go serious. Kinda like the first 6 seasons of supernatural (all I watched).

But hopefully better earlier on lol.

 

Beyond the books there's all the comics and short stories Butcher has released. Or the series could look back at his early days in Chicago looking for missing children with his mentor while Marcone is coming to power. Harry is supposed to know a lot of the minor practitioners who congregate at Mac's bar, and they could have episodes. If Michael or Sanya are popular enough, there could easily be Knight of the Cross episodes sprinkled in. The more I think about the setting, the more I realize how much is skimmed over in Dresden's POV, but the world is really expansive.

 

Yeah. My hope is a serialized show that goes for a while and slowly builds up the book series' overall plot, with subtle hints through the episodes and season finales that give some deeper insight into the Black Council and Nemesis and all that, and then it climaxes with the final season being, effectively, the BAT and final showdown of ultimate destiny.

 

You missed my point, however it is my fault for not making it clear.

Harry various cases in their TV adaption can be changed to not mirror their books counterparts.
However in order to do it successfully, the show writers need to map the show long term plot lines first, and than see what they need to foreshadow first.
Than write new cases base on that.

If you follow Endless Pantheon writings (Dresden/SG1) you can see how hard Todswind on making sure everything is done properly.

 

I agree with Methos. The biggest problem with any adaptation of DF is what killed GoT at the end. The books are all connected, but we don't have the resolution to all these mysteries and what are the most important secrets that Dresden probably isn't even aware exist. Without this information it's impossible to create an adaptation that will move into a right direction, even if it will be able to expand other things that are in a material that is published.

There is a good chance that Butcher will tell the showrunners his plans, but even if they decide to use them, cliff notes aren't fully realized books as GoT example presents.

 

Dresden Files has the benefit of not being as complex as Game of Thrones with its various plot lines. So if at some point they began to overtake the books I’m not as worried about the show runners figuring things out themselves and screwing up like Weiss and Benioff did. Also something tells me if they started overtaking Butcher we’d see the show runners fall back on more monster of the week filler episodes to buy time.

 

What do you guys think of a Sherlock model? That way you could stay very close to the stories of the books without rushing through them in two seasons. The 90 minute nature of the episodes would also allow some of the stories more room to breathe.

 

I'd be fine with the Sherlock model. Would make the show quite different, but I'd still want it to be more than 1 weekend every year for 20 years.

 

It's Done.

 

Really, my feelings on the matter are summed up in the second response on that twitter thread.

 

One day, when I have nothing better to do, I need to go back through this thread and make it less fucking ugly, I swear, or at least threadmark shit. In the meantime, however, new Word of Jim from the AMA:

 

It's WoG that Rashid "cheats" aging somehow owing perhaps to how much time he spends at the edge of the Nevernever, or his role as Gatekeeper more generally. It's unclear what exactly that means, though.