Hmmm.Yeah, well... Pratchett's estate and family are not impressed, and have not been invovled with this for some years, it seems.
Terry Pratchett Estate distances itself even more from BBC America's THE WATCH
Following the publication of yet another publicity image from BBC America's The Watch , a TV series loosely "inspired by" Sir Terry Pratchet...thewertzone.blogspot.com
Going from the quoted tweets from Rhianna Pratchett, it doesn't sound like they ever had actual control or approval over the production - what they had was consultation rights, and as is often the case in such productions, just because the producers consult with you, it doesn't mean they need to actually go along with anything you say.Hmmm.
“The Discworld Monthly published a run-down of the project here which seems to explain the root cause of the problem: the original contracts between the BBC and Sir Terry Pratchett stipulated that Sir Terry had some degree of influence and approval over the production, not Narrativia; Narrativia wasn't formally founded until after the initial contract was signed. As a result, when Sir Terry sadly left this Mortal Disc in 2015, there was no longer any kind of creative control being exercised from the book end of things and that allowed BBC American to effectively do whatever it wanted with no input from Narrativia.”
I don’t know how one-sided that version is, but I the face of it that sits really badly with me.
I don’t know how one-sided that version is, but I the face of it that sits really badly with me.
It sounds to me like they took advantage of his death to go their own way. Hard to tell though. Rights don't come into it; I'm talking about normal human respect here. There's a lot of things I have a legal right to do which I choose not to do.Going from the quoted tweets from Rhianna Pratchett, it doesn't sound like they ever had actual control or approval over the production - what they had was consultation rights, and as is often the case in such productions, just because the producers consult with you, it doesn't mean they need to actually go along with anything you say.
The look of the production actually makes sense to me. It's not anything I'd have come up with myself, but it's well in keeping with the setting's lore. This is a world that's so far on the edge of being real that other realities bleed into it constantly. That includes other fictional realities, but most of all, and almost constantly, it is our own real, modern world and pop culture.
It makes perfect sense that a world so constantly inundated by our tropes, memes and concepts would start to model itself after ours aesthetically, creating an anarchic mix between medieval fantasy, modern reality and contemporary fiction.
The thing is, aside from the aesthetics and some character gender-swaps, there's a lot in that trailer that looks pretty faithful to me. There's still Vimes the obstreperous policeman butting heads with the supercilious Patrician, the unexpected appearance of a dragon from Guards! Guards!, Gaspode the Wonderdog turning up for what is presumably going to be Men at Arms. In terms of the actual stories they're intending to tell, it looks like they're sticking pretty close to the novels.It sounds to me like they took advantage of his death to go their own way. Hard to tell though. Rights don't come into it; I'm talking about normal human respect here. There's a lot of things I have a legal right to do which I choose not to do.