Urban Arcana TV series?

[Desdichado]

In addition to the budgetary and logistical issues others have mentioned, thereissues of audience. The greater the difference between the real world and the fantasy world a show has, the more effort you have to put into simply getting the audience up to speed on those differences. Using a setting more akin to the mdern world means they have many "handles" the audience will already recognize. It is just easier to write stories set in worlds the audience already understands. This is important if you want non-gamers watching the show.

This I think is really the crux of the matter. To D&D and fantasy fans, yeah, FR is a good setting for a show. For a more general audience, something like Urban Arcana probably has a much broader appeal.

 

[WayneLigon]

...Heroes Anonymous... I dunno. Haven't they figured out that if you try to do a live-action superhero show and don't have a movie-sized budget, you end up with Mutant X or The Greatest American Hero? ...The best superhero live-action show to come out recently is The Tick, which, while still trying to find its balance, at least realized that the show had to be about the characters, not the effects or the glorious combat, neither of which were going to look as they did in the cartoon or the comic.

Hopefully they will take that tone with it. The heroes in HA are really not that heroic for the most part They're more like the heroes in Mystery Men.

 

[Temprus]

This isn't going to be a total Buffy clone is it?

Only if she started working for Sam Spade investigating the X-Files.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Only if she started working for Sam Spade investigating the X-Files.

Yeah, it sounds much more like the X-Files than Buffy.

 

[Klaus]

Or Night Stalker, even.

 

[Khayman]

My question is why this and not Forgotten Realms or any other D&D setting that has alot of things going for it? Wizards did have a FR tv show planned but it never happened.

The idea was optioned and a treatment written. About that time the TV fantasy bubble burst. My understanding as well is that the two main companies involved in the production end saw more money to be made from low-cost reality programming and shelved the concept. I have no idea for how long they optioned the brand and/or conceptualization.

Had the show been produced a few years earlier, during the time while Xena: Warrior Princess was still in the early or middle stages of its popularity, it likely would have gone somewhere.

 

[Temprus]

The idea was optioned and a treatment written. About that time the TV fantasy bubble burst. My understanding as well is that the two main companies involved in the production end saw more money to be made from low-cost reality programming and shelved the concept. I have no idea for how long they optioned the brand and/or conceptualization.

All the other shows Firework was doing tanked and took the FR show with it.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Urban Arcana will probably just be shot in Canada and use cheesy CGI for the monsters (or out of work hockey players). Much cheaper.

Canada almost completely dominates the production of sci-fi TV series with Enterprise going off the air. With Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Andromeda, Smallville and Battlestar Galatica being filmed in Vancouver... Yes, many of those series do have cheesy CGI, and every alien planet tends to resemble somewhere in BC...

 

[Viking Bastard]

I mean, who would've thought.

No matter where you go in the cosmos, it all looks like... Canada.

 

[Desdichado]

Eh, 40-50 years or so ago everything resembled southern California. At least now we get Canada for TV shows and New Zealand or the Czech Republic for movies.