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Sci-Fiction Channel To Do Myst Miniseries

Posted by Hemos on Wed Apr 03, 2002 05:14 AM
from the tv-worth-watching dept.
Media Television
E1ven writes "The Sci-Fi channel and Cyan have just announced that they are collaborating on a miniseries based on the MYST series of computer games and novels. If they can combine the story of the books with the depth of their Dune series, this could be a great watch."
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story
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  • is it just me or do some others feel that game/movie conversions (whichever way) are most of the time pretty lame. Get a good game (Street Fighter II was an arcade hit, that's one of tons of examples), make a crap movie out of it. Movie to game conversions are a lot more common yet suffer from the same problem IMHO. Rarely have I seen a good Movie/Game combo. Thoughts?
    • I agree. If they want to do this right they have to put in a lot of efford and money. I hope this comes to Holland so I can see it though.

    • Re:Game/Film conversions (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 03 2002, @05:25AM (#3275930)
      Except the Myst world actually had an excellent plot. There were three Myst books published, and they were all a surprisingly good read. The makers of Myst created the Myst world first, then decided mediums to express it through (games, books) afterwards, so it's not like they are trying to stretch the Myst game into a movie (I don't think there was enough story in the Myst game to do so). This is more akin to a book being made into a movie. I would recommend checking out the books, they are very well done. I am looking forward to their results.
    • How about "Pac-Man: The Thriller" ?
      • ..but PacMan is so much more than a mere thriller - it's a soaring roller-coaster of a tale, encompassing addcition, persecution, vengeance, struggle against almost overwhelming odds and even romance (in the form of Mrs. PacMan) With the right director, writer and cast, this could be next years' 'Beautiful Mind'
      • Yeah, isn't that the one they blame with starting the idea of 'raves'?

        How else would people have come up with the idea of munching pills in the dark while listening to techno music? ;)
    • If I had my druthers, there would be two games that I would love to see as movie conversions: Marathon and Half-Life. Half-Life is one of those that, sure, would probably end up as popcorn-flick, big-budget summer blockbusters, but there's enough interesting turns in the plot that it wouldn't simply be the same-old-same-old for 2hrs. (However, there's only one person that could play Gorden and that's Charlie Sheen, and I'm too thrilled on his acting for such a film...:-). Marathon has way more than enough plot for a few hours, and would even have to be condensed to fit into a good sci-fi/thriller catagory.

    • is it just me or do some others feel that game/movie conversions (whichever way) are most of the time pretty lame.

      It seems the movies are always targeted toward little kids.

      When you play a computer game, there's more "mental interpolation" going on by the player to fill in the conceptual blanks. When someone makes a movie, they have to adopt *someone's* point of view - and most often, for game conversions, that's a kid's point of view.

      Case in point: I think an adult sci-fi movie (or even series) based on MechWarrior or Heavy Gear would be great - could be a futuristic, post-apocalyptic "code of the warrior" kind of film that tries to imagine what such a world would actually be like. Instead, it would almost surely be a "i like when robots fight!" kid's movie.

  • Star Control 2 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by phunhippy (86447) <zavoid@gmail . c om> on Wednesday April 03 2002, @05:29AM (#3275941) Journal
    I think what most people would love to see would be a series done on the great game Star Control II..

    Seriously.. who else would love to see shofixti(sp?) running around on our TV screens getting whipped to death by Ur-Quan.

    ahhhhh memories..... and the guy wrote babylon 5 should write the series... that would be perfect!

    • ...that way we could finally find out if the "fish guys" (sorry - can't remember what they were actually called) actually DID eat the Androsynth... =)

      • ...that way we could finally find out if the "fish guys" (sorry - can't remember what they were actually called) actually DID eat the Androsynth... =)

        The ORZ.
        want to *dancing* in *slippery space*?
    • Star Control II? bah! I want a mini-series based on STARFLIGHT!

      Endurium dealers, Spemin politics... I want to know how did the Ulteck ally with the Gazertoids, did the Elowans know about what happened to them, and how did the Ancient Ones manage to make ruins if they're just sitting rocks in the first place?

  • Myst as miniseries? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Blikkie (569039) <blikkie AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday April 03 2002, @05:31AM (#3275943) Homepage
    Hmmm, I have to admit that game- to movie usually doesn't make a high-quality movie (take Tomb Raider, interesting view but no storyline worth mentioning), but Myst won't just be a computergame worked out, since there were Myst novels already (never read them, are they any good?) so in that case it will be more like Dune. Anyway, to get back to what I expect and hope: I expect Myst the miniseries will continue to show the stunning graphics we already knew from the game. At the same time I hope they will try to create an interesting storyline that will bring something new, even for seasoned Myst-players. I am curious though how they will treat the most important feature of Myst: puzzles. I think they should honor the legacy of Myst by keeping a puzzling kind of element in it while I hope at the same time that the won't spoil it all by replacing storyline with puzzles.

    Sincerely,

    Remco
    • I read the books. They're not too bad. It's interesting that there are three of them (that I have -- they may be more, but I haven't seen them) and that they all work backward in time. The final passage of the first book is the opening monologue of the first game.
      • Yeah the series was pretty good until the 3rd book. I don't know what happened there, but all that underworld class society stuff was not very good IMO.

        However, the first 2 books had lots of fascinating details, and I think there is serious potential for great storytelling in the Myst universe. I'm looking forward to this.
    • The fact is that most TV is essentially crap - so this will probably be crap aswell. However. The basic puzzly elements present in Myst are there in a series like "24" which is on episode 5 or 6 in the UK justnow. From episode to episode you get a bit further through the wider plot with little mini puzzles "whats the senator not telling his wife? who kidnapped tha daughter". Its reasonably compelling stuff.

      Puzzles are where its at. This COMES FROM puzzles. This SHOULD be good.

  • I'm still waiting... (Score:3, Funny)

    by carm$y$ (532675) on Wednesday April 03 2002, @05:33AM (#3275946) Homepage
    MYST (4-hour miniseries) - Inspired by the best-selling CD-ROM adventure game of all time [...]

    I'm still waiting for the miniseries inspired by my 2 all-time favorites, tetris and lemmings... :)
    • I'm still waiting for the miniseries inspired by my 2 all-time favorites, tetris and lemmings... :)

      Well, the problem with this is if the director accidently forgot to save that digger lemming towards the end, and his whole cast would end up stuck walking back and forth infinitely in a dirt pit. Thus, the miniseries would NEVER END!

      P.S. Speaking of lemmings, geekiness, and TV, does anyone rememember a 1985 Superbowl TV ad by Apple showing a bunch of IBM/clone execs walking off a cliff blindfolded? No? Death to you all under the age of 17!
      • it was 1984 and it was the first macintosh commercial. It was only shown twice, once for the superbowl, and once somewhere in idaho so that it could be eligible for a cleo.
      • Well, the problem with this is if the director accidently forgot to save that digger lemming towards the end, and his whole cast would end up stuck walking back and forth infinitely in a dirt pit. Thus, the miniseries would NEVER END!
        Oh yes it would. The miniseries would go out with a bang as all the cast shout "Oh no!" and die in a nuclear holocaust....

  • Wow, sounds like fun! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Colin Bayer (313849) <<vogon> <at> <icculus.org>> on Wednesday April 03 2002, @05:59AM (#3275990) Homepage
    [ The movie opens with a long shot of a gear set into a grainy wall. ]

    Guy #1: What the f**k am I supposed to do with *that* thing?

    Guy #2: No f**king clue.

    Guy #1: Screw this, I'm leaving to play Quake3.

    Guy #2: Me, too.
  • I shudder at the thought of a TV series based on Dune, the computer games. Think about episode after episode with hordes of nondescript soldiers and vehicles flogging it out in a repetitive desert environment. Budget would be really low since lots of episodes would take place in the exact same locations as well. I would think Myst sucks even more as a basis for a TV series than the Dune games. Discaimer: I LIKE the Dune games, and I like Herbert's books and I also like Lynch's Dune movie. My primary dislike of the TV series was that it didn't have as clourful characters and actors as Lynch's epic work.
    • SciFi's Dune was the biggest dissapointment of the whole millenium for me. It just plain reeked.

      Technically, it follows the first book more closely than Lynch's, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Lynch took liberties with the film because he had to in order to make a good film. He knew what he was doing. The jokers who made SciFi's version are the media's equivilent of paper MCSE's. They got hired because they went to film school or whatever, but couldn't film their way out of a wet paper bag.

      Lynch's version RaWkEd, even if it is a different story, it just stands by itself as a fantastic film.

      that's my $0.02 anyway

  • great idea! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mmusn (567069) on Wednesday April 03 2002, @06:43AM (#3276076)
    We can watch a lonely guy run around punching codes into combination locks for four hours. Wait, on the other channel, they are showing grass grow. I think I'll rather watch that.
  • If they can combine the story of the books with the depth of their Dune series, this could be a great watch.

    Just because it was six hours long doesn't mean it was deep. They threw in a generous amount of plot to satisfy the soap opera audience, and they cheesed pretty much everything else.

    The casting of Paul Atreides was particuarly galling. It was like, "OK, we need to cast a military hero of mythic stature. Let's cast around Hollywood for the most gay and ineffectual actor we can find."

    Sci-Fi channel is crap that my granny of a mom watches. Cleopatra was the only thing they had going in recent memory.

    • The casting of Paul Atreides was particuarly galling. It was like, "OK, we need to cast a military hero of mythic stature. Let's cast around Hollywood for the most gay and ineffectual actor we can find."
      Oh, I wish he was gay, he was adorable.

      But seriously, first I assume you must be talking about Hollywood Ireland... I think it was generally not an American production, and he is distinctly Irish.

      Also, I thought he did a really good job: he has to come off believably as a teenage boy at the beginning and age a lot during the story. I think he pulled that off unusually well.
  • "...the first TV show run at 1/24 FPS!"
    </joke>

  • Will it have the same quality of acting as the Dune series?

  • Myst should translate well (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chazzf (188092) <cfulton@@@deepthought...org> on Wednesday April 03 2002, @07:31AM (#3276168) Homepage Journal
    Myst was an impressive achievement for its day (1993), in terms of graphics and gameplay. It was fun, it was nice to look at, and it was, at times, quite challenging. Anyone else slave away trying to match tones on the rocket ship?

    I notice lots of people are saying "games don't turn into movies, this will suck," and I would have to disagree. Myst isn't a game in the traditional sense. It bears as much resemblence to Tomb Raider or Resident Evil as a water pistol to Kalashnikov. Myst is a story, an interactive story, and thus ought to move better to the big/small screen. There were Myst novels, after all.

    As I see, the difficulty will be in creating true character interaction when the game had practically none. Unless, of course, you just want to have interplay between Artus and the main character, but then it would feel like some sorry fantasy Charlie's Angels rehash (so what did the voice in the book say this week?)

    ~Chazzf

  • great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Drunken_Jackass (325938) on Wednesday April 03 2002, @07:44AM (#3276194) Homepage
    I get to waste 400 more hours trying to figure out the sequence of buttons on my remote that'll let me change the channel and watch something else!

  • "...the depth of their Dune series..."

    I read that three times and I don't get it. I thought April Fools' Day was over, yes?


  • or did most if not all of the pronunciations of words in the Sci-Fi channel's version change? It was as if they decided to move the syllabic emphasis around for fun. Perhaps it was because the producer/director was a non-native English speaker and we were used to the original version. Just a thought...

    Chani (chAHnee) -> chAInee
    feydakin (faidAHkeen) -> fuh DYKE en

  • Imagine when it comes out on DVD...."tone" puzzles and "maze" puzzles just to unlock the 1st and 2nd chapters for viewing...

  • If they can combine the story of the books with the depth of their Dune series . . .

    You must mean the shallowness of their Dune series, which was the only film version of a book that could possibly make me appreciate David Lynch's Dune. Sci Fi's take on Dune was a disaster; after 40 minutes I was hoping someone at the network would regain his sanity and interrupt it with a Farscape rerun. Better to spend the 4 hours rereading (as much as you could in 4 hours) the book.

  • Cyan, when writing the novels, went into a ton of detail of the history of the D'ni and their great, vast civilization. I *really* like to "see" this. The books gave a strong impression of the richness of this culture and that really helped give a good idea of exactly who and what Ghen was. Really boosted the story!

    I remember from the interview on the original Myst CD with our friends at Cyan. One of the artists (a really geeky, engineering type) mentioned "we had to fully realize this 3D world". Luckily, Cyan went far beyind just visuals in developing this world. I'd love to see it on the screen with that level of detail and devotion. :)

    (Incidently, the best order is read "Book of Atrus", play Myst, read "Book of Ti'ana", play Riven, read "Book of D'ni". You'll really have a strong feel for the characters and their causes in this case. It's particularly chilling to read Atrus' journal entry about losing his Myst book into the star fissure and then hear him recite it at the beginning of the game. It suddenly makes so much sense after that. :)
  • You will never get the depth of dune. Dune is an epic multi-book novel, with huge backstory, and a huge amout of people who have put time and effort into figuring out cosutmes and sets. Additionally there was a previous movie to draw material and ideas from.

    There is no way you are going to get something that good based on a computer game.
    • Dune is an epic multi-book novel, with huge backstory, and a huge amout of people who have put time and effort into figuring out cosutmes and sets

      Umm.... while I woudn't put the Myst novels on the same literary level as Dune the books weren't that bad and described an interesting alternate reality with a lot of potential.The backstory is pretty complex. As for costume and set design Myst is well ahead of the game since one of it's primary creators is a visual artist and it was originally concieved in a visual medium; which like the original Dune movie will be a rich resource to draw material and ideas from.

      In some ways this project may have MORE potential to be a good miniseries than Dune. Dune, even more than most books, was too complex to be reduced to a movie, or even a miniseries. The result when you DO turn such a novel into a movie is that even if it is a decent movie on it's own merits it will always suffer in comparison to the book which will always have more depth. On the other hand most video games have the opposite problem - no depth or plot at all. On the gripping hand Myst has the depth, plot, and complex backstory that video games lack. And the story isn't tied to one particular canonical narrative like you have with a novel. They will be able to adapt the story to the medium of film rather than be forced into the kind of compromises you usually see going from a novel to a film.
  • Two strong prospects:

    Myst suffers the usual game-to-movie lack of plot and dies an ugly hard-to-watch death. Sort of like that nasty jack-n-the-beanstalk miniseries from last year. The good money's on this prospect.

    Myst hires good writers. They convert a few dozen hours of gameplay and several novels into something that vaguely resembles watching a movie on fast-forward, trying to cram in a jillion details. Even if this runs a dozen hours in miniseries mode, there's so much material that something has to give.

    I conceed, there were stories that accompanied Myst. Granted. But anyone that thinks for one moment that they were *exceptional* must like the suspense in reading a good cheerios box. Ugh! What's more, the mere existence of all this background is a serious strait-jacket to anyone developing a movie script. They must tell a compelling story while not clashing with all that stuff!!!

    Heck, it can be done. But expectations are high, and there are jillions more ways to fail than to succeed. I haven't touched on lots of other risks: 'artistic' conflicts with Myst's original creators on what *must* happen, attempts to avoid revealing info that spoils the game, attempts to cling too tenaciously to the gameline, attempts to stray too far from the gameline, production weaknesses, poor acting, or any of the six million other ways a movie can suck without this added baggage.

    How bad is it? Remember the rants about LoTR, and remember that it at least had a great novel as a basis. These guys start without a proven storyline but *with* all sorts of baggage.

  • Is Wil Weaton in this show too?
  • "...If they can combine the story of the books with the depth of their Dune series, this could be a great watch."

    Son, are you on drugs?

  • Time frame (Score:2, Informative)

    by Fwongo (570947)
    This Myst fansite [aol.com] says the series will cover the 30-year span between the beginning of the Book of Atrus novel (the first in the series, chronologically the second) and the end of the Myst game. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but events of both Myst and BoA will be featured.

  • Amber and Forever War, too... (Score:4, Informative)

    by dlamac (570951) on Wednesday April 03 2002, @12:35PM (#3277844)
    This came across dark horizons [darkhorizons.com] today. Sci-fi will also be making versions of Zelazny's Amber books, Haldeman's Forever War, and Battlestar Galactica!

    Battlestar Galactica & Many More (TV): The Sci-Fi Channel has issued a press release about all sorts of new projects it'll be doing shortly and there's quite a few in there that caught people by suprise. Along with the 20-hour epic miniseries "Taken", there'll numerous 4-hour mini-series in the works based on various things ranging the famous atmospheric computer game "Myst" to award winning sci-fi novels like "The Forever War" and "The Chronicles of Amber". One that caught many off guard though is a 4-hour mini-series based on the 70's TV series classic "Battlestar Galactica". Its been well known that "X-Men" producer Tom DeSanto has been developing Galactica for over a year now with Bryan Singer first attached (he pulled out of directing duties later on). The announcement today mentioned neither of them, rather people like Star Trek writer Ronald D. Moore penning, David Eick ("American Gothic", "Spy Game") exec producing and Breck Eisner directing. The worrying thing is that rumours are indicating this will forget pretty much all the old show's characters and rather be a teen 90210 style adventure in space, however the decision won't be finalised for a few weeks. In other TV news it seems David Caruso and Rory Cochrane will star in the planned "CSI" spin-off for next year, Marcia Gay Harden has joined CBS' "In the Echo" and Kyle McLahlan & Andie MacDowell will star in the veterinarian-subject show "Jo". Thanks to Futon Critic & CinEmpire

  • They can only aspire to the high quality of the thesbians in the original game.
  • I'm looking forward to it. I could never make any progress in Myst because I'm color-blind. Switching indicators from red to green? I don't think so. (Took me days to figure out what I was supposed to be trying to do.) Now I'll finally be able to figure out what the hell was going on!

    • Re:Who cares... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by esper_child (515754) on Wednesday April 03 2002, @07:06AM (#3276124)
      >I'd rather play Zork again.

      that isn't saying a whole lot. Zork was probly one of the best games ever made. The only games that were more fun to play were also in the IF catigory. However if this is about the Myst books it could be good, as those were pretty good (unlike the rotten DooM books . The video games were pretty bad, infact I think they started the standard that games don't have to be good to sell a crap load of copies.

      Now I would love to see a movie/series made out of the Zork series (Beyond would be great to see a movie of) or maybe Lurking Horror. Honestly i don't see why they don't pick games like that.

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