by Brendon Connelly, Source: Bleeding Cool.com
There are six books in the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, a chain of lightly comic fantasy adventures starting with Magic Kingdom For Sale – SOLD!
The protagonist of the stories is a Chicago trial lawyer who loses his wife in a terrible accident. While in mourning he purchases a so-called Magical Kingdom to find out, in fact, that’s exactly what he’s getting – a faraway world of which he now becomes king.
It’s classic fish-out-of-water stuff by way of high fantasy, and SOLD! has been crying out to be a Hollywood movie since it was first published in 1986.It may now be on the verge of actually happening.
According to Hollywood.com, Steve Carell has been attached, presumably to star as Ben Holiday, the Lawyer who becomes king. There’s also a good villain’s role, Mr. Meeks, which could be a contender too as neither really seems to fit Carell perfectly.
But my hunch is that Holiday will be tweaked to work and Carrell will end up in the throne.
The adaptation will need a lot of FX to bring to life the Gnomes and Kobolds, the love-interest Silph character and the dragon Strabo. It’s almost a shame that Benedict Cumberbatch has already been cast as Smaug as he’d have made a pretty good dragon here, in fact.
I’m a big fan of Carrell, and I think Brooks cooked up some great concepts. With good writers and director this could be well worth looking forward to – and apparently Craig Wright, an alum of Lost has written the recent draft.
I’ll be watching this one closely.
