Hulu Streaming a Forgotten Fantasy Epic That Failed To Start a Franchise (But There’s a Show on the Way)

The magical worlds and mythical beings of fantasy movies offer viewers an escape from reality, but a film that hit theaters back in the 2000s wasn’t as magical as it should have been. As new TV shows and movies started arriving to Hulu’s streaming library in November, the Disney-backed platform added a fantasy movie flop that saw its franchise dreams fizzle in an instant, but there’s still hope for the story’s future.

That movie is Eragon, and it flew into the Hulu streaming library on November 1st amid an in-development TV show at Disney+. Directed by Stefen Fangmeier as an adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s beloved 2002 fantasy novel of the same name, the movie stars Ed Speleers as Eragon, a poor farm boy living in the magical Alagaesia kingdom who discovers a mysterious stone that turns out to be a dragon’s egg. The movie wasn’t a box office flop, performing well with a more than $250 million box office haul against a $100 million production budget, but it was panned by critics and audiences alike.

Eragon Is Getting a Second Chance on the Screen

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Eragon was initially intended to be the first in a franchise based on Paolini’s book series, and its stellar cast, fantastical plot, and the fact that it came on the heels of the Lord of the Rings movies seemingly set it up to be a homerun. However, the movie’s disastrous performance with critics and fans of the book ultimately dashed those plans, and future sequels were canceled.

The film’s disastrous reception boiled down to just how far it strayed from its source material. Not only did the movie fail to establish the immersive world of Alagaësia effectively, making vast, detailed locations like Farthen Dûr nothing more than generic landscapes, but it changed and entirely removed plot points that stripped the story of its magic, even compressing the story to a much shorter period. This all resulted in a film that was a major miss with viewers and only earned a staggeringly bad 15% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Nearly two decades later, Eragon is getting a second and much-deserved second chance on the screen. Back in 2022, news surfaced that a live-action Eragon TV series was in development at Disney+, with Paolini attached as co-writer and executive producer and Bert Salke as executive producer. Few details have been shared since, but Paolini confirmed on X back in February that the Eragon show “is still on track.” Given that Paolini is directly involved in the project, it seems promising that the series will be a far more faithful adaptation of his books and one that will make fans happy.

What’s New on Hulu?

Eragon soared into Hulu’s streaming library as part of a massive roster of November arrivals. This month has also seen movies like 13 Going On 30, The Last Duel, and A Star Is Born (2018) all start streaming on Hulu. Other recent additions include The Book of Clarence, The Sound of Music (1965), Miracle on 34th Street, and Love Actually.

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