Riftwar Saga TV Show in Development

Another classic fantasy novel series could be making its way to television. Deadline reports that a new studio is developing The Riftwar Saga into a television series. The new production company, Six Studios, will be focused on genre TV, with the first six novels of The Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts being their first major project. Writers working on the potential adaptation includes Hannah Friedman (Disney+'s Willow, Obi-Wan Kenobi), Jacob Pinion (Fear the Walking Dead) and Nick Bernardone (Fear the Walking Dead, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) are attached to adapt the books for a potential series. No network or streaming platform was mentioned with the new project.

The Riftwar Cycle is a series of nearly 30 novels written primarily by Raymond Feist, which primarily focuses on two worlds –  Midkemia and Kelewan – which can be travelled between via magical rifts. As Six Studios has the adaptation rights to the first six novels of the series, it's likely that a TV show would focus on Pug, the Magician at the heart of the first trilogy, and Mara, the protagonist of the second trilogy of books. The two trilogies largely complement each other, but there's enough crossover to justify a single TV show.

Fantasy is a hot genre in television right now, continuing a trend catapulted to the forefront by HBO's Game of Thrones series. Major fantasy series right now include Netflix's The Witcher and Shadow and Bone, Prime Video's The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings, and HBO's Game of Thrones prequel The House of the Dragon. A Dungeons & Dragons TV show is also in development, which would complement a live-action movie due out in 2023.

Coincidentally, The Riftwar Cycle owes much to Dungeons & Dragons and other early tabletop roleplaying games. Feist created the worlds of Riftwar for a tabletop roleplaying game that he and his friends designed as an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons. Feist took heavy inspiration from Empire of the Petal Throne, an early TTRPG also published by D&D's original publisher.