Writer/director Vadim Jean, who directed the upcoming TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic, said that the four-hour miniseries is more ambitious than his previous Pratchett adaptation, last year's Hogfather.
Color combines Pratchett's first two Discworld novels--The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic--and centers on the incompetent wizard Rincewind (David Jason) and Discworld's first tourist, Twoflower (Sean Astin). The miniseries also features Tim Curry, as the power-hungry Trymon, and Christopher Lee, who voices Death. Brian Cox narrates.
Jean wrote and directed both adaptations (with "mucking about" by Pratchett, who also cameos). He said that Hogfather provided a number of lessons that helped make the new miniseries even better. "There was a huge learning curve," he admits. "But in a good way and supported enormously by RHI Entertainment, so there was a lot of expertise to help see us through."
Set in the fantastical Discworld universe of Pratchett's books, Color follows Rincewind, a wizard who is expelled from Unseen University. He is conscripted as a guide for Twoflower, Discworld's first tourist, who is visiting Ankh-Morpork.
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Twoflower (Sean Astin) is Discworld's first tourist in The Color of Magic.
Jean adds: "The Color of Magic is a lot more ambitious than Hogfather. It has more scope, more scale; it goes to more locations. It has an adventure that goes from the hub of the disc all the way to the rim, so in that sense it was more difficult. But the things we learned had to do with choosing where you spend your visual-effects money and that you make sure that you don't under-resource the real highlights. In other words, you say, 'OK, that is going to be as spectacular as it can possibly be!' whereas if you try and do too many of those things, you only have a little bit of visual effects all the way through. For example, if you say, 'OK, the edge of the world at Krull, when Rincewind and Twoflower go off the edge in the Potent Voyager,' that scene has to be amazing."
Jean said that the miniseries will also make more use of the turtle. "Because I'm hoping that we'll get to make a whole series of these films, and if people came to them fresh, they'll start with The Color of Magic," he said. "So I wanted to make sure that we really established the turtle, because a lot of the story is about what happens to it, and we get to see the edge of Discworld, we get to see the middle, and we get to see ... No, I don't want to give that away, because it's the ending. But at the end, you'll understand the significance of where the turtle is going."
Jean said that The Color of Magic is simpler. "I wanted to make sure we had a simpler narrative line, just to make it that little bit more accessible, so I approached the script without losing all the wonderful texture that's in Terry's books," he said.
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Sir David Jason is Rincewind, an incompetent wizard who's just been expelled from Unseen University.
One of Jean's biggest challenges was finding two actors for the lead roles who were relatively well-known in the international market while also being perfect for their characters. "The reality is, we wanted to make sure that we had at least one or two--ideally two--actors who if you said, 'It's Terry Pratchett's Color of Magic and it stars ...,' they would say, 'Oh, great!'" Jean said. "I think that's important, because we want this to work in America. So I have to say it was a factor. At the same time, we didn't want to do any miscasting, so it's always a balance. But I think we've got it right."
The Color of Magic originally aired on Britain's Sky Television in March 2008. It makes its U.S. debut on ION Television on Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. ET.
-Joe Nazzaro
