Elric and The Black Company are the two series I've always wanted to see on the big/little screen. Unfortunately The Black Company is probably doomed with Eliza Dushku supposedly working on an adaptation.
As stated, Elric is a lot about when you read it. Not just your own age, but the year as well. He wrote that shit in the 60s, and I read it as a junior high kid in the early 80s. It was fucking awesome. I still want to blow $10,000 on a realistic replica of Stormbringer, for no other reason than that Stormbringer is essentially the fucking progenitor of all "special" swords, and was fucking evil to boot! Sure, if you read it today, it lacks in a LOT of ways. We're used to authors like Sanderson and Abercrombie spending 300-1000 pages to tell us an epic story. Moorcock sometimes told you a great fucking story in 30. You filled in the blanks of a lot of background lore, because he didn't get to spend 200 pages building up the world. He might have 2. And it worked. I'm not trying to pull a "back in my day..." thing, because I love many of the books of today. But it was a different mindset back then, and if you had nothing else to compare it to, it blew you away. As said, it was mostly Conan and Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, that were writing similar books. Tolkien clearly had his own style, but Conan and John Carter of Mars would be almost direct competitors for the market Elric was aiming for (although John Carter was much earlier than all of them). Honestly, it is possible that a Sanderson might have flopped back then, because it wasn't what people were expecting. Tolkien wasn't even anywhere near as long.
Anyway, point being, while I know it kind of falls flat if you read it today, this is purely a nostalgia thing for a lot of us. Clearly it would need to be "updated" for the current expectations of fantasy series, although I hope it doesn't get a full on Game of Thrones treatment either. It should be shorter and more visceral and brutal, and even disturbing. This is someone who literally slaughters people and dedicates their souls (that are stolen by Stormbringer no less) to the gods of Chaos in order to further his own power and personal gain! He lusts after his cousin, kills his family, etc. Sure, they had a lot of that shit in GoT, but pretty much everything except Dany's retarded decision in the final season was based on politics and lust for power. Now that I type it out, I have to think GRRM was an Elric fan, since a lot of those themes were already dealt with decades before with Elric. Unlike the people in GoT vying for political power, Elric is more a victim of fate, trying to survive but pretty much fucking things up and making them worse at every turn. Until he's had enough...and then gets fucked in the end anyway!
I will die happy if they keep the ending the same as it is in the books. Talk about your fucked up ending. Game of Thrones and that bullshit TV ending is an afterthought compared to that. As with when The Black Company comes up, I am a HUGE Elric fanboi. Sorry!
Arioch! Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!
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