Eragon author on how series will differ from “not great” film adaptation

Paolini, who is attached as exec producer and co-writer, and the team behind the series are currently looking for a showrunner.

He added that "once we get some key personnel in place, then we should be moving forward with authority".

Of course, it's not the first time Eragon has been adapted, with a film version being released in 2006, and Paolini is conscious of what needs to be different this time.

He exclusively tells RadioTimes.com: "Some of my fans are going to hate for me to say this, but the original film is not really a bad film. But where it fails is it's not a great adaptation, and that's ultimately the problem.

"In a new adaptation I want - I mean, this is pie in the sky dreaming, of course - but I would want to capture the feel of the characters, the emotion of the story and the grandeur of the locations, something that I think the original film really fell down on, as it stripped out a lot of the elements that actually made Eragon unique, which is problematic given that since this is an archetypal hero's story, there are a lot of familiar elements.

"So you need to embrace the things that do make it special. One very small example, I say small but it's actually large, is with locations. Eragon and his companions end up travelling to a place where [there are] these absolutely gigantic, staggeringly large mountains, which are about 10 miles high.

"And there's magical reasons for that in the world. I know that can't happen in the real world but visually, it's a stunning thing to be able to show and to have your characters in this amazing location.

"They just completely eliminated that from the movie, as well as the fact if you watch the film, you would never guess that there were supposed to be elves and dwarves in the world, the characters who are elves and dwarves are just kind of there, but have no distinguishing characteristics that would allow you to identify them as such. So, for all of those things, I think embracing what the book is and what the world is and really going hard for that."

Speaking about what the series could look like, he adds: "I think the idea is that the first season would cover the first book and after that, we'd just have to make some decisions based off the success or lack thereof with the first season.

"The second book could probably still be one season, but the third and fourth books are quite long so either cuts have to be made or pieces moved around to earlier seasons."

Two decades after Eragon was first published, Paolini has returned to The Inheritance Cycle series with his new book Murtagh.

Speaking about why it was time to revisit the series, he explains: "I always planned on returning – I have a lot of stories in that world that have appealed to me.

"I just wanted to write something different after writing Inheritance, so I wrote my giant sci-fi novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. Unfortunately, it took me longer than expected...but after that, and the release of Fractal Noise, my short prequel novel, I wanted to write about dragons again and I wanted to write in this world again."

As for why Murtagh, Eragon's half-brother, was the right character to focus in on, he adds: "He is one of the major characters of the original series, but we don't see a whole lot of what actually happens with him.

"For various reasons he's off-screen quite a bit in the series, which is unfortunate because, in some ways, the series itself is the story of three different brothers...they each represent a different facet of maturity and a different way of dealing with the problems that I presented them in the story.

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"But Murtagh's approach to all of that was off screen for a large chunk of the story in effect. Were I to go back and write Eragon from scratch – which I'm not going to – but were I to do that, I would be highly tempted to include Roran and Murtagh's points of view right from the very beginning, since they are just so important to the story.

"So to be able to come back and write a book from his point of view, and really show this whole other side of the world – and the story, and the book is not just like a giant flashback, it's moving forward from the events of the Inheritance Cycle."

Murtagh, the new instalment in The Inheritance Cycle series, by Christopher Paolini, is on sale now. Disney Plus's Eragon series is currently in early development.

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