72 replies to this topic

[Chuckie]

Joe Luck, on 24 October 2012 - 10:02 AM, said:

Fox is a horrible station to do SCIFI. They schedule it into oblivion. That's what happened to firefly and many other Scifi shows. Also, Spielberg is over rated now. He wouldn't be working on it but would have someone else. They really wouldn't then keep to btech but just make a big robot stompy movie. SyFy could do it but that's at least 2-3 mill per episode like they did with Battlestar. F/X might also be a viable alternative. NBC or ABC would dumb/simplify it down then try to make it "Family" Oriented.

By Fox I meant FX not the over air Fox.. It would only really work and survive in the way The Walking Dead did.. First a loyal fans of the GENRE / property watch.. Then the writing draws in their friends and neighbors and it gets a second season, and then it gets more word of mouth and gets a third.. and so on.. That can ONLY happen on Cable. Thus FX, SyFy, or even AMC who has had a recent track record in bringing Genre shows to life and making a go of them. I.E. Mad Men has done well and survived, while PanAm and the Playboy series failed miserably trying to copy it on broadcast TV.

[Beleos]

I voted for all three. Like the consensus, any of these would have to be done well and stick fairly close if not hugging the original lore and backstories to fly, at least with us not tied to the usual Terran entertainment tastes.

My vote on "anime" is also to help clarify that anime just means "cartoon" and/or "animation", not necessarily magic-girls, incredibly outlandish robots, whiny and destined teenagers, and whatever other Japanese animation tropes you have queued in your mind. The old Battletech sho; Bob's Burgers; Last Airbender; even Rugrats, can all be called anime if you were from a culture that used that word for a cartoon. We can call it Western or North American anime to make the distiction or make ourselves feel better, but a well made animated show (anime series) is just as viable as the other two options, with likely a lower production cost. Cartoons can also get away with more that live-action folks as far as violence and/or locale.

[Iron booger]

battle tech has a fairly low following, this would flop right along with all the DND movies.

[FaustianBargain]

An HBO/AMC series in the style of something like Game of Thrones would be awesome. I think the best place to start would either be the Grey Death Legion story or the 4th Succession War. If it were a story about the GDL it would have to focus more on the Mech combat, which would be cooler but also more expensive and overall less appealing to the audiences were trying to reach, but it could still work.

I'd rather see a darker reimagining of the 4th Succession War though. Reading the Warrior trilogy felt like 3 books worth of Mary Sue fanfic and there's just too much good stuff in there to be let down like that. There's a secret alliance (sealed with the marriage of a 45 year old "king" and the recently turned 18 "princess"), a longshot scheme to get double agent Justin Allard into a position of prominence in the Liao (who could really have their crazy played up) intelligence agency, duplicity by ComStar who profess to be the neutral party, and so much more.

I'd see the series work a little like this:

Season 1: Focus on Justin Allard's apparent fall from grace and rise to prominence on Solaris. The idea that Justin was in on the scheme the whole time is kinda lame, so the exile should be "real" and Justin can have a great big sob about it. Cut to Solaris where he's doing the only thing he knows, blowing up big robots. But intrigue is afoot on Solaris and house spies are always trying to recruit new blood...

The second focus of the season would be on Hanse and his secret plans for a Steiner/Davion alliance and attacks on Liao. He knows someone is feeding Liao information on troop movements but not who, and we can see some ComStar mediated debates between him and Katrina Steiner as well as some budding chemistry between the Fox and Melissa.

Third main focus is on the Wolfs Dragoons helping Minobu Tetsuhara build the Ryoken. This part pretty much writes itself, and needs to be told alongside the rest to set up the conclusion...

The Davion-Steiner wedding, which would be the season finale. We see Jaime Wolf barge in with Minobu's swords and insult Takashi, ComStar has some meetings about how the Federated Commonwealth alliance will be bad for them, either Hanse or Quintus can apologize to Justin and offer him a place back in the Federated Suns, and the episode closes on "My dear... I give you the Capellan Confederation."

Season 2: Will have things like Takashi gunning for the Wolf's Dragoons on the Davion border, Melissa Steiner's kidnapping and eventual rescue, Justin trying to decide which side he belongs to, and we can get some crazy Liao scenes.

Season 3: Unless someone can think of a way to really drag this out, you'd see the end of the 4th SucWar (yeah I just did that) as well as the introductions of the new generation of leaders. The timing here might need to be fudged (either by long jumps to the future or messing with the accepted timeline) because if there's gonna be a fourth season it should be the clan invasion.

The hardest parts about making a series like this would be selling it to a network; a well written book or comic series is a much easier sell than poorly written game lore, and the effects; Mech battles would have to be entirely CGI. The best bet for an effects studio would be the one that BSG had since they did top notch effects on a cable TV budget, and they got the industrial sci-fi military look down really well.

PS: If nothing else, writing a hypothetical series bible for this would be fun!

[TheBossHammer]

Orzorn, on 24 October 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

I can just imagine Micheal Bay making a Mechwarrior "film" (that man doesn't make films, he makes vomit). The mechs would would fire all of their weapons all the time without worrying about heat. Swords would be used, even though its only 3050. The Atlas has huge spikes jutting out of every part of its body, which, by the way, is now made up of thousands of small parts somehow bound together. Victor Steiner Davion has a smoking hot girlfriend whom is never given a real reason to be there, and he pilots his Victor, but it has a huge billowing cape and its left hand now holds a shining red bladed weapon that materializes out of its arm.


Harmony Gold holds to right to certain designs appearing in anime. They do not hold the rights to Battletech of any media (whether it be animated, movies, music, anything). They couldn't do anything.

Correct. However, Harmony Gold does own the rights to the unseen images of the Warhammer, the Marauder and all the other unseen. The reason they pulled them last time was the Battletech Anime, which they thought strayed too close to the Robotech Anime. The last thing Mechwarrior should do is reopen this old battle.

[Listless Nomad]

How about a series solely about Solaris?

It's like space Las Vegas. There is intrigue, gambling, sex, violence, explosions, backstabbing etc. Despite the success of game of thrones, I feel like the overarching politics and history of the Innersphere might be a little much for people.

EDIT - PS I looked up Armored Trooper VOTOMS...and it looks exactly like Gundam. Sorry.

Edited by Listless Nomad, 24 October 2012 - 08:56 PM.

[Endarius]

Good idea but I think the Gray Death Legion would supply just as much material. Let's face it the odds of a series going long enough to encompass the clan invasion would be minimal, and unless they wanna make stackpole's work into TV, they would have to work within the succession wars era.

[Baphomech]

HBO series is in the lead, and we're getting a lot of suggestions to focus on the 3rd and/or 4th Succession War. Good stuff.

[Orlockian]

I'd go for an animated series around the start of the clan invasion with some CGI thrown in for good measure... oh wait...



Love the idea of an animated series using current techniques in the field. The book "Heir to the Dragon" would be where I'd start as far as timeline/potential story though...

v/r

Edited by Orlockian, 25 October 2012 - 06:17 AM.

[Corpse Grinder]

No anime. So sick of that crap!

[Zakatak]

Please no anime! Aside from my completely irrational hatred for it, Harmony Gold would be all over it, and it seems contradictory to make one of the few Western stompy robot franchises an anime. I wouldn't mind an Animesque art style, however. I'm trying to picture Megas XLR/Avatar with grimdarkness. Wasn't really fan of the Battletech cartoon style.

Ideally, I would like a 10-episode miniseries with high production value, like Band of Brothers or The Pacific. Also, I don't want it to be all giant robots all the time. I want to get a feeling for the Battletech universe beyond that. The politics, the people, the beliefs, the worlds. And no adherence to tabletop rules, long range missiles don't run out of steam that quickly.

[AA Yeti]

revived

[Jackhowitzer]

HBO has the most potential. Just look at Game of Thrones, or Boardwalk Empire, or any of their other quality shows. Movies are more liable to be screwed up, and anime might be corny. It's very iffy.

[Baphomech]

It lives, indeed.

Jackhowitzer, on 05 December 2012 - 11:56 PM, said:

HBO has the most potential. Just look at Game of Thrones, or Boardwalk Empire, or any of their other quality shows. Movies are more liable to be screwed up, and anime might be corny. It's very iffy.

I agree - HBO does tend to be the best bet if one is looking for quality these days.

[TJ Saint]

Well, why not HBO-Anime? Todd McFarlane did rather awesome and was allowed to stick, as far as I can tell, exactly to his comic book when he did his Spawn series for HBO in the late 90's. It could work.

[Ricama]

Anime, not just because I like Anime but because it would be bitter, bitter irony regarding the unseen.

[SteelyDan]

Quote

Just have to get big name behind it.. to be honest Steven Spielberg comes to mind recently he has supported a lot of SciFi (Falling Skies, Terra Nova, etc..)

And he's a documented Whoivian!!!

[Ariana Rifkin]

YogSothoth, on 24 October 2012 - 07:10 AM, said:

A chance to highlight the Draconis Combine in a tasteful and somewhat positive way, while still maintaining the "perpetual grey area" that is the Battletech universe.

When I think Dracons, I don't think tasteful or positive.

[Ariana Rifkin]

Anime is fine if it isn't preachy and obnoxious. Leave the script writing to someone who doesn't have an obnoxiously bleeding heart and a childish sense of humor. In other words: Adults. And no CGI because most of the time, CG in anime is just tacky.

[Anjian]

An HBO or live action SyFy series simply won't strike me if it could work. The characters are not interesting enough, unlike you want it like Game of Thrones with mechs. Battlemechs are not BIG enough, otherwise they are just there for mere support of the story like they do in Falling Skies and occasionally on Defiance (the rare times they show battles). CGI is the most expensive thing you can put as FX in a show, and when budgets are limited, the CGI will only be shown in very limited times and often repeated. The result is a series that would absolutely suck and gets cancelled in just a few episodes. Plus the Battletech franchise and following is only small, very small, please, don't think of it as some "premier" mech franchise when it is not. Battletech actually lacks a visual cinematic pop and if I were a producer, I would be more interested in putting Hawken. Not because it s a well known franchise, hardly, its almost zero, but it has this cinematic "look".



Anime is the best medium, especially considering where many of the original designs came from. It attracts a younger crowd, instead of an older and getting older generation. In fact one of the problems with BT/MW is that the young generation never really heard of it. Anime is the best medium for introducing new franchises. Like how Transformers started. Like how Gundam started. We are seeing more and more IP being introduced and catching the attention of viewers, like Attack on Titan.

Anime can be produced at a fairly low budget and you do not have to demphasize mechs in the story, just because you want to remain within your CG budget while the actors want more screen time. it can also get away with a format where most of the characters would die, like they did with Attack on Titan and the Gundam series following the Universal Century timeline.

Anime is also in the best position to capture audiences from Asia to Europe and South America.

If its anime, no to an all CG format like they did with Heavy Gear. It has to be cel based, or if CGI is used, it must be made to recreate a cel based look. Many anime actually incorporate CG but its done to create a cel based look.

Here is a new anime that is currently being simulcast in Crunchyroll. Meaning its also currently running in Japan. I have not seen an anime for a while with mecha that has a Battletech approach and look for awhile. Argevollen reminds me of Dougram, the show where mechs like the original Shadowhawk, Battlemaster, Griffin, Wolverine and Thunderbolt came from.