What ‘Terrifies’ Kingkiller Chronicle Author Patrick Rothfuss About A Possible Adaptation – Looper

The future of the “Kingkiller Chronicle” remains in limbo. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, at least to some fans. They believe that a successful TV or movie adaptation would not work because so much of the action and characterization takes place in the main character’s head. As YouTuber Jay Kennedy points out, a screen-based version would not be able to translate the clues and wordplay that Rothfuss has woven into his language to something that’s intelligible on screen.

Producers and writers, when adapting books, often use visual shortcuts to convey messages to viewers. And the complexity of the world Rothfuss calls The Four Corners of Civilization, or Temerant, would require many of these. The story of young Kvothe spans years and includes many characters and complications; as a child, he travels with an acting troupe, then is forced to live as a young orphan alone in the city of Tarbean. Later, he becomes a student at the University with all its students and Masters and the residents of the city of Imre nearby. There’s an overarching narrative featuring the shadowy evil beings called the Chandrian, plus enemies and allies at school and beyond.

The idea of having to take many shortcuts makes Rothfuss skeptical about an adaptation. He told the “Feminist Frequency Radio” podcast in 2018, “This is something that I’m currently in the midst of terror about. Any significant book is more than a two-hour movie in terms of the story it’s conveying. And my books are much bigger than that. But always what happens during these conversion processes … is there’s this fear that people are dumb. And it’s like: maybe make the story simpler … remove something that might be outside their experience” (per Newsweek).