Now that fans of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of books and films have grown up, perhaps they would like something a little darker and a little more adult. Enter Lev Grossman's The Magicians series, which takes the familiar tropes of magic and magic schools and turns it up a notch for an older audience.
The novels tell the story of Quentin Coldwater, a young man (although not as young as the kids in the Harry Potter series) who realizes that magic is real and that he can learn more about it by attending a special college of magic in New York.
Now, those novels have a screen adaptation, thanks to Syfy, who created a 13-episode season based on the first book in the series. And that television series premieres early next year.
Syfy released the official trailer for The Magicians at New York Comic Con 2015.
There is one key difference between the Grossman books and the Syfy series, though: the students at the college of magic are a little older. In the books, they enroll at the age of 18. However, in the miniseries, the students are graduate students and are around 22 years of age. This is, perhaps, to keep the series from looking like something seen on The CW, as well as sets it apart more from the Harry Potter movies.
Learning magic on the series is also often harder than seen in other similar stories.
"Learning magic is this arduous task," said The Magicians co-executive producer Sera Gamble at New York Comic Con, as reported by Mashable. "When I read it, I thought about learning how to play the piano: you have to make your hands do very unnatural things. And the magicians—you can actually spot a magician on the street, a true magician, because their hands can do things that regular hands can't."
Grossman has also given the series his blessing and worked closely with the creators to make sure that Syfy got it right.
"We sent him a really early draft of something and he gave a lot of great notes," said Gamble. "One was ... magic is not just levitation. Magic makes the weather, magic makes the flowers bloom and die, magic is sexual attraction, magic is what turns water into ice. He sent this beautiful, poetic email that opened our minds up so much to the subject we're writing about. He's thought about this stuff deeply for a decade. He's the ace in our pocket."
The Magicians debuts on Syfy in January 2016.
For more Comic Con news, check out T-Lounge coverage of New York Comic Con 2015.
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