On the heels of the news of The Magicians’ renewal and just ahead of today’s big news about the showrunner of the new Star Trek series, the worlds of Magicians and the final frontier collided on Monday night.
It all started when Star Trek icon William Shatner posed this question out to the TV-watching Twitterverse: “So what’s on tonight?” The official Magicians account quickly replied with the recommendation to watch the new Syfy show, along with an on-point gif of Eliot welcoming Alice and Quentin to the Physical Kids’ house with cocktails.
There’s a kind of sly genius behind the SyFy Channel’s new series “The Magicians,” which begins with a number of thinly disguised references to frothy, magic-laced fantasies such as “Harry Potter,” “The Secret Garden” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” among others.
But “The Magicians,” premiering Monday, Jan. 25, is anything but adapted kiddie lit.
The series, adapted by Sera Gamble and John McNamara from Lev Grossman’s best-selling trilogy, focuses on misfit and recent college graduate Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph), who is about to take an entrance exam for postgraduate work at Yale.
As a kid, he was deeply into fantasy and magic, as were many of his friends, including his bestie, Julia (Stella Maeve). Other kids grew out of the fantasy phase, but not Quentin. He knows what he’s supposed to be doing at this point in his life, but his heart isn’t in it. His Peter Pan syndrome has landed him in a mental institution for a few days and earned him a mood-leveling drug prescription.
Quentin is fixated on a five-novel series of fantasy books by the fictional Christopher Plover called “Fillory & Further,” about three English children who enter a secret world by stepping into a grandfather clock. One day, Quentin is handed the manuscript of a hitherto unknown sixth book in the series, which leads him into the land of Fillory and to an upstate New York magic college known as Brakebills University. Read more…
That’s a hot question for fans of Lev Grossman’s fantasy book trilogy, which Syfy has adapted into an unmissable TV series premiering on Jan. 25.
The series follows Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph), a talented loner who discovers he can perform magic and attends a college dedicated to teaching the art. With three books in question (and the obvious specter of that other famous fantasy show that played fast and loose with its books), it’s reasonable to wonder where the season finale of the 13-episode first season will place its bookmark in the trilogy.
The Magicians producers teased — coyly, to be sure — their plans for the length of the freshman trajectory during the show’s panel at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena on Thursday.
“A lot will happen in season 1,” said executive producer Sera Gamble. “We’re even dipping into book 2 a little.” The big change of note is that Julia’s (Stella Maeve) story, which falls “off the page” in book 1 but picks up in the second book, The Magician King, will be pulled into the first season. “We’re getting a fair amount of the way through book 1 as we are telling Julia’s story — actually, the origin story of her story — in book 2.”
Syfy and Universal Cable Productions (UCP) are excited to present the new scripted drama series, THE MAGICIANS. The series kicks off with a special two episode premiere beginning on Monday, January 25 at 9/8c on Syfy.
Starring Jason Ralph (Quentin Coldwater), Stella Maeve (Julia), Olivia Taylor Dudley (Alice), Hale Appleman (Eliot), Arjun Gupta (Penny) and Summer Bishil (Margo), THE MAGICIANS is based on Lev Grossman’s best-selling novels. The series centers on Quentin, a brilliant grad student chosen to attend Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, a secret upstate New York university specializing in magic. He and his 20-something friends soon discover that the magical fantasy world they read about as children is all too real – and poses grave danger to humanity.
In the season premiere, titled “Unauthorized Magic,” airing January 25 at 9/8c, Quentin Coldwater – a brilliant, but depressed college student from Brooklyn, NY – learns that magic is real when he is offered admission at Brakebills University, an exclusive graduate school for magicians. Once ensconced in school, he quickly discovers, firsthand, the darker and terrifying side of magic.
The drama continues at 10/9c, in “The Source of Magic,” where the Brakebills students struggle to deal with the aftermath of a catastrophe that befalls the university. Back in Brooklyn, Julia makes her first foray into the mysterious world of Hedge Witches.
New episodes will air in the series’ regular timeslot on Mondays at 9/8c.
Recurring guest stars this season include Rick Worthy as Dean Fogg, Anne Dudek as Professor Sunderland, Jade Tailor as Kady and Esme Bianco as Eliza.
Groundswell Productions’ Michael London and Janice Williams (Milk) will executive produce THE MAGICIANS. John McNamara (Aquarius) and Sera Gamble (Supernatural), writers of the pilot, will serve as executive producers. Mike Cahill (I Origins) directed the pilot. Universal Cable Productions will serve as the studio.
Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” trilogy is an international sensation, published and widely praised in more than twenty countries. The epic conclusion to the series, “The Magician’s Land,” opened at #1 last summer on the New York Times Hardcover Best Seller’s list, and was widely acclaimed as one of the best books of the year.
THE MAGICIANS joins other high profile upcoming Syfy originals, including the December 2015 premieres of epic space drama THE EXPANSE, starring Thomas Jane, Steven Strait and Shohreh Aghdashloo; CHILDHOOD’S END the first-ever adaptation of ARTHUR C. Clarke’s iconic novel starring Charles Dance, Mike Vogel and Julian McMahon; the acclaimed time travel thriller 12 MONKEYS, returning for its second season in early 2016; and HUNTERS, a 13-episode thriller from THE WALKING DEAD executive producer Gale Anne Hurd, set to premiere in 2016. CHILDHOOD’S END, 12 MONKEYS and HUNTERS are also from Universal Cable Productions.
About Syfy: Syfy is a media destination for imagination-based entertainment. With year round acclaimed original series, events, blockbuster movies, classic Science fiction and fantasy programming, a dynamic Web site (www.Syfy.com), and a portfolio of adjacent business (Syfy Ventures), Syfy is a passport to LIMITLESSpossibilities. Originally launched in 1992 as SCI FI Channel, and currently in 96 million homes, Syfy is a network of NBCUniversal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation. (Syfy. Imagine Greater.)
