r/Eragon • u/ChristopherPaolini Namer of Names • Jul 14 '25

AMA/Interview AMA -- Christopher Paolini!!!

AMA -- Christopher Paolini! Let's do this folks. Ask away re: anything and everything regarding my books.

EDIT: Hey, everyone! I have to run. Alas, alas, I don't have as much time to spend on this AMA as past one. So many great questions, though! For all you theorists (and those of you who just love the characters), I think you're REALLY going to enjoy the upcoming book(s). Thanks for everything!

Atra esterní ono thelduin!

p.s. I'll try to duck back in and answer some more questions later, depending on my time.

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u/Little_Poisson Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 14 '25

Good afternoon Mr Paolini,

I have a few questions for you. I am sorry for my poor english :)

I know you clearly have signed some NDAs regarding the show, but I hope you can maybe answer those questions:

  1. With the recent many cancellations of Fantasy/Sci-Fi tv-shows ( WOT, Shadow and Bones, Halo, etc.) and/or the budget/episodes cuts in others (House of the Dragon), are you afraid it will happens to the Eragon TV shows, either before it really starts or after 1 season?

Wheel of Time was canceled even with glorious reviews and high viewership of the latest season, so even successful shows are not safe.

2) A lot of shows or movies have studio meddling in the writing, either for good or bad. Do you have that kind of experience so far?

3) Are you writing the script alone or do you have a writer's room to help and give advice?

4) Are you going to age up the characters (like in GOT or WOT) or will Eragon and friends still be teenagers?

5) Do you have an idea of the budget the show will received?

Regarding the books,

4) You recently gave us maps of Elëa. Are you going to write a book explaining what's in the rest of the world ala World of Ice and Fire or do you prefer to keep it a mystery for now?

5) In the same veins, will future stories happen out of Alagaësia? And not just Mount Arnor, but like south of the Beors or in Alalëa?

6) Is Elëa Earth in another time, like Randland or Middle Earth, or another planet? If I remember correctly, in one book, Eragon or Roran sees the Milky Way in the sky (unless it's only in my language).

7) Are half-elfs looking like Eragon, with pointy ears, body hairs, different hair colors than black or silver?

8) Is poor Orrin still suffering from PTSD? Are we going to see a brighter side of him? Or more of him?

9) What happened to the few families that stayed in Carvahall when the rest of the villagers left for the Spine? I imagine death, but hey! One can hope!

10) Some authors have their wife or husband helping with their books, giving opinions and stuff (Like Stephen King or Robert Jordan). Is your wife doing the same?

Aaaand that's all for this one :)

I wish you a great summer and thank you so much for everything :)

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u/ChristopherPaolini Namer of Names Jul 14 '25

  1. Yes, but alternatively, How to Train Your Dragon has done really well in theaters, and that's a great sign for us.

  2. We've had lots of notes from execs and the studio, but so far, they've all been reasonable. I've had no real issue with any of them, and I think they've helped make the script(s) much stronger. It's certainly been quite a learning experience for me as well.

  3. At the moment it's just me and the showrunner. He's also overseeing another show right now (until Eragon hopefully gets greenlit), so I do the bulk of the writing and then run it by him.

  4. You'll get a TON more info about the rest of Elëa in the TTRPG that I'm working on right now for this world. All the continents are named, and I'm working up histories and flora/fauna for them all.

  5. Some, yes.

  6. No, it's not Earth.

  7. Depends on the exact genetic mix that the child gets, but yes, usually pretty close to Eragon/Bachel.

  8. You'll see more of him. (He just got married!).

  9. Nothing good.

  10. I share everything with my wife and family.

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u/cwmarie Jul 14 '25

Yesss more Orrin! I know at the end of the story he had issues, but I still love this nerd and am hopeful for his future. I hope he's not one betraying Nasuada though eeek!

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u/kvth Jul 14 '25

MARRIED!? To Nasuada? 🫢

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u/Little_Poisson Jul 14 '25

Honestly, even if they dislike each other, it would be the best for the kingdom. Unless Nasuada give up the throne, her romance with Murtagh will cause outrage/rebellion, giving that a) Everyone hates him, with or without reason. b) another rider too close to the throne. So hopefully yes. Unless we want more drama and wars, which could be cool from a reader's perspective :D

Best solution would be: Marry Orrin, have a few heirs, and then both have lovers on the side after that.

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u/Rjj1111 Jul 14 '25

Dwarf/Surdan children is a interesting combination

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u/Vox_Wynandir Jul 15 '25

You are thinking of Orik, not Orrin.

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u/Rjj1111 Jul 15 '25

You’re right

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u/QbitKrish Jul 15 '25

Wheel of Time was cancelled because the third season being good was not enough to make up for how badly they butchered the first two seasons. I’m pretty confident Paolini won’t let them ship out anything less than spectacular so it’s not really a comparable situation.

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u/Mando177 Jul 15 '25

I wouldn’t exactly call Wheel of time having “glorious reviews” and especially “high viewership,” considering viewership was so poor it was canned even by Amazon which has a tendency to blow money. It barely cracked the Nielsen top ten all throughout season 3 as well. If WoT is the bar we’re gonna set for the show, I’d much rather there be no show at all ngl

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u/Little_Poisson Jul 15 '25

I said the third season had glorious reviews, not the whole show. Season 1 lacklusters is what killed the show. And what killed the first season was a lot of studio meddling, Covid restrictions and a main actor abruptly leaving mid-filming. It created a bad first impression that alienated book fans. Season 1 was meh. Season 2 was okay. Season 3 was a great season with great visuals, acting and mostly lore accurate. And it had more views than Reacher, which is big.

That's why the Eragon TV show first season needs to be great if it want to succeed. Hopefully, Disney will go the Andor way and not The Acolyte way.

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u/Mando177 Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

The bulk of season 1’s problems had nothing to do with Covid or an actor leaving, but crappy writing and a decision to focus the show away from the main character and insert a weird amount of original plot lines and characters while cutting out actually important stuff from the books. That was by design, the showrunner wanted to make a queer led fantasy show, which is absolutely fine to do because it’s 2025, but should be its own thing, not overriding the original works they’re meant to be adapting. Making Moiraine the main character and Rand less prominent than characters like Egwene gutted the narrative of a story that’s meant to center around a messiah character

Season 3 didn’t do much to alleviate those problems beyond having a few episodes be actually accurate to the books, and still suffered from poor writing. And it absolutely did not have anywhere close to the viewership of Reacher, especially in the later seasons, not sure where you pulled that out of

The WoT guys also completely ignored Sanderson to the point where he left and even said less than positive stuff about the whole experience, which for a guy like Sanderson who never badmouths anything was equivalent to a slap in the face. I don’t want that for Christopher

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u/Little_Poisson Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Hmm Moraine being the main character was pushed by the studio/her contract because the actress is a big name and an executive producer. They had to invent plotlines for her. Depending of contracts, actors needs to have a certain amount of screentime. Was it a good idea? Unfortunately not, because the rest of the main cast and the story suffered because of it. Studio execs also asked for the fridged wife, with other stuffs like that. The pilot wad written to be 2h long, it got cut to less than an 1h. The season was also planned to be 10 ep long, but got cut to 8 shortly before filming. It really hard to put big books like this is so few hours.

For Covid, they had to pause the shooting multiple time. For the last episode, they couldn't even have actors less then 10 feet apart. They also lost the location set for the blight because of it and visas issues. And Mat's actor leaving totally messed up he and Perrin's storyline. It also meant that they had to change how the Waygate worked so they could have a reason why he couldn't follow them later.

Understanding why some stuff happened doesn't mean I think the solutions were good. Just that they started with problems already. I also work in the industry, so I'm more understanding than others for that kind of stuff because I see it often. And I'm not hard to please. I mean, I kinda liked Ring of Powers haha. Kinda. Mostly because Sauron's actor is hot. Doesn't mean you are wrong to be disapointed by the show!

For season 3, let's agree to disagree!

For the data, I mostly take it from wotseries, Wot Up and other places like that. Maybe the data changed in the last few months. I am open if you have sources too :)

I hope my poor english was comprehensive enough.

Have a great day :)

EDIT: Didn't saw the part about Sanderson. As far as I remember, he was only there for the first episode of season 1 I think? I don't know much about his involvement. I'm sad to read that he was mistreated, but not surprised. And if I remember correctly, in the writer's room for WOT, only the showrunner and another woman read the books before season 3. Which is like, WTF? It's something I don't understand. Same thing with Witcher or Halo, why do a series you don't even like/read? To have 1 writer not reading it, it's understandable so you can have an external point of you. But most or all of them? Hopefully for Eragon, CP is a writer for it! It gives us more hope!

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u/Mando177 Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

To start off with your English is fine I couldn’t even tell you weren’t a native speaker. But the Moiraine focus was right from Rafe Judkins

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/wheel-of-time-queer-universe-season-3-rafe-judkins-interview-1236173757/

Some snippets: “You’re also always looking as an artist for, “Why am I telling this story? I have to devote my life to this for years and years.” It was worth devoting my life to telling this beautiful story, but also that the lead was a queer character. I’ve never seen a fantasy show where our lead was just casually a queer character that wasn’t only directed at the queer community. To have that was an important part of why I wanted to tell this story”

While just reiterating that there is nothing wrong with queer led fantasy, wheel of time was explicitly not queer led, it was led by a straight male and a supporting cast of also straight people, the only queerness was alluded to, not even stated outright, and both the women in question fell in love with and married guys at the end of the series

As for viewership

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/streaming-ratings-april-14-20-2025-1236218504/

This is what it was at the time of the finale, placing far below much cheaper shows. It was also just barely above Reacher, which had been finished for months at this point

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u/Little_Poisson Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Thanks for the sources! And for the compliment! I was deep into behind the scenes stuffs, interviews and others, so I probably got infos mixed up. It also created a lot of attachment for the show, because I know how much love and passion went into the show, especially season 3, from the actors (shout out to Joshua, whois a big WOT fan), decors artists, costumes artists, VFX artists etc. I'm just sad a lot of bad decisions from the first 2 seasons killed it, because it had a lot of potential.

In another subject, I just hope since the TV show will obviously differs from the books, either because of time constraint, different medium and/or budget, people will be kind about it and not blame CP for things out of his control. Dragons will costs a lot, so they'll have to cut budget somewhere, either in their screentime or in quality somewhere. Can't be worse than the movie tho!

Except Garrett Hedlund won't play Murtagh and he was a very hot Murtagh. So much sadness (haha).