Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
Doom Patrol was a 1963 comic book before it became a TV show.
And If you want another adaptation example - Umbrella Academy added genderfluidity and queerness that wasn't present in its source material either, without hurting its popularity.
Hold on - are these examples of a story from a book (I guess a comic book counts) being retold with adaptions to make way for trans or genderfluid characters? Or are these whole new stories that are set in an established world, drawing on some established characters, like She-Ra. Because the second is not the same thing.

Again, the very reason for choosing to adapt an existing story instead of writing a new story (even one using the existing settings and or characters) is because it is a proven formula that people like. Changing that story undermines that reason. With a new story (even one using the existing settings and or characters) you don't have the same constraints.

Of the five stories you mention, how many are retellings of the original story, rather than something that is a complete rewrite?

I didn't mention neutral because then it will likely just come down to what the showrunner feels like doing. Again, with the five examples (three being adaptations) I mentioned previously, somebody made the decision that audiences would either enjoy the portrayals or not care much. I think the same could happen here.
Well I thought we were talking about whether it was probable that the showrunner would be motivated to put aside commercial concerns and insert trans characters for their own reasons. A showrunner who is neutral on gender issues would not be motivated to make those changes.

As noted above, I'm not sure you have three or five examples of a story being adapted this way, because She-Ra is not a retelling of the original story, it's a new story. That makes me wonder if you other examples are either? Anyway, we deal with why those are very different below.

What "first" comes to mind for anyone isn't relevant to me, so long as it does.
I thought the intent of the question was obvious. But let's rephrase to clear up any ambiguity - do you disagree that the question of "How well does this story reflect the idea that gender is not binary?" would not be amongst the highest priorities for most of the population?

Worth repeating where this point came from, because it can get lost in these types of threads - we were talking about it in the context of showrunners, rather than audiences. Although I suppose it could apply for audiences as well.

Pretty sure every property I listed was released on a major network, not a "niche market."
So what? There are lots of things aimed at niche markets on major networks. For example there are Korean langauge programmes on Netflix in English speaking countries - they are clearly aimed at a niche market despite being on a major network.

Do you think that a television adaption of WoT would be considered successful if it has the same profile and number of viewers as the likes of She-Ra or Dragon Prince? Or do you think it would be shooting for the sort of success of a GoT or a Harry Potter?

As Glyphstone helpfully suggested, I'm leaving this well alone.
No problem, it has been pretty comprehensively answered by others. it seems clear that it is not relevant to the discussion of a WoT adaption anyway (unless perhaps we were thinking Rowling would write it).


One thread of our discussion seems to have got lost - where you suggested that there might be some risk in not adapting. Do you still maintain that there's a risk from simply retelling the same story (with necessary adaptions for TV)? If so, based on what?