Legend of the Seeker Fans Campaigning for a Movie

When Legend of the Seeker was cancelled in 2010 fans hoped to bring the show back for a third season by persuading a cable network or online streaming service to pick up the show. After nearly four years of reminding entertainment industry executives they want their Seeker, the fans were given a new sign of hope by former star Craig Horner in early 2014 when he pointed out that there was a better chance of persuading Sam Raimi to make a movie.

Raimi’s film-making career spans decades and his work as producer, director, and other functions includes classics like “The Evil Dead”, “Darkman”, “The Quick and the Dead”, and a few television shows including Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Spartacus: War of the Damned. This list does not do him justice. In fact, most people may know him better as the guy who directed three “Spider-man” movies with Tobey Maguire. More recently he directed “Oz The Great and Powerful” with “Spider-man” co-star James Franco (Harry Osborne, Jr.) starring as the man who became the Wizard of Oz.

Raimi’s genius is not limited to producing and directing. He knows talent in all capacities of the film and television fields. He and his partner Rob Tapert have put together some of the most successful crews in film and television history. Many of their technicians and support crews were recruited by Peter Jackson to work on “The Lord of the Rings” and other projects; that is partly because Raimi and Tapert invested a lot of money and resources in New Zealand’s once tiny film and television industry in the 1990s, and partly because their desire to create syndicated television shows that looked more awesome than typical network TV productions fomented a creative environment that continues to this day.

So Raimi, Mr. Horner tells us, is the key to bringing Legend of the Seeker back from the mothballs. In fact, a movie makes more sense for fandom than a television show. It would be hard to get the band back together without everyone being fully convinced the show could run for 5-10 years. Reviving cancelled shows is not easy, even though Legend of the Seeker wasn’t cancelled for lack of audience. Raimi’s magic powers could not overcome Sam Zell’s 2007 leveraged buyout of the Tribune Company, which controlled 1/3 of the American syndication market. In December 2010 Zell’s company filed for bankruptcy and very quickly moved to drop expensive shows like Legend of the Seeker from its stations.

But we have seen how much money Sam Raimi movies can make. Given the right production budget and talent, Raimi could put together a huge blockbuster that rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. And it’s not like he would have to struggle to find a story to tell. The series was based on Terry Goodkind’s popular Sword of Truth books. Raimi could mine the plots endlessly. He could even go a little darker than the TV show did and dip into Goodkind’s more mature sub-plots (not suitable for children in the books, but he could hint at them more in a movie than in a show).

With a successful movie everyone will start smelling money. They may come back for more movies, do a television show, or do movies AND a television show. The opportunities are boundless when you take success into consideration rather than failure. The failure of LOTS was not the product of bad production or writing. It was just the result of the machinations of corporate American greed. But that greed can now be turned to fans’ advantage. Just persuade the right people to make a movie. And thanks to Disney’s Marvel Studios, fantasy-type movies are doing pretty well these days. Superhero films like “The Avengers” are not quite the same as sword-and-sorcery movies but Raimi would do a far better job with this kind of material than the people who consistently turn out low-quality crud that bombs at the box office.

If Katniss Everdeen can take on the Capital with just a bow and a mockingjay pin, Richard Rahl can take on Hollywood with the Sword of Truth. But how do we get the word out to fans?

Save Our Seeker is running a contest for fans. Write a letter and submit it for consideration. You’ll win some prizes. The contest runs out at midnight on November 9, 2014. You find out how to enter on the Legend of the Seeker movie contest page at SaveOurSeeker.com.

We are promoting the contest on Twitter. You can promote it on Pinterest, Google Plus, Facebook, and every other social media service you participate in. Blog about it. Discuss it on your mailing lists. Just post the link to the contest page and a brief explanation. And then write a letter to Sam. He is one of the top-grossing fantasy film-makers of all time. He has the chops to do this. And if anyone tells you it won’t work, quote Yoda at them: “That is why you fail.” It begins with you believing you can make a difference. It ends wherever it ends.