After the recent years of rebooting television shows from the 1980s and 90s and adapting a movie or two into a show, Hollywood has set its next reboot target: popular franchises based on popular book series. There have recently been announcements for television series based on both the Harry Potter books and the Twilightnovels, as if this is once again the early to mid-2000s. Both literary series were previously adapted into major film franchises, each one grossing over a billion dollars that, despite some quibbles, are genuinely beloved by fans of the source material. The promise of new adaptations is that they will be more fateful to the books, but with imperfect but beloved adaptations, is there any urgency for the titles? Hollywood would be better off adapting a series of books that maybe were meant to be a franchise but were possibly too unwieldy for the medium of film. With the rise of prestige television, maybe it's time to reach for a different beloved early 2000s movie, with enough source material to provide a decade's worth of television. Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturinseries, previously adapted as Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, would be the perfect candidate for a prestige TV reboot.
The 2003 seafaring epic is the penultimate film in the impeccable career of director Peter Weir, whose follow-up to The Truman Show was another critical and commercial hit, with Master & Commander earning over 200 million at the worldwide box office and garnering two Academy Awards out of ten nominations. The project was a passion for 20th Century Fox studio head Tom Rothman who, after years of wanting to adapt the O'Brien novels, finally was able to make it happen when he took over the studio. "When he became CEO, that was the opportunity for him to finally make it happen, and he put all the studio’s support behind the project," said one of the film's producers, Duncan Harrison, when speaking to TheWrap.
Unfortunately, despite making its money back, the film was deemed enough of a disappointment that no sequels were commissioned. That year's Academy Awards had juggernaut The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King looming over it, not to mention that the film was culturally overshadowed by 2003's other high-seas adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, and Rothman was left disappointed that the franchise never came to life. Why couldn't a reboot happen now — in the landscape of television, no less?
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What Are the 'Aubrey-Maturin' Books? (Your Dad Probably Read Them.)
In 1969, English author Patrick O'Brien published the novel Master & Commander. A historical fiction novel, the book creates two memorable protagonists: Navy Captain Jack Aubrey and physician Stephen Maturin. The novel puts Aubrey and Maturin on a ship setting a course, with real history with the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars proving the main direction for the action. O'Brien's major decision with the book was to use fictional characters to be a part of real history. While licenses were taken, O'Brien was careful to keep to the timeline of history, use the language of the time, and the technical terms for the ships. All of this is infused with O'Brien's dry wit and is not above the pun here and there. This first book launched what would become the main drive for the remaining 30 years of O'Brien's life and career, with 20 novels following Aubrey and Maturin throughout the Napoleonic Wars, until his death in 2000 (with the last unfinished book of his published in 2004). The series has a major following and is ripe for further adaptation.
Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World is a fairly loose adaptation of the series, using bits and pieces from multiple novels (including a title using the title of two books). What it lacks in direct faithfulness to the books' plots, it makes up for by capturing the spirit of the novels, particularly the companionship between Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and Maturin (Paul Bettany). With 20 books to draw from, there are so many stories that could be mined for a television show that could last a decade. A television series would also be more financially sustainable without having to cast huge movie stars in the two leads (and likely upping their paychecks for each subsequent sequel) and being able to re-use the expensive sets over and over again. Whether it wants to take more creative liberties in its adaptation of the stories or follow the Andor-type model of three-episode arcs (one for each book), there are plenty of ways to go about adapting O'Brien's novels — and there is definitely an audience for it.
The 'Master & Commander'Hype Is Real
Time has been kind to Weir's adaptation since its release. Film critic Scott Tobias wrote a reappraisal of the film in 2019, praising its depth of themes, excellent craft, and whimsical nature. Star Russell Crowe has frequently spoken about the possibility of a sequel and more recently defended it publicly on Twitter. Popular film-branded apparel site Super Yaki debuted a Master & Commander-themed shirt within the last year for its growing fan base. More recently, Gabrielle Paiella penned a GQ article that explores the current infatuation with the film and how it comes from a place of sincerity as opposed to a meme-influenced irony and what a different era of Hollywood movie-making it represents. A properly-done TV show could capture the endless dilemmas and charm of being at sea, so much so that the action may not even need to be the focal point, so long as the right Aubrey and Maturin are cast.
Hollywood, more often than not, looks back to what worked in the past to make something new. On rare occasions, a television show can be a better fit for a book series. Many fans were disappointed with the Percy Jackson films, but now a TV series hopefully stands to capture what they loved about the books. The Series of Unfortunate Events books were adapted into one movie to cover three novels but then received a more complete adaptation from Netflix, which managed to cover the whole franchise in three seasons. Meanwhile, a Master & Commander prequel has been commissioned by 20th Century Fox, with a screenwriter hired to adapt the first book, but not much has been heard since 2021. With so much material to potentially cover, why another movie and not a TV show? Fox, now a Disney subsidiary, has the rights, and sadly the main champion of the original adaptation, Rothman, is at Sony, but that doesn't mean a series is impossible.
A Master & Commander TV show would have a lot to live up to, considering how beloved the film is, but if done right, the fan base could expand beyond the current crowd and indoctrinate more people to the charms of sailing the high seas with Captain Aubrey and the faithful Maturin. And, huge hit or not, every single Dad would watch this show. Every. Single. One.
