Wendy Pini also wanted to make an animated Stormbringer film, but sadly that never came to pass either. — Wendy Pini also wanted to make an animated *Stormbringer* film, but sadly that never came to pass either.

As our greatest living writer of speculative fiction and an author whom I admire, particularly for his Elric and Corum stories, I’ve often wondered, why hasn’t Michael Moorcock’s sword-and-sorcery fiction ever been adapted to the silver screen?

It could have been.

In a July 1, 2021 episode of the podcast Hard Agree with host Andrew Sumner*, Moorcock explains that he was approached by the likes of filmmaker Ralph Bakshi for an adaptation of Elric. This would have been circa 1978, as Moorcock mentions watching an early print of Bakshi’s visually arresting but flawed The Lord of the Rings in the director’s own production studio.

It was a heady time and place for Moorcock, who was residing in Hollywood and meeting actors like Christopher Lee and Gene Wilder. He was editing New Worlds, and his Elric stories were riding a cresting wave of sword-and-sorcery, republished by DAW with arresting covers by the talented Michael Whelan. His Corum and Hawkmoon stories added to that considerable legacy, and in 1978 Gloriana was published to critical acclaim.

Moorcock’s former agent turned producer brought a series of directors into his home to meet with the upcoming writer and pitch an Elric film. All the pieces were in place, the opportunity presented. But Moorcock turned Bakshi, and the others, down. From the interview:

I wasn’t trying to sell Elric at that time, I didn’t really want to. Because in those days the effects always took over the film. You couldn’t help it. It was the way they were made, all the money went into Harryhausen, as it were, and there wasn’t anything much less for actual acting actors.

Moorcock detested Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and admits in the interview to sabotaging the opportunity, quoting the filmmaker such a high price that he had no choice but to decline:

In the end what I did was I put the price up so high that he couldn’t possibly—I knew he was a cheap bastard too—so I thought OK, it’s a million or nothing as it were. I can’t remember what it was, I was much more sensible than making it too big, but I made it too big for him. And so I got out of that one, and very glad I was too. It would not have been a happy time… I didn’t want to make a fantasy movie at that time. I didn’t mind making a historical movie where we didn’t have to have many effects, many big effects, but I didn’t want to make a fantasy movie. I just didn’t. And I didn’t want anybody to buy it. I wasn’t trying to sell Elric in Hollywood. I was just trying to be a decent scriptwriter, really.

Should we admire Moorcock for sticking to his artistic guns, or lament the missed opportunity? Personally I lean toward the latter. I submit that a rotoscoped Elric exploring the interior of the sorcerer Agak, or battling Yyrkoon with Stormbringer clashing against Mournblade, would have rocked the world. Given the weird, hallucinogenic quality of Moorcock’s tales, an auteur filmmaker like Bakshi might have delivered something truly memorable.

Even a bad animated adaptation would likely not have harmed the potential for a later live action, CGI-infused adaptation. This was the same scenario that ultimately played out with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films. The Rankin-Bass films (which I love) didn’t deter New Line Cinema from financing the project 20 years later.

Alas, Moorcock declined. More than 40 years later his works remain un-adapted. It appears he missed his best window.

But maybe not. In November 2019 rumors of a possible television adaptation resurfaced. New Republic Pictures acquired the exclusive rights to the Elric Saga and are reportedly shopping the property for a series. Perhaps someday we’ll see Tanelorn and Doctor Jest, and Cymoril and the Dreaming City of Immryr, on the small or the silver screen. But for now they remain solely in our mind’s eye.

Was it for the best? We’ll never know.

*Worth listening to; there is a lot more in this podcast including Moorcock extolling the underappreciated efforts of Donald A. Wollheim in reviving sword-and-sorcery fiction, and his experiences writing the screenplay for The Land that Time Forgot (1974).

Brian Murphy is the author of Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery (Pulp Hero Press, 2020). Learn more about his life and work on his website, The Silver Key.