Stephen R. Lawhead

Maybe half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, maybe an hour if the awen comes over me.

You say, "What is the awen?" Well, that is something that Stephen Lawhead talks about in the Taliesin and Merlin series, King Arthur series, The Pendragon, that just came out on Amazon, and I watched it just the other day.

We watched all seven episodes.

I was so happy because these are, like, the, my favorite books in the history of the world, and the awen is, like, this thing that comes over the bard when he starts to sing and when he leads the people into battle.

Not at all.

So the show was created by Jeremy Boring, and he's adapting a book series by Stephen R. Lawhead, and we aren't talking about, like, some trendy new young adult novel that just came out.

No, this IP is nearly four decades old.

39 years ago, the first book was published.

Yeah, my show's called The Pendragon Cycle.

It's based on the novels by Stephen Lawhead.

And Stephen Lawhead's a, a very interesting guy.

I read these books when I was a teenager, and they had an enormous effect on me.

They were very formative in how I perceived the world.

... and, uh, Dragged Across Concrete, um, Brawl in Cell Block 99.

A- excellent filmmaker.

Uh, Dallas had made some films with us, and he approached me and said, "Hey, if you could make one thing, what it would be, what would it be?" And I said, "Well, I've always wanted to make Stephen Lawhead's The Pendragon Cycle." Well, a few weeks later, he walks in my office, says, "Hey, I got you the rights to Stephen Lawhead's The Pendragon Cycle."

And I kept a pot of water on the stove to keep the humidity.

And also, in case of hot chocolate needs, because we had lots of hot chocolate, And I was reading a book by Stephen Lawhead to the kids.

And it was kind of like a time travel book.

And the character had gone back to ancient Britain.

Yeah.

According to the MovieWeb piece, the series stars Tom Sharpe as Merlin, and it is an adaptation of the novel series by Stephen R. Lawhead.

Which is a crucial detail.

It is.

And then this month, everything changed.

Based on the first two volumes in Stephen R. Lawhead's series, the Pendragon Cycle worked its new wizardry to reach number two on Prime Video.

Let's go behind the scenes of the cycle, touching on controversies, but staying pre-political and pre-medieval as we explore how Christian creators fight to build the future.

Today we are joined by the Pendragon Cycle Series creator, Jeremy Boring.

You know, Zach, watching those first two episodes of The Rise of the Merlin, if you squint, I think that you can make it in continuity with the DC universe, at least more Zach Snyder's more mythical presentation of Aquaman.

And I think you have to squint a whole lot.

And a lot of people had their eyes opened all of a sudden to this pre-medieval land, originally from author Stephen R. Lawhead with the Pendragon Cycle book series released decades ago.

and now it has come to the screen on Prime.