Well, I suppose a woman beater being a representative of TSW isn’t so bad. I mean hey, Disney canned Depp from PotC, but Funcom will continue to support him, I’m sure.
Depp’s production company purchased the rights to the property. You understand how that’s different than actually being in charge of casting and deciding to feature Depp?
How does one even begin to translate TSW into a TV show?
Insert speculation / brainstorming here.
There’s so many stories, so many viewpoints, how do you narrow that down?
Is the TV series from a Bee’s perspective, or from a “muggle’s?”
Is it from the perspective of the Illuminati? Dragon? Templar? Council of Venice? Pheonicians? The Orochi Group?
Who are the bad guys? Morninglight? Pheonicians?
What ‘phase’ of the story do you focus on - the beginning (tutorial)? Solomon Island? Egypt? Transylvania? Tokyo? There’s enough content in each story zone (grouping of zones, rather) to fill a series in itself. How many seasons devoted to Solomon Island? To Egypt, etc.? How much of the game will be left out in ‘translation’ to a TV series for editing (time)?
There’s so much going on in TSW, it’s going to be fairly easy for any TV series based off of it to get downright convoluted (“I’m bored and confused”). For those familiar with the game, or players themselves, there’s going to be something left out or glossed over and it’s going to be disappointing (I’m afraid).
I’m not sure TSW/SWL lends itself to a TV series without being like 20 seasons long, and with enough shows out there like AHS, Stranger Things, that already occupy a great deal of pop-culture space in the horror genre, I’m not sure there’s room for it, or if audiences have the patience for it to get through all the game content.
TSW was a great game, but I think it works best as a game.
Remember Mortal Kombat? Super Mario Bros. W/ John Leguizamo? Doom? Rampage? Street Fighter? Resident Evil? Sure those are movies, but what about the ill-fated Kindred: The Embraced? You’ll be hard-pressed to find a V:tM fan who thinks that is better than Bloodlines (especially with the Clan Quest Mod and Wesp unofficial patches). There was a D&D movie, too, lest we forget, speaking of RPG adaptions - and TSW is an RPG (albeit an MMORPG).
Honestly, TSW lends itself better to a comic (Dark Horse, fingers crossed, Dark Horse, fingers crossed…) than a T.V. series or a movie. Or, what I would prefer, an actual pen-and-paper-and-dice RPG (Modiphius, fingers crossed, Modiphius fingers crossed…)
(I’d rather have a TSW RPG or comic than watch the TV series, Depp or no - and I’m a Depp fan)
Procedural fantasy crime comedy/drama with Geary and Inbeda as the main stars.
Done. I will await my royalty checks in the mail.
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They’ve bought the tv rights to the Secret World IP, not just what we’ve seen in the game.
I wouldn’t expect the game storyline to be the TV plot either. There’s just so much potential in the concept that everything is true, it’d make more sense to explore new stories rather than trying to stick to an existing one which is still being developed and added to.
I’d think that to make the story relateable, you’d have to have at least one protagonist being new to the secret world, so you could have reveals from the character perspective. They wouldn’t have to be a bee though - it could be something as simple as they got saved from being eaten and it just goes from there.
They could also choose a different time frame - show how Sarah, Rose, Mei and Alex all met and started working together, or even focus on how Zuberi started out.
The bad guys would be the rising Darkness, the factions could all potentially have their dirty underbellies shown though.
There’s a massive range of options that could be explored. You could have Carter’s story before the mist reached Solomon Island; you could find out more background on Norma Creed; you could follow the story of how the amusement park in SC went so wrong. There are so many different options that you could pick something totally new to expand on, and then just mix in different characters which the gamers will recognise but they don’t need to be central to the plot.
It could be terrible. It could be ok though. I’m hoping it’ll be half decent, as it’s a fun idea 
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CSI: Agartha?
Wouldn’t that need to star Jeronimo?
“Infinitum Nihil is an American film production company, founded by Johnny Depp. The company is run by Depp’s sister Christi Dembrowski. Depp founded the company in 2004 to develop projects where he will serve as actor and/or producer.”
No, you explain it to me, hotshot.
Attempting to parallel the game plot would be pointless and indeed tedious. What would be of interest to any writer working on a Secret World script is the basic concept and the whole mood of the original, which offer enormous potential for story-telling. I for one am looking forward to seeing the result, while hoping they don’t make a dog’s breakfast of it - which would be all too easy if they take the low road and make the series either excessively simple-minded or (horror of horrors!) teen-friendly…
I think a fair bit will come down to whether they’re aiming it at TV distributors or internet ones - there’s a lot more restrictions on shows made for TV than streaming services.
“Procedural fantasy crime comedy / drama” has been done to death, IMHO.
Grimm, Lucifer, even the Sleepy Hollow re-make (the series, not the movie starring Depp) was a cop show. At this point, it’s almost cliche. Besides, TSW/SWL already has elements kind of like that, but, it’s more like we’re the Supernatural Police (the factions are, in a manner of speaking) and that’s enough for me.
Let’s please leave the actual police out of this.
(they can still make cameos in London as they do in the London map).
P.S. I’m a big fan of Geary and Imbeda (who isn’t?) but no.
I like AWOL’s idea, showing how Sarah, Rose, Mei, and Alex all met and started working together with Zuberi. That’s enough big-name characters from the game to make it enjoyable for people who play the game, and give them something else to explore the lore of the game that they haven’t seen already in-game. It would be a good way to get exposition that we haven’t seen, which would be nice. And also since all factions are represented in that group of Super Friends, it would be a good way to show off each of the factions, too. Yes, even the Dragon. And you wouldn’t have to try and get all the stories from all the mission NPC’s either (Norma Creed, Carter, the Madahando’s, etc.) to showcase the zones (Solomon Island, Egypt, etc.). Maybe even keep to the NY Raid storyline or the Tokyo storyline?
As far as making a TSW/SWL show teen-friendly, I’ll pass on Carter: the Teenage Bee.
Keep brainstorming. I need stuff to read while in the bathroom dodging work and I like where this is going.
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The problem is that there’s a limited scope for tv drama settings. If we’re supernatural police, then there’s probably going to be some kind of procedural nature involved. There needs to be enough time for them to drive a non-action based plot forwards, and yeah, there’s a lot of stuff which has walked the same line.
The options are to either follow someone totally new to the secret world, or someone already in the know. It’d probably be easier to explain everything if they pick a new initiate - doesn’t have to be a bee, though it wouldn’t surprise me. I think they’d probably have to pick one faction to be the main viewpoint though, trying to explain the 3 factions at the same time would be lengthy. I’d guess they’ll pick either Templars or Lumies, as the Dragon works nicely as an enigmatic side story that they can allude to, and have the other two clearly antagonistic.
Everyone knows it ought to be about Dame Julia grumbling and complaining.
About everything.
So let’s start fantasy casting this thing:
Dichen Lachman for Bong Cha
Ki Hong Li for Daimon Kiyota
Joe Mantegna for Arturo Castiglione
Christina Hendricks for Kirsten Geary
Mahershala Ali for Richard Sonnac
Daimon’s a small player until Tokyo, so if we’re avoiding the game storyline then he wouldn’t be present.
And Ki Hong Li’s way too young to play him 
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For what it’s worth, I was sarcastically mocking Lucifer (and to some extent Grimm).
Ving Rhames for Ellis Hill. (I would have preferred Michael Clark Duncan, but he’s unavailable…)
Frances McDormand for Sheriff Bannerman
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Wasn’t there a joke somewhere about not knowing how old Daimon actually is or if he’s even just one person?
Close 
we’re sent on a mission which shows that his predecessor looks exactly like him, and the lore suggests that he may have been around for a long time - but hasn’t attracted the attention of the factions, so they’re all a bit surprised by him.
I think there was even a tinfoil hat discussion about him being Solomon.
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He uses a lot of 1920s slang in his conversation (“giggle water”, “barney mugging” etc) so he must be from that era, and probably not as old as Solomon.
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