Fan-Favorite Dark Urban Fantasy Series Needs Remake

Starting with 2000’s Storm Front, The Dresden Files follows the adventures of modern day wizard Harry Dresden–a private investigator who comes off more like a pop culture savvy Phillip Marlowe than Gandalf.

Fluent in both the mystic corners of Chicago and the more mundane criminals of the city, Dresden wages an uphill battle against the darkness–sometimes for pay, sometime for the fate of the world.

The Dresden Files finds its hero often struggling against being a pawn of the various Powers That Be–whether we’re talking about royalty of the Fae, dark vampire courts, or mob bosses who know more about magic than Don Corleone.

Like any detective worth his salt, he never quite gets along with his superiors–though in his case his superiors aren’t cigar-chomping police captains, but the White Council of Wizards.

The Dresden Files has everything you could possibly want. Dresden is a hero with a dark, mysterious backstory. Along with a number of other doomed romances, he has his extended will they/won’t they dance with Chicago PD’s Karrin Murphy.

As long as there’s an adequate VFX budget, The Dresden Files would have potential for stunning visuals. Dresden wages war on vampires, zombie hordes, and hellish beasts of all sorts. In Book 7, Dead Beat, he rides a zombie T-Rex through the streets of Chicago.

Zombie T-Rex. He rides one.

Dude.

In The Dresden Files, when you think of the hero’s companions, the one that immediately springs to mind is Karrin Murphy. But she’s hardly alone.

There’s Bob, the centuries-old ghost confined to a skull. There’s Waldo Butters the medical examiner. There’s ghost whisperer Mortimer Lindquist, the magical sword wielding Knights of the Cross (one of whom is an atheist), Father Mortimer, Dresden’s troubled apprentice Molly, his unusually large cat Mister, his powerful and intelligent dog Mouse, and, of course, Toot-Toot and Za-Lord’s Guard.

That last one? Toot-Toot is a pixie who leads a group of the wee folk. They often do jobs for Dresden–sometimes menial and sometimes more dangerous. They take pizza as payment and often refer to Dresden as “Za-Lord.

So I know you may be wondering how I can argue for a Dresden Files remake when the first couldn’t last.

I’ll be honest–I’ve never seen the SyFy series. I didn’t become a fan of the books until after the show was canceled.

But along with what I wrote earlier about the media landscape changing since 2007, I would also point out that SyFy–evidenced by the too-soon deaths of such promising series as Krypton, Deadly Class, and Happy!–tends to have a very itchy trigger finger when it comes to canceling.

So the good news is that Fox optioned The Dresden Files for a new TV series in 2018.

The bad news is that Fox optioned The Dresden Files for a new TV series in 2018.

In case you forgot, the following year marked Disney’s historic acquisition of Fox. Like with every acquisition of its type, lots of purging followed. As of yet, there’s no solid word whether or not our Dresden Files hopes survived it.

Regardless, if we have any hopes of seeing remake of The Dresden Files any time soon, it’s in Disney’s hands.