The televised version took a long time to come to fruition. There was talk of movies or TV shows back in the '70s and '80s, Brooks said, but special effects were too primitive and expensive, and TV was disinclined to tell long stories, preferring episodic series in which each entry had a clear beginning, middle and end. MTV picked up the show only after it had been pitched to a dozen networks. Brooks wasn't sure the cable channel was the best spot for the series but was convinced by the network's commitment to the project and by Favreau and the writing team, who assured him MTV was a smart play.

The story goes something like this: Amberle Elessedil is an elven princess who becomes one of the Chosen, a group of elves who protect an ancient tree called the Ellcrys. As long as the Ellcrys thrives, demons are locked away in the Forbidding … but now the tree is dying. Each leaf that falls releases another demon into the world, and it falls to Amberle, the half-elf Wil Ohmsford (the last of the Shannara bloodline), the thief Eretria and the druid Allanon to go on a quest to try to restore the tree. There are other subplots and wrinkles to the story (Ohmsford has magical elfstones which can destroy demons, for example, and Allanon is 300 years old), but this is a simple summary of the tale.

Brooks said he is thrilled with the casting, which includes genre staple John Rhys-Davies as the elven king, Manu Bennett as Allanon, Austin Butler as Ohmsford and Ivana Baquero as Eretria.

"(Actress) Poppy Drayton will always be Amberle for me,” Brooks said. “Whenever I think of her now, she's going to look and act just like Poppy.”