Variety reports that Sony Pictures Television will produce the TV adaptation of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. The news comes just about a year after Harriet McDougal, wife of the late author, announced that the TV rights for the 14-book epic fantasy series had been optioned by a major studio. Sony will produce with Red Eagle Entertainment and Radar Pictures.
The series has also set a showrunner: Rafe Judkins, who has written for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Chuck, and Hemlock Grove, will write and executive produce. Other executive producers include Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon (from Red Eagle), Ted Field and Mike Weber (from Radar), and Darren Lemke. Harriet McDougal will also serve as consulting producer.
Leigh Butler, who knows her movies and knows her Wheel of Time, has some casting ideas for Rand, Egwene, Moiraine, and the lot!
I wish them well because they have a whole lot of material to sort through. I mean, I get it: everyone is scrambling to find the next “Game of Thrones”. But, this is much more complicated even than the world of Westeros and, quite frankly, a lot of the Wheel-verse doesn’t make sense, in my opinion. Maybe the show runners will turn this into something great but I still wouldn’t see it. I read five Wheel books (maybe six) and I just gave up. It started to get insipid.
Sony. The folks that bungle Spiderman. Repeatedly.
This is going to be about casting and world building. If Judkins can wrap his head around what attracts the fandom to the series and gets that right, then there may be some hope.
Woof™.
Good to see Lan Mandragoran getting an executive producer job on this. He knows his way around the WoT world.
Well, hopefully they can do better than “Winter Dragon” with Billy Zane and Max Ryan.
With Sony and Rafe on this I have to tone down my sheer joy of possibly seeing this in TV and remain very cautiously optimistic. WoT isn’t something that should be rushed in an effort to ride the tide of successes like GoT. A well produced and casted WoT will capture interest regardless of current trends so this needs to be done right. I doubt the WoT will ever get another shot if this blows.
LOL listen to your friend Billy Zane, he’s a cool dude…
Anyway…I don’t know what to think as there have been so many false starts anyway. It could be good (although no matter what it’s going to have to be very different from the books).
I do not see how this can be a live action TV series. Some of the books, if fully adapted, would be multiple seasons in of themselves. There may have to be entire plot lines not included. (I am looking at you, PLOD).
Ultimately, I think at some point, the TV show will diverge from what actually occurs in the books for a while. In the end, the series will then come back to mirror the last book.
If the WoT series does go forward and the TV execs keep it on until all the books are adapted, which will happen first: the completion of the WoT series or GRRM completing the books in his series.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
Given the reporting quality, I have concerns.
@7 Which PLOD?
I’d bet the WOT TV series would finish before aSoIaF.
I shall remain cautiously hopeful… with the emphasis on “cautiously.” Someone who really knows their stuff and understands fantasy & it’s fandom could trim it down and still tell the essential story in a well-made series.I don’t know enough about the Names to guess whether they’re getting the right folks, so I’ll just keep hoping until they prove me wrong.
There is too much source material. They will have to be careful about what they compromise. At least they had the sense not to try to cram “Eye of the World” into a movie.
I don’t know enough of the ins and outs of the industry to make a judgement now. I am just hopeful and willing this to be well done and successful. It can be an utter garbage or a triumph.
@9 There is only one PLOD, Perrin goes to get Massema for Rand, and very slowly fails to accomplish the task. Now let us never speak of the PLOD again.
As for the show, I’d love to see it happen, but Red Eagle is still involved and now Sony too. This ain’t happening.
Sony TV are a different company to Sony Pictures. Sony TV are the company that made Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Justified, The Shield, Preacher and The Shield. They have quite an impressive legacy.
Red Eagle are almost certainly involved only as Producers In Name Only, part of the deal which resolved the 2015 court case as painlessly as possible: Red Eagle get a credit and some nominal cash thrown their way but will almost certainly not be involved beyond that. They’re also not writers or people with TV experience. Sony Television will actually make the show with a writing team led by Rafe Judkins. All previously-existing scripts will be mined for ideas and then thrown out to make room for new material.
FANGIRLSCREAMS
Rafe Judkins was on Survivor in 2005. Someone from one of my favorite shows adapting one of my favorite book series. How random.
Okay. What needs to happen is the books must be ignored in terms of establishing seasons. Instead, the entirety of the series needs to be broken down into events. The earlier books were pretty linear, but later in the series we had events that were out of sync. The utmost important thing to do is establish a chronological order of all events. Otherwise, things will get really confusing later on in the series when it should all be starting to make solid sense.
This is not going to be an easy show to shoot, and I do not envy any of the producers and crew their tasks of keeping this all together.
I agree with G.B. Jackson. It is difficult to follow the timeline in the later books. It has taken me several readings of the entire series to get a good grasp on the timeline. If done well, this could be a 14 year saga that dwarfs GoT. If done poorly, legions of fans will be disappointed.
I hope it doesn’t go the way of the Sword of Truth TV series. I couldn’t even watch it and I’m not that picky with my TV stuff.
Still, I’m looking forward to at least watching the first episode. :)
Legend of the Seeker
The Shannara Chronicles
The Sword of Truth
I hope they do this one right. TV is famous for using cheap effects which, I think, causes viewers to lose interest because of the lack of realism. They need to have a big budget and use it if they want the audience to engage.
This could work if they approached it as a “Cinematic Universe” and had multiple concurrent shows. Too many characters for one show to stay focused. Occasionally the shows come together for an “event” episode(s). The one thing they absolutely should NOT do is start the show like the LOTR’s movies with a big prologue overview. Keep it small and the stories work really well for TV. Going big only works if the small stories have built to it. Case and point, the last episode of season 6 GoT.
If they try and put this on network TV it will fail. Guaranteed 100%. Make it Amazon, Hulu, or Netflix.
My fingers and toes are crossed in anticipation of seeing my all time favorite series come to life. Just keep Red Eagle a silent partner and away from production.
I remember when I was just a young lad and I heard tale of my [at that time] favorite series Ender’s Game being made into a movie. I was thrilled! 15 actual years later the movie hit the big screen. It sucked. The end.
#FeelingSkeptical
Somewhere (Reddit?) I read that Rafe is a big WoT fan. This gives me hope.
I don’t understand why anyone would go with TV instead of movies. I have yet to see any TV series based on either books or historical reality that does a decent job of translating to the small screen. _Rome_ was especially bad, and _Game of Thrones_ is just dragged out at this point. _The Tudors_ was bad because everything was shoved into a condensed time frame. These will always be problems with TV adaptions. Is it too late to change it?
Even as I remain cautiously optimistic that they won’t eff this up, I can’t say I even begin to grasp how they’re going to parse 20+ years — 15 novels, most 600 – 800 pages long — of somewhat dense mythology into tv. Fortunately, they’re not paying me to figure it out. Hopefully the people they are paying can, because otherwise, the margin for error is going to be pretty large. But, boy, if they manage to nail it, how great would it be to see many of the characters brought to life on screen.
Please, please, please Sony reference the other fantasy shows that failed and don’t do what they did.
Such as don’t air it on Fox! They cancel too many good shows before they get started.
Surprisingly, some of the longer running (4 or 5 seasons) fantasy shows that I can think of (Hercules or Xena) had certain corny, humor elements and didn’t take themselves so seriously. I wonder if that is the key?!?
I know I’m a fan of fantasy and will watch, but it needs to be done right.
P.S. I have to admit I read the first three books and the last three books and didn’t feel like I missed much of the Wheel of Time story. That may be a clue that Sony should consider a more “tight” story than this behemoth of a telling to turn into a TV show.
Get the Shadowspawn right. That’s all I ask.
I’ll probably be disappointed.
Because movies are short stories at best; that’s all you have time for. Whole novels tend to have too much complexity to fit even in 3 hours; you have to distill it down to its essence which typically means dropping large parts of it on the floor.
To be sure, WoT does have a lot of material that can be dropped on the floor with no ill effect (…sorry but RJ was desperately in need of a strong editor later in the series…), but there are still a lot of books there
Yes. Get the Shadowspawn right…
No cheap effects
I already have my doubts. I realize that WoT doesn’t have the profanity or nudity/sex plot lines like GoT, but I am extremely disappointed that this isn’t a Netflix exclusive like Stranger Things or is being done on HBO or Starz like GoT. Winter Dragon was embarrassing and RJ had to have rolled in his grave. Harriet McDougal, may she live forever, needs to have the final hand on the reins regarding this. I’m a little excited, but another hope is that they don’t recast Billy Zane as BA, Ish, Moridin. It would all be ruined from the start. Please let this bloody be good or I’ll goat headed trolloc.
@26, Dude, Rome was awesome.
An HBO or Showtime series can have similar effects and acting to a movie, but be 10-50 times longer (True Blood). That said, a series of movies can work well too (Harry Potter). Personally, I think WoT would work best as an anime-style animated series. One with a serious feel, like Berserk or Samurai X. One with about 1500 episodes.
I would love to see a WoT tv series. BUT, it has to be cast properly; it has to be condensed properly; and it has to have a decent budget to pull off the special effects needed to make all the “magic” work. That is asking a lot, but I will watch whatever they manage to do, because I love WoT so much and will always be grateful that I stumbled across the first book at Sam’s Club all those many years ago! Good luck with this project. I have my fingers crossed and a prayer in my heart and mind that it happens.
I read the whole series I think it will be awesome if they can stay with the books or at least close. It will require a lot of CGI to do this but with what’s out there it should be possible can’t wait to see how it develops thanks for the heads up. I will need to go back and reread the series
It sounds like they’re under a good television company and have some solid talent so far. That’s a good sign, as it will take an excellent team to get this done, and some amazing scriptwriters who can condense and translate WoT to television. It’s promising that Harriet is explicitly on the team too, although I think how seriously Sony TV takes that role will heavily influence their likelihood of getting a series that core fans will enjoy.
Have to agree with posters above who’ve noted that re-pacing the series (especially at the end) and trying to keep things a little more chronological would be a good idea, and that the books wouldn’t make good season markers, unlike other series derived from novels. I absolutely think the first thing the writing team is going to need to do is to go through the books and establish somewhere between 3 and 7 major sets of events (how many you do depends on how ambitious you are, honestly most TV shows are lucky to get three seasons with cancellations after 1 or 2 being quite common, but if you’re gunning for WoT you’re hopefully planning on getting at least 5 seasons in) that would correspond to TV seasons, and then go through and subdivide each of them into plots.
I do hope that if this looks to be coming to fruition it’s aired on the right network and at a solid timeslot, and with a mind to online streaming services, too, where the SFF audience is gravitating in the long run. WoT could absolutely be the next GoT on TV, which would be amazing.
It will definitely be interesting to see if they’ll give the series the VFX budget it will need to do its storytelling effectively.
This is much, much preferable to a movie IMO. There’s no way you could reach a good stopping point for WoT with a feature film.
My opinion is in line with and a combination of a bunch of opinions already here.
First, casting is stupid important. I can’t tell you how wrong everything will go if the characteristics of those they choose don’t fit the characters they will try and emulate. In the beginning I imagine they’ll get it all wrong at first until they start to “become” the characters. Mat is going to be hard. Nynaeve is going to make or break the series. Moraine Rand Egwene and Perrin will be easy acts. Fain will be pretty freaking important if they get him wrong. And of course Ba’alazamon/Moridin (did I just spell that wrong again?) better be freaking Darth Vader.
Condensing the books will be easier than I think many worry about. So much of the books were spent describing the remaining bark on wind tortured trees nobbiness and things of the like. Which will simply give the set designers and cinematographers a broad reference to work with as if Jordan had it in mind all along. This will essentially kill about 40 percent of each book except of course the final 4 books and especially the three final books which are so packed with action and setting up that action, that there was hardly time to be overly descriptive.
Budget will be important for two make or break reasons. Quality actors and Special Effects/Set and Costume design. These will determine the commitment Sony has for the Series. If they go all out it will be all kinds of win. They don’t necessarily need to bleed the bank on big names they just need good actors. They do need to spend mad money on the Power and all its of intricacies. If the CGI isn’t up to snuff the whole series WILL crater. I remember early Star Trek Next Gen compared to mid way through the series. Night and day differences. But that was a different scenario because of a 20 year gap in advancement in Special Effects. The weaves alone are going to make or break the series.
My two cents…. Z
I think I mentioned this on the previous thread about casting/adapting WOT, but one thing they need to do is change how it starts. In a book you can acknowledge the trope that RJ was playing with, but in a filmed version they can’t make it start exactly like LotR. It’ll die in the pilot to cries of “rip off of lotr!!” and no one will watch after that. Maybe start in Baerlon (and make Baerlon not at all like the Prancing Pony), and flashback to Emond’s Field. I think starting it with a party, and “orcs/nazgul” and essentially “Keep it secret, keep it safe” is just asking for mockery and cancellation. Shannara Chronicles tried to get out from under seeming derivitative by pushing the “Dystopian Earth” aspect early, and WoT/EotW is going to have to do something similar.
Ellisande: They should start with New Spring. When I recommended the series to a friend she said it really helped get her hooked, and it avoids immediate LotR comparisons.
The intricacy of the plotline, combined with a cast of thousands, big landscapes, big effects, and BIG world building will be important if they are going to do it right. In fact, they may need to focus more on the beginning of the story to lay the groundwork for what is to come later, and by the beginning, I mean going back to the Breaking, New Spring, etc. before even attempting the Eye of the World. The drawback to shows like these is that the readers of the series will inherently understand what they are seeing on the screen, because they will have read the books. People that haven’t read the story will need to have the story told for them visually, that is a hard approach to take. I am 45 now, and when I started reading the stories I was the age of the main characters. That’s how long it took for the story to be completed. Before each new novel came out, I would reread the entire series to that point(I am sure many other people have done the same) always finding new things I had missed the first time. The devil is in the details, and if the writers cannot grasp that fact, no one should attempt this project. This is going to take money, and a LOT of it to do it right, if they get cheap, or bored, or make any of the multitude of mistakes on other sci-fi/fantasy series….the damage would be saddening. I sincerely hope they understand that. (I wouldn’t mind playing Basil Gill, the innkeeper btw. where do I audition?)
I read four or five of the Wheel of Time books before I decided it was a Waste of Time. The story just turned into female characters endlessly griping about the male characters.
I’m not sure this is a good idea, with the exception of Game of Thrones, taking a best selling fantasy series to television can be bad, like Shanara Chronicles . Mercedes Lackey was angry with the mini series Tales of Earthsea. I’ll give it a chance but I hope it’s not as bad as the awful adaption of Wizard of Oz that was on NBC recently
This is exciting, I will be waiting! But PLEASE take a LOT of lessons from the Outlander series! The author, Diana Gabaldon, has been very involved in the production and it shows. Hopefully the ones who finished Robert Jordan’s work will have the same kind of input! Also please PLEASE take a lesson from the Shannara Chronicles!! Although I watched the first season and will watch again (if it ever comes back!!), I was VERY disappointed in how much Terry Brooks has caved on the content of this adaptation! Both series were very popular, as has been the WoT series. They are successful book series for a reason. Outlander shows that the story line can be followed without including every chapter of an 800+ page book and still stay true to the story that people love. Now, if there’s just some way you can make it so we don’t have to wait so long for it to start, and wait so long between seasons!!
First call Brandon Sanderson, pay him whatever he wants and chisel what he tells you in stone. You now have a chance. Lock the important cast down in chains, that continuity is crucial. this will need to span a dozen years and a very long season every year. Anyone, actor or studio who is not up for 20 shows a year for that long needs to hang it up now or have a black mark that will not wash off for a generation. The bar is very high for epic fantasy at this point, get over it or fail. There will be no “it was not bad”. Go ahead and call Jason Momoa now for Lan’s part. As far as timeline goes, Iron hot, strike, pilot needs to be ready in under two years.
I really, really hope this turns out well. I was so disappointed in Shannara. Instead of telling the story, which was really good (you can tell by the way they still sell and they want to make a TV show out of it), they instead changed it to make it a PC teen-pop atrocity. I read where they quoted to actress playing Amberle as wanting to portray the character as stronger. If she’d bothered to read the book, she’d have seen that the character wasn’t weak. She was scared and grew more confident and stronger as the book progressed. They made Will an idiot that had to be saved by the girls all the time. While there is no doubt that Eretria is competent, Will was chosen as the guardian and he made calls and pulled the group through a lot of the time. Also, while Allanon was cool. It completely changed his character. He was fairly quite, yet commanding, with occasional outburst of rage. That’s not how he was portrayed on the show. It just felt like a teen drama.
I agree with some of the other posters. A large amount of material can be dropped, because it’s just description. Either of place or person, hundreds of pages are dedicated to a description that can quickly and easily be shown on screen. As for the rest, they can cut out several minor story lines. They just need to keep in mind where the characters are starting from and where they’re going. They need to give them room to grow. They need to leave the flaws in, whether or not they think they’ll offend someone. Because the truth is, you’re always going to offend someone. So stay true to the story that has sold millions of copies instead of what you think people want. Don’t listen to PC Principle.
The beginning is a rip off of LotR. Sheesh. So is LotR a rip-off of the thousands of stories that had a young hero get chased from his village at the beginning of the tale throughout history? It’s an old beginning that has been used many times. And the idea that they would need to do something to give the WoT a “hook” like the idiots that screwed up Shanara is ridiculous. Here’s the deal: The closer they stay to the source material the better the chance of making something good. The more they wander off into idiocy the more likely they waste every one’s time with another flop. (I like the suggestion of Brandon Sanderson being involved. That is one person who is an authority on understanding the WoT Universe.
I’m somewhat concerned that the writer’s room seems to be entirely made up of men (besides, of course, Harriet’s input).
Specifically since transforming the gender-related concerns from the book (i.e., a fundamentally gendered magic system, a conception of sexes as ‘separate or complementary but equal’, and a world filled with sexism/bottom smacking/braid pulling) to the screen would probably need some nuanced discussion. Obviously, I look forward to this and hope it turns out well, but I am also a bit skeptical upfront. If the show wants to tackle these issues head-on, it’s going to need more diverse input.
I have little faith that any adaptation of the WOT will survive the PC and “Fierce Woman” test. GOT has all the dominant characters as female now with the males diminished (or dead) and left to the shadows. Jon Snow, arguably the only alpha male left, fumbled the big battle and had to be saved by Sansa. Now she is giving Littlefinger all sorts of side glances to foretell her taking the reins this upcoming season. You think Jon will win the battle of wills when he meets Daenerys? Hah!! You think the WOT TV series will be different? If they could, they will change Rand into Randi.
If you don’t like fierce women why are you even reading Wheel of Time? Most of the main characters are women to start with; aside from Rand/Mat/Perrin who start the story off, we end up also spending a lot of time focusing on Egwene, Moiraine, Nyneave, Elayne, Aviendha…plus characters like Faile, Min, Siuan, Elaida, etc that maybe aren’t ‘main’ characters but are pretty important.
Also, huge side-eye at all the consternation that the dominant characters in a given point of time happen to be mostly female. I guess that must be very hard for you.
Ugh. I can’t believe the direction this comment thread just took. Gender arguments? Seriously? Why can’t people just accept a great story for what it is? WOT is basically a distillation of pretty much every major fantasy epic out there that led up to its creation. Star Wars, Dune, LOTR, the Arthurian saga, with 17th/18th century material culture thrown in and a healthy taste of the Renaissance as well. Jordan mixes and matches whole peoples and technologies that have existed throughout human history, and puts his own spin on them. One of the major things that this series does do, is that it explores differences in perception in the way that men and women perceive the world around them, as well as each other, but every single character is an individual, or an exception to the stereotypical rule. Basically every character has their own foil, and there is always a bigger fish. To lump men or women into one category or another is to take a simplistic, intellectually dishonest course through life. Who cares whether or not a plotline follows, “male” or “female” characters more or less, or whether or not some characters get more screen time than others? Life is not black and white, true or false, right or wrong, male or female. Many times life is a complex dance between all of these things and much more colorful because of the compromises that people make. Dominance when discussing the WoT? One of the overriding themes of these stories is that every character must surrender first, before mastering that which gives them power. “Nosce te ipsum.”
I’ve been a fan since 1991 when I picked up the paperback Eye of the World at the Miami Airport and was fortunate to be in Raleigh NC to see both Harriett and Brandon for the last book tour. With all adapted films or shows, there will always be something left out or changed…and WOT will be no exception. I’m just thrilled that something will be coming to a visual representation of the world Robert Jordan created. We all have our own visuals of each character’s characteristics and how things like channelling should be addressed, but I’m extremely confident that Harriet will have a tremendous amount of input into this production and that will be good enough for me. Knowing how Robert Jordan felt about this medium, I dont believe she would have gone this route unless she had some form of creative control. What I’m more curious about is the aging of characters. The whole series lasted just a handful of years and to complete this series, it will take time. I’m wondering if they are considering shooting numerous seasons at one time similar to LOTR trilogies.
I picked up Eye of the World on a whim. As I usually did back then, I saw the artwork on the front cover, picked it up, read the back cover looked at the front cover again and put it with the other two or three books I had in my hand. After browsing the book store for another hour or so I had another 10 books in my hands. But I could only buy three. I weighed them, literally (because I was putting them in my backpack which is heavy enough as it is) and played two out of three elimination coin flips to choose the three I bought. I read it first and went back and bought the Great Hunt immediately afterwards. I was hooked from then on.
During all my time reading the series until I discovered Leigh Butlers re-read, I never thought about the whole battle of the sexes relationships in books in general or in the Wheel of Time. Books to me were a story. That’s it. I live in that world for however long I have time in it and that’s that. My only requirement is for me to be able to live in it and if I can’t, it’s not a good story. The Wheel of Time is EASY to live in. So much so that when I leave it at the end of the book, there’s a profound loss. But there was always the next book to look forward to. And when that was finally not possible to look forward to, well… I cried. I loved the ending. It ended well and that may have something to do with it. Ending with lives still moving along, a continuing story left to your own imaginings. I have not since read it again. Sort of saving it for a time where I can just take my time and live there everyday for however long I’d like.
Now with a show coming, I will likely not read the books at all. I know enough having read the books over and over numerous times, too many to count. And so I will give it it’s chance and live in it if possible, via TV. I think if they choose the main characters well, with relative unknowns and have more established actors occupying secondary roles, it should do well. It should, given the depths of Jordan’s descriptive ability, be easy to visualize and shrink. Mainly because most of the sets are explained so thoroughly. Special Effects will of course be important. Set, costumes, location…they have to get all of that right. The books are sooooo vast, that it will get difficult and tricky at times with all of the races and styles native to regions and cities. But I’m hopeful. It will be much more difficult than Game of The, but I am hopeful.
OMG. WOT is my second favorite Fantasy series after LOTR. Sony please do this! Please do it right! I think you have 20 seasons if they really wanted to. 5 years of none stop production should be able to complete all of the seasons. I sure would be wonderful if they could do it right.
Just one tip of advice i was thinking about. Please let me know if you agree. Rand and the other guys a 19- 20 years old. By the end of the books they are 20- 21. Although it is a long ads series and would be on tv for a while, it is worth noting that in the books rand no longer looks like a child but like a man. Same with all the others. So even if you casted 18 year olds and 14 years later when they are 32 it is not unlikely that it would be odd. The characters literally are said to have matured unnaturally fast. So i think it is quite plausable for then to not even worry about that time gap. RJ took care of that problem himself.
19- 20 to 21- 22** my bad
I think Sean Bean should play either Lan Madragoran or Ba’alzamon he’s a good actir and has plenty of experience with fantasy roles (even if his character dies in the first fight/episode) but it would still be great to see him un one of those roles
I concur with those worried about the ability of TV to do WoT justice. (Compare Terry Goodkinds SWORD of TRUTH series to the -in my opinion- disaster, SEEKER TV Series. In that series they should have not insulted the characters, renamed them and kept the premise. I could never wrap my head around the difference between TV and Book.)
If kept strictly to the WoT books and its chronology this could be the longest running series in history. In my opinion that is the only way this story can be produced without ripping the heart out of the entire story. The idea of multi-series shows with appropriate crossover episodes would be the only way to tell the story in under ten or fifteen seasons
Is it just me being impatient, or does anyone else think Apr 20th – Sept 4th is long enough for us to wait for Sony to say something additional beyond Rafe Judkins being named showrunner. I mean, how about, “Things progress on the WoT project.” Even just that. Something to let us know that they didn’t just buy the rights and then decide to kill it.
It COULD be done well, if they allocated 20 or 30 seasons to it….
WoT totals a bit over 4 million words. ( http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Statistical_analysis#Full-Series_Unique_POV_Breakdown )
As an audiobook at 100 words per minute, that’d be 40,000 minutes. That’d be (Oh, you’re gonna LOVE this!):
666.666666666….
hours, or about 15 full work weeks.
At 20 hours per season for a the video that’d be… about 33 years’ worth of showtime!
– MJM, who looks forward to watching it in a nursing home someday far in the future…
When does the show starts…. Im a big fan and I’ve been looking all over and its a no show how disappointing…..
This page has the latest information I’ve seen.
Ok, so I just want to address 2 things that I think a lot of people in this thread don’t seem to understand about adaptations (which is fine, many don’t either).
1. A strict page for page adherence to the books is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE. There are some things that you can do or describe in a book that simply DO NOT TRANSLATE to a visual medium. There will have to be changes made. Remember an adaptation is “(Director’s Name)’s representation of X series,” not simply “X series.”
2. The idea that you will need multiple seasons to tackle one book is just….I’m sorry…it’s just stupid. Yes these books are thick with 2 cs, but there are instances in novels where something needs to be described in paragraphs or pages that can be shown on a screen in about a minute or less. This chops the books down much more then one might think, and you could theoretically devote just one season, and knock out EotW-TDR. Yes the books get MUCH larger and more complicated as the series progresses, but if they chop the fat, go in chronological order, the show, theoretically, COULD be done in about 8 or 9 seasons, perhaps even less, while still remaining true to the heart of the books.
There’s my two cents, anyway: the pros and cons of adaptation. It’s a double edged sword (unlike apparently every sword in WoT. I’m beginning to think RJ had a katana obsession)
61. Riley
Agreed!
While the books are dense and big, Jordan was particularly descriptive and wordy in doing so. About half of each book could be eviscerated with merely the scenes being visually shown. I think of what can’t be done will be small in number. The most difficult illusion to show will be the flows of the power. The effects of the power will be easy. Everything else is set design. Reasonably this series will be no longer than 9 seasons. Books 6,7 and 8 can be shrunk almost into one season. And truth be told, books 1 and 2 could be done in the very first season. Removing Jordans penchant for explaining the same thing over and over again in the first 5 books can strip a lot of fat away as well.
I think with the later books, once the characters’ paths diverge for many books, if you do a season for each character, that would work, then have them meet up for the final season or two with the last battle as an effective strategy to fix the chronology difficulties of the later 1/3 of the series.
One thing you need to remember Is that probably only 30% is dialogue add 10% fot action and I agree it can be done in eight or nine seasons, by which time I will be a drooling idiot in an old folks home (yes I hear ya, He’s probably a drooling idiot all ready, My wife would disagree -in public- but there you are.
Can’t wait the reaper is getting closer