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WHEEL OF TIME officially optioned for television


Werthead

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I'm not a Jordan fan, gave up after book four because I could not handle the glacial pace. But damn, he deserves better than this. Here's to hoping the lawyers get this sorted out and the rights end up with a proper production company that can trim the dross and the cliches of the book giving us a taut story that will work well on TV.


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Not random for people that read ASOIAF. I'm sure that when Wired put in the comment they did it under the assumption that many WoT fans reading the article also read ASOIAF or at lease heard of it and would get the reference.



Random in the sense that anyone that doesn't read ASOIAF reaction would be " What is The Winds of Winter and why was it thrown in the last two sentences of this article?"


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Not random for people that read ASOIAF. I'm sure that when Wired put in the comment they did it under the assumption that many WoT fans reading the article also read ASOIAF or at lease heard of it and would get the reference.

Random in the sense that anyone that doesn't read ASOIAF reaction would be " What is The Winds of Winter and why was it thrown in the last two sentences of this article?"

Well, they ARE the two most well read fantasy epics of the past two decades.

There could be an article on Obama which ends, "But Putin, of course, goes hunting for his holidays", and someone wouldn't know who Putin is. The reference would still be appropriate.

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Well, they ARE the two most well read fantasy epics of the past two decades.

There could be an article on Obama which ends, "But Putin, of course, goes hunting for his holidays", and someone wouldn't know who Putin is. The reference would still be appropriate.

Well, I'm just gonna say we are both correct. I don't think this thread necessitates further discussion on whether or not the mention of WoW in the WoT pilot article was random or not. :wideeyed:

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Looks like Harriet Jordan had an Aes Sedai Foretelling moment:


QUESTION
Is there any plan for a movie series—anything along that line—and if so, what is the progress on that, if any?
HARRIET MCDOUGAL

The year after my husband's death, I signed a big, fat contract with Universal giving them the movie rights. They have the rights by contract to make a miniseries or movies of the Wheel of Time books, and they have seven years to get the first movie into theaters. And I've forgotten what the timing is on the miniseries. Somebody here in the room has seen a first draft of a movie script and said it is..."execrable" would perhaps be the correct word. Just no—no, no, no, no. I have not seen this, but the clock is ticking. I would...does anybody remember the Ralph Bakshi movie of Lord of the Rings?

AUDIENCE

Yeah...

HARRIET MCDOUGAL

Yeah, was that the pits or what? Just awful. And it didn't kill the Lord of the Rings, because now there's the wonderful Jackson. It may be that this will happen with the Wheel of Time. I don't control it; I do have a little....if they sat down to make a triple-X movie out of The Eye of the World, I think I would be able to stop them legally. I don't have...I can't say "You have just really messed up this character." They would say, "Thank you, we've consulted you, now go away." It's pretty much how it works. The chances are that it may be shelved and never made at all under this contract; I get the rights back if they do that, after seven years...which is so peculiarly Biblical. (laughter) I think about the Pharaohs and the kine, and the lean kine and the fat kine, every time I say that. You know, why do they do that? They're obsessed with [permits?] maybe.

So, chances are it will never be made—it will not be made under this contract. The next likely chance is that something awful will be made, and the third possibility is that they'll do it right and something wonderful will happen. I think it's about 50-50 that they're gonna shelve it. It's been very slow so far, and I don't think they'll make the deadline. But I hope they're all sitting out there going very broody about the Game of Thrones. Theyshould be, little dollar signs flicking through their eyeballs like saa. (laughter) Because this would be bigger, if they did it right. It would be wonderful if they did it right, but there's no way to even expect that. The wisdom among writers and publishers is, "Oh, you're offered money for a movie? Take the money and run, and never,never go to see what they do with it." But of course I will. (laughter)

Source: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=819#6

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That was terrible. And yet I kind of like the way Billy Zane was playing it. Still utterly terrible.

This is how I felt about it. The actor playing Lews was horrible, but I kind of liked how Zane looked as Ishamael and thought with good directing I could stand and even enjoy seeing him as a recurring character here and there in a quality WOT series.

All in all, more fun to watch than the other infomercials on at that time.

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Fuck that was bad, Billy Zane could be ok with a decent script and no beard. Such a scumbag move. Imagine if a decent anime studio got hold of the rights, or AMC/HBO? It would be bigger than GoT if done right.

Doubt it could ever be bigger than GoT, not enough tits and gore to please the masses

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Doubt it could ever be bigger than GoT, not enough tits and gore to please the masses

As for tits, they could always just increase the Seafolk's role. For gore...... well as far as I know GoT doesn't have thousands of people just explode in piles of guts and blood from an invisible power. I think WoT crushes GoT on that front.

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If you're going to make a shitty "pilot" that virtually no one will see (on purpose) just to extend your control of the rights, then why even go to the trouble of hiring Billy Zane* for a role until you're actually willing to commit to making the series? Hire a bunch of nobodies and then re-cast everyone later.



* Unless Billy Zane is so desperate for work that he took SAG scale for this. Which isn't out of the question - his filmography seems to mostly encompass films nobody has heard of for the past 15 years.


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I read the synopsis first, and that answers any question about why this exists. You don't make a WoT 'pilot' that's just the prologue if you really, seriously intend to do a series in the immediate future.

I thought the acting by both main leads was... variable, sometimes good, sometimes terrible. The intro/outro was awful. Overall, the thing was interesting but no more than that.

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