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WHEEL OF TIME officially optioned for television


Werthead

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LOL, true. I mean, it is not like there are no epic battles in WoT. Almost each book has some sort of epic battle. By the time you come to Tarmon Gaidon, you would have seen quite the number of battles - Eye of the World, Falme, Tear, Dumai Wells, fights with Seanchans, battle at Caemlyn, cleansing of saidin etc, etc, etc... I mean, those who love battles would find the adaptation a real treat.

I think this could be a big problem with an adaptation because doing some of those battles properly would be insanely expensive on a TV budget, some of them are far more complex than any of the battles GoT has done and they only seem to be able to afford a big battle on GoT every couple of seasons. For some of them you might be able to get away with only seeing a limited part of the battle but you can't really do that for The Last Battle.

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I guess the upcoming Shannara series might tell us something about the potential audience for a more 'traditional' Epic Fantasy adaptation.

 

I think the problem with an epic fantasy TV series is always likely to be the budget that you have to spend to have something that doesn't look cheap, which is probably why most non-GoT adaptations have either been miniseries (I thought Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was excellent but Wheel of Time would be an order of magnitude more complex to do) or relatively low budget (the BBC's Merlin got 5 seasons and good ratings in the UK but there were obvious limitations, I think every other week they had an action scene in the same ravine).

 

 

 

 

I think not being able to recognise parts of the second half of WoT in the show might not be a bad thing, necessarily. I think I could cope without there being an accurate adaptation of the hundreds of pages spent on Faile's captivity in the Shaido camp.

Shannara, isn't that the LOTR knockoff? I read half of the first book and I couldn't stand the so overt LOTRness of it that I put it away and never returned. As I'm a sucker for fantasy I will no doubt give the Shannara TV show a try, but I have low expectations personally, and I have significant doubts of its success unless it is produced for and aimed at the young-teen and pre-teen audience.

 

Merlin benefitted from being a famous wizard from British cultural legend. He has an anormous amount of awareness and good will from the non-fantasy population going in.

 

It is certainly the case that enormous swathes of WoT can be sliced right out, and you could probably adapt the whole story in the same amount of screen time as it would take to adapt a normal 5 or 6 book series. And I have a feeling a lot of people who read the series would be totally up for that sort of major surgery. But it's like the big cuts vs. small cuts thing. Making huge cuts (like Tom Bombadil and the scouring of the Shire) don't really affect the the main narrative or the motivations and personalities of the characters. Making small cuts screws things terribly and makes what you see on screen nothing like what you read in the book.

 

For all GoT turned to shit in the eyes of many (but not all, and perhaps not even most) book fans, including me, it is still highly popular and critically well received by the "unsullied". But it's got that praise and loyal following for the elements that are distinctly non-fantasy, which increasingly gain in prominence over and above the fantasy elements. All future fantasy TV series aimed at an adult audience will be compared to GoT, and if they are the standard epic fantasy fare they will be compared unfavourably. The Walking dead is similar. People love the Walking Dead for all the non-zombie elements. If it was standard zombie fare it would have been cancelled after one season.

 

I think the comparison to Legend of the Seeker upthread is apt. I think that show is more likely to be a sign of how other live action fantasy TV series (including WoT) will fare.

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I think this could be a big problem with an adaptation because doing some of those battles properly would be insanely expensive on a TV budget, some of them are far more complex than any of the battles GoT has done and they only seem to be able to afford a big battle on GoT every couple of seasons. For some of them you might be able to get away with only seeing a limited part of the battle but you can't really do that for The Last Battle.

That's why animated series might be the best bet. But not anime, closer in look to Star Wars The Clone Wars or Rebels. Personally I would prefer the wonderful animation gaming companies use for their cinematic trailers. I wonder how expensive would be to make a whole show with that kind of animation.

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Shannara, isn't that the LOTR knockoff? I read half of the first book and I couldn't stand the so overt LOTRness of it that I put it away and never returned. As I'm a sucker for fantasy I will no doubt give the Shannara TV show a try, but I have low expectations personally, and I have significant doubts of its success unless it is produced for and aimed at the young-teen and pre-teen audience.



The first book was a blatant knockoff but the second one and on much less so, and the second one is where they've started. It could yet turn out to be a failure, of course, but the comicon trailer looks [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crjkQHnDYu0]pretty great.[/url]

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That's why animated series might be the best bet. But not anime, closer in look to Star Wars The Clone Wars or Rebels. Personally I would prefer the wonderful animation gaming companies use for their cinematic trailers. I wonder how expensive would be to make a whole show with that kind of animation.

I can see Clone War animation style working pretty well. I'd prefer they do a live action, mainly because I have a hard time staying engaged with animated series, as much as I love well done movies or the occasional stellar episodes*. However, unless they gut much of it, I don't see how they can do a live adaptation.

 

I've mentioned this in the past and was shouted down, but I'll say it again: the Seanchen could easily be removed from the story, which would save thousands of pages from the adaptation. At the very least, have them show up in season 7 (in an arbitrary 10 season series). From beginning to end, they didn't add enough to the overall story to justify the time spent with them. Their army was needed at the end because of the scale Jordan set up (which was great for the books). Reduce the scale (which they'll do for TV or movies) and you reduce the need to infuse this massive invasion of cultures into Randland.

 

Normally, I love reading about culture clashes, but there is so much going on in WoT that this is just not needed here. It'd be reduced to superficial difference anyway. To be done well, you'd need a series devoted to the difference in cultural attitudes about the One Power.  

 

There is one thing I think we can all agree: the Quest for the Bowl of Winds has to go.

 

Two things: Faile's capture needs to be reduced to a single season or less arc.  Perrin can transition to a harder man faster. It's TV. 

 

 

 

 

*I tried watching Clone Wars and ended up just googling to find the best episodes and by the end only watched those.

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The two biggest headaches are the use of the One Power and the near-absolute use of outdoor filming, without the recurring sets that GoT was able to rely on from Day 1. There are some creative solutions to the latter, but the former would be a challenge. Not an insurmountable one though. There's been a massive breakthrough in cost-effective-but-awesome-looking CG in the last 1-2 years that we've seen in GoT and we can see in the trailers for Shannara, and WoT could benefit from that as well.

I didn't say ageless - which I don't think is too difficult (cast actresses aged 35-45 and talk about how old they are, even have 1-2 die of old age remembering something we know happened 120 years ago); I said ages. To be done properly, WOT would need more-or-less 10 seasons; whilst the central protagonists age all the way from 18 to 20.
GOT already suffers from this.
 
 

You don't need cut-offs. GoT certainly doesn't have them, and very few other serialised shows do. WoT's primary benefit of course is the fact it's done, so the hedging-their-bets that the writers have occasionally done on GoT because they don't know if a character is important or not would not be necessary on a WoT show. You could map the whole thing about before shooting a single frame of footage.

 I disagree. I disagree that GOT doesn't have cut-off points. I disagree that nothing else does, when anything else that isn't still being written well into the broadcast season has cut-off points.
On the mapping out the show in advance - I fully agree, as you could probably tell by the way I said that you'd need to map out the whole of the show beforehand. This would need to be done in ridiculous detail, before the show is green-lit for a first season, and would be a significant amount of time on a gamble. It would pretty much need to get to first-draft scripts for 2/3 of the whole, or there's simply no way the writers would keep pace with a season every year.
GOT already suffers from this.
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I can see Clone War animation style working pretty well. I'd prefer they do a live action, mainly because I have a hard time staying engaged with animated series, as much as I love well done movies or the occasional stellar episodes*. However, unless they gut much of it, I don't see how they can do a live adaptation.

 

I've mentioned this in the past and was shouted down, but I'll say it again: the Seanchen could easily be removed from the story, which would save thousands of pages from the adaptation. At the very least, have them show up in season 7 (in an arbitrary 10 season series). From beginning to end, they didn't add enough to the overall story to justify the time spent with them. Their army was needed at the end because of the scale Jordan set up (which was great for the books). Reduce the scale (which they'll do for TV or movies) and you reduce the need to infuse this massive invasion of cultures into Randland.

 

Normally, I love reading about culture clashes, but there is so much going on in WoT that this is just not needed here. It'd be reduced to superficial difference anyway. To be done well, you'd need a series devoted to the difference in cultural attitudes about the One Power.  

 

There is one thing I think we can all agree: the Quest for the Bowl of Winds has to go.

 

Two things: Faile's capture needs to be reduced to a single season or less arc.  Perrin can transition to a harder man faster. It's TV. 

 

I'm not sure what to say about the Seanchen. I don't think I would cut them out just because of the battle at Falme. There are a few things that happen there that are of significance: Rand v. Ishamael, Rand getting the heron brands, Lanfear's reveal, Bornhald's death which causes Perrin grief further down the line, the use of the Horn (though this may be not as important), and some good character development for Egwene.

At the very least I would reduce the Seanchan role until late in the show. But if they are to be cut until a later season, a whole lot of other stuff would have to be cut or re-arranged.

 

I wouldn't cut the Bowl of Winds either, just make it really short: one episode, they arrive in Ebou Dar, next episode, the fight with the golam (which is a must imo), the next they use the Bowl and leave, while the Seanchen invade. Cut all that stuff with Tyene, and Mat wasting his time drinking in taverns.

 

And yes, Faile's capture and rescue arc can be reduced to about 3 episodes.

 

A lot of the plots that take place in different books can be combined more effectively than in GOT. For example, since Perrin is not in book 5, books 4 and 5 should be combined in one season, to have all the major characters present. Same thing with books 8, 9, 10, and 11.

 

Blizzard or Assassin's Creed cinematic animation would be my preference for an animated series. Would it be more expensive than a live actions series done right?

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Generally, the audience is there. I don't have the numbers, but I am inclined that the series surpassed 100 million copies (The 44 million sold copies is from 2008.) As someone who comes from different corner of the world, I have to say that pre-GoT, Jordan was surpassing Martin in sales and popularity around here. Actually, Jordan, with Rowling, Tolkien, Pratchett and Gaiman, and perhaps Erickson whose books are constantly being bought.

 

 

Jordan's reported sales of 56 million are for North America only. Throw in the rest of the world and you are at 80-85 million. Nearer 100 million by now is certainly possible.

 

The Wheel of Time is the biggest-selling epic fantasy series since Tolkien, with sales that absolutely dwarf even the likes of Terry Brooks and match those of Terry Pratchett. If Martin can maintain his growth, he may pass WoT in another year or two (ASoIaF's sales figures have absolutely exploded from c. 5 million in 2010 to about 60 million now), but given that WoT's success has been achieved without any tie-in TV series or movie, it's certainly more impressive.

 

Erikson is highly obscure by comparison. Lifetime sales are somewhere around 2 million based on the last reliable information. Impressive, to be sure, but not at massive phenomenon levels. Rowling, with almost half a billion sales, leaves all of them in the dust, of course.

 

To be done properly, WOT would need more-or-less 10 seasons; whilst the central protagonists age all the way from 18 to 20.

 

You could get it done in six 16-episode seasons, or maybe eight 12-episode ones. You don't need to go to ten, which wouldn't happen anyway. Also, Mat, Rand and Mat are 19 when the story starts. Bring up Egwene and Elayne to the same age (I never really got why they were 2-3 years younger anyway) and you're pretty much good to go. Also, have the story take place over a longer period of time, exactly as GoT does compared to the books. In fact, it feels like 4-5 years pass in the books, not the 2-2.5 that really pass (and less than one year between Books 6 and 14!).

 

A lot of the plots that take place in different books can be combined more effectively than in GOT. For example, since Perrin is not in book 5, books 4 and 5 should be combined in one season, to have all the major characters present. Same thing with books 8, 9, 10, and 11.

 

Season 1: Books 1-2

Season 2: Books 3-4

Season 3: Books 5-6

Season 4: Books 7-9

Season 5: Books 10-12

Season 6: Books 13-14

 

Tight but doable, with some other caveats (12 and 13 really need to be chronologically combined and then split, the way Sanderson did it in the books wouldn't really work on TV). There's some things that happen off-screen I'd put on, like the massive naval battle between the Sea Folk and the Seanchan in Ebou Dar's harbour between Books 9 and 10, and there's rather more I'd cut altogether or have happen offscreen.

 

I have a whole ton more stuff here on how it could be done. I probably need to revisit this in more detail.

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  • 6 months later...

I just started reading this series (middle of book 2, as of now) .... because this messageboard has never steered me wrong....lol... I'm enjoying it so far... IMO, only Netflix or HBO could pull this off....maybe Starz, but not even Showtime... That said, even they would have to condense story, as is the way when adapting epic fantasy such as this...

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25 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

I just started reading this series (middle of book 2, as of now) .... because this messageboard has never steered me wrong....lol... I'm enjoying it so far... IMO, only Netflix or HBO could pull this off....maybe Starz, but not even Showtime... That said, even they would have to condense story, as is the way when adapting epic fantasy such as this...

Depending on who you talk to the series goes downhill at either book 7, 8 or 9. Book 10 and the books written by Brandon Sanderson are definitely a big drop in quality. It was necessary, obviously, to get someone to finish the series but qualitatively it was doomed as soon as it was known RJ would not live to see his work completed.

I feel like the story could have been wound up in 10 parts. At the end of book 7 it felt like three books would wrap it up. But Jordan seemed to meander too much and go too far away from the main plot.

22 hours ago, voldemormont said:

Disappointed dude didn't turn into a mountain.

They should run an animated series, in the same style as Samuri Jack 

I agree, and animated series would be the way to go. All the sfx that would be needed to make a live action series look and feel right would be far too much production budget. GoT has way less demand on sfx and it's a very expensive production, so expensive that they had to gimp the show right from the start by limiting it to 10 episodes per season. 

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Depending on who you talk to the series goes downhill at either book 7, 8 or 9. Book 10 and the books written by Brandon Sanderson are definitely a big drop in quality. It was necessary, obviously, to get someone to finish the series but qualitatively it was doomed as soon as it was known RJ would not live to see his work completed.

I feel like the story could have been wound up in 10 parts. At the end of book 7 it felt like three books would wrap it up. But Jordan seemed to meander too much and go too far away from the main plot.

I agree, and animated series would be the way to go. All the sfx that would be needed to make a live action series look and feel right would be far too much production budget. GoT has way less demand on sfx and it's a very expensive production, so expensive that they had to gimp the show right from the start by limiting it to 10 episodes per season. 

HBO doesn't really do long seasons though. Most are 8-12 episodes for all of their series.

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12 minutes ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

HBO doesn't really do long seasons though. Most are 8-12 episodes for all of their series.

Yes, but a number of contemporaneous HBO productions notably got 12 ep seasons. And the reason given for 10 eps for GoT was cost.

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I just started reading this series (middle of book 2, as of now) .... because this messageboard has never steered me wrong....lol... I'm enjoying it so far... IMO, only Netflix or HBO could pull this off....maybe Starz, but not even Showtime... That said, even they would have to condense story, as is the way when adapting epic fantasy such as this...

Book 10 is universally regarded as the weakest, and Books 8 and 9 have some issues. Book 11 sees a rise in quality again and the concluding three by Sanderson are pretty good, hampered by a few technical and structural issues which are mostly ignorable. The notion that Sanderson's books are "defnitely a big drop in quality" is very much debatable. Much more widespread is the belief that Jordan would have easily also taken 3, if not another 5 or more, books to wrap things up after 11 and Sanderson brought much-needed focus that Jordan lacked in the 8-11 period (although 11 shows some signs of it coming back, but still not decisively).

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HBO doesn't really do long seasons though. Most are 8-12 episodes for all of their series.

HBO wouldn't touch WoT until GoT was completed and had been for a few years. I also suspect they'd be interested in a show more different in tone than WoT is to GoT.

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And the reason given for 10 eps for GoT was cost.

It was a mixture of cost vs. time. To get the 10 episodes made per season now, the producers have to start working on the next season in December, whilst the previous season is still being edited and before it airs. They only get 2 weeks off per year. To get 12 scripts done in time, they'd need more writers or they'd need to reduce filming locations to something more manageable.

My personal belief is that Netflix or Amazon is the way to got with WoT. They'd clearly be interested in a GoT style show and they're the only people around with the money and time commitment to go one better even than HBO.

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WoT doesn't make sense for television.  Too expensive, not enough broad appeal.  GoT is a soap opera dressed up in swords and dragons. WoT is much more about the magic and battles and stuff.

I think most people believe that WoT is way more soapy than GoT is. The characters spend a lot of time agonising over their love lives, career choices and friendship issues even whilst the fate of the world is at stake. Certainly WoT I think has more broad appeal than GoT, in that it's less gory and has less emphasis on sex. You could certainly market it to a larger audience. Whether it would work or not is another issue.

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8 hours ago, Werthead said:

It was a mixture of cost vs. time. To get the 10 episodes made per season now, the producers have to start working on the next season in December, whilst the previous season is still being edited and before it airs. They only get 2 weeks off per year. To get 12 scripts done in time, they'd need more writers or they'd need to reduce filming locations to something more manageable.

Time is what you use when you can't use money. So in the end time reasons for only doing 10 is still about cost. If, for example, you only have 2 filming crew and 4 locations in which to film then clearly time is going to hit you. But if you add a 3rd filming crew, thus spending more money, then you are able to do more in less time.

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2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Time is what you use when you can't use money. So in the end time reasons for only doing 10 is still about cost. If, for example, you only have 2 filming crew and 4 locations in which to film then clearly time is going to hit you. But if you add a 3rd filming crew, thus spending more money, then you are able to do more in less time.

They had 3 filming crews this year.

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37 minutes ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

They had 3 filming crews this year.

That was an example. I have no idea of the details of what time constraints they have, but really it comes down to how many people you put on the job, which comes down to money. I would be surprised if the cast was a time limiting factor in 10 vs 12 eps. But it's possible and they are more or less the only people that can't have another team brought in to speed up the process.

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12 hours ago, Werthead said:

Certainly WoT I think has more broad appeal than GoT, in that it's less gory and has less emphasis on sex. You could certainly market it to a larger audience. Whether it would work or not is another issue.

It certainly has less sex, although it would be easy enough for a show to add that in if wanted.  And as for gore, well realistic gore maybe I could see GoT having more than WoT; Dumai's Wells has more gore than the entirety of ASOIAF though.

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