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WHEEL OF TIME officially optioned for television


Werthead

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3 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Well, the incest is a pretty major driver of the plot, so it has an actual purpose. And who's NOT judging that? Are there a big contingent of people out there defending their love and calling it beautiful? We're supposed to think it's creepy. We've just become accustomed to it. The harem serves no real purpose. You can keep the Elayne/Avi relationship. In fact, I would be upset if they didn't because as strange as it is, it's refreshing to not see it devolve into just jealousy and competition. Keep all the aspects of the female relationships and how their love for Rand affects them, but just don't have them all agree to share him because ick. In the books it's all too clean and happy and yay - Rand gets to sleep with all of them! It should be more messy than that.

Trust me, I was waiting to see why the harem was relevant to the plot and expecting some sort of payoff. Since it never came, it's a lot harder to swallow.

Fair enough. I do agree that them agreeing to all share him was iffy as fuck. My point with the incest thing was not that it wasn't iffy, but that it barely generates comment anymore, let alone controversy.

As for it serving a purpose... I suppose one could argue that those bonds all helped Rand with not devolving into complete lunacy, but that's barely critical. It was just a way for Rand to have three women he banged but not be judged for it. I'd be happy to see it go. Maybe Aviendha and Elayne just fall for each other, and decide that they'd rather have each other and leave Rand to Min?

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  • 8 months later...
1 hour ago, Nicomo Cosca said:

Apparently the guy who is supposed to be the showrunner of the TV show just tweeted this 

Should I get excited?

Potentially, but not until we get a production partner confirmed.

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2 hours ago, Nicomo Cosca said:

Apparently the guy who is supposed to be the showrunner of the TV show just tweeted this 

Should I get excited?

I dunno, all I can think of is the disclaimer "If you bought this book without a cover you should know that it was reported as damaged to the publisher."

I think the dude may be a legit thief.

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38 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

You would think that production companies would line up to be a part of this...

You would, but there are significant costs involved and everyone with the pockets big enough to do this are committed already. So far we have:

Amazon - Lord of the Rings

HBO - Game of Thrones & spin-offs

Showtime - The Name of the Wind prequel thing

Netflix - The Witcher

Starz - Outlander and American Gods

AMC - The Walking Dead and Preacher (and are skinflint bastards who can't afford this)

SyFy - The Expanse and The Magicians (and now Nightflyers)

 

It's not impossible that Amazon or Netflix would plump for a second fantasy series, and Starz may judge an epic fantasy different from their current fare to make it worthwhile. CBS All Access and FX seem like possible homes for this. FX is also now owned by Disney and Disney may be interested with an epic fantasy series to back up their SF stuff (Star Wars) and Marvel comic book projects. They may also be eyeing WoT for the new Disney adult streaming service or Hulu.

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17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

You would, but there are significant costs involved and everyone with the pockets big enough to do this are committed already. So far we have:

Amazon - Lord of the Rings

HBO - Game of Thrones & spin-offs

Showtime - The Name of the Wind prequel thing

Netflix - The Witcher

Starz - Outlander and American Gods

AMC - The Walking Dead and Preacher (and are skinflint bastards who can't afford this)

SyFy - The Expanse and The Magicians (and now Nightflyers)

 

It's not impossible that Amazon or Netflix would plump for a second fantasy series, and Starz may judge an epic fantasy different from their current fare to make it worthwhile. CBS All Access and FX seem like possible homes for this. FX is also now owned by Disney and Disney may be interested with an epic fantasy series to back up their SF stuff (Star Wars) and Marvel comic book projects. They may also be eyeing WoT for the new Disney adult streaming service or Hulu.

Outlander will have another season?

And I think netflix might go for wot. If it is well done it has more potencial than any other of these projects with the exception of got spin offs and LoR. But this also depends on what time of westeros and midle earth these projects will focus... They might end up being worse than wot if they aren t carefull. 

 

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30 minutes ago, Werthead said:

You would, but there are significant costs involved and everyone with the pockets big enough to do this are committed already. So far we have:

Amazon - Lord of the Rings

HBO - Game of Thrones & spin-offs

Showtime - The Name of the Wind prequel thing

Netflix - The Witcher

Starz - Outlander and American Gods

AMC - The Walking Dead and Preacher (and are skinflint bastards who can't afford this)

SyFy - The Expanse and The Magicians (and now Nightflyers)

 

It's not impossible that Amazon or Netflix would plump for a second fantasy series, and Starz may judge an epic fantasy different from their current fare to make it worthwhile. CBS All Access and FX seem like possible homes for this. FX is also now owned by Disney and Disney may be interested with an epic fantasy series to back up their SF stuff (Star Wars) and Marvel comic book projects. They may also be eyeing WoT for the new Disney adult streaming service or Hulu.

You make good points, but there is a difference between networks, and production companies.... even Game of thrones is produced not only by HBO, but television 360, Grok Studios, Generator Ent, and BigHead Littlehead.... I imagine  a project like this will need several partners

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17 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

You make good points, but there is a difference between networks, and production companies.... even Game of thrones is produced not only by HBO, but television 360, Grok Studios, Generator Ent, and BigHead Littlehead.... I imagine  a project like this will need several partners

The production company will be Sony Television (through a holding company for various legal reasons). That's already in place.

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2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The production company will be Sony Television (through a holding company for various legal reasons). That's already in place.

Ah... I getcha now.... and regardless... to speak to your point... even if they did seek additional partners.... a show like this will be expensive to purchase for any network... and the ones you mentioned are probably the only ones who could afford it.... 

If SONY is footing the entire production cost.... it might be a smart move for them to move it to Crackle, and charge a monthly fee.... this kind of show could be their anchor.

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11 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

Ah... I getcha now.... and regardless... to speak to your point... even if they did seek additional partners.... a show like this will be expensive to purchase for any network... and the ones you mentioned are probably the only ones who could afford it.... 

If SONY is footing the entire production cost.... it might be a smart move for them to move it to Crackle, and charge a monthly fee.... this kind of show could be their anchor.

Apparently Sony is also considering flogging their entire TV and movie operation (shades of Fox) so it depends whether that happens and who steps up the plate and what happens then.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Apparently things are happening and we should hear some news soon.

Weirdly, WoT's development may be helped by the success of the new Jumanji movie, which Radar Pictures (who have a stake in the WoT deal, apparently) is leveraging to fire up interest in their other projects.

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On 1/5/2018 at 11:50 AM, Werthead said:

Apparently Sony is also considering flogging their entire TV and movie operation (shades of Fox) so it depends whether that happens and who steps up the plate and what happens then.

Well now is the absolute ideal time for Sony to flog off movies, at least, Spider Man has got its mojo back, James Bond is still reasonably bankable but also ripe for another reboot, and Jumanji turned into box office gold. even Venom is receiving some pretty positive buzz. Sequels and reboots are always risky, so why not sell the movie division off and let another studio try to bottle the Jumanji lightening a second time (recall the original Jumanji 2 was rubbish and killed the franchise the first go around), let another studio make the high risk play of introducing another new bond, and let another studio try to maintain the Spiderverse momentum.

One problem, I imagine, is that Disney / Marvel must surely have negotiated, as part of their current arrangement, first right of refusal for buying the Spidey rights. And assuming the Fox deal goes through, I seriously doubt that the govt regulator would approve Disney wholly acquiring another of the big movie houses. Which means if Sony is more or less forced to sell Spidey back to Disney/Marvel, the value of the rest of their movie house diminishes a fair bit. And if Sony can't include Spidey in their package deal are Jumanji and Bond big enough by themselves to attracts anyone who is wiling to pay top dollar?

So it's a great time for Sony to sell, but it's also a not terribly straightforward time for Sony to sell.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Randland,l Randland tra la la.

I agree with you an animated series would probably look better. 

Edit: (Hmmm. Maybe "better" isn't the correct word. Probably "more faithful to the source material" would be more accurate. As mentioned before, I just don't see how they can make the magic system described in the books work in a live action show)

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  • 1 month later...

I've long been in favour of an animated format for any WoT TV show; I just don't think you can show magic system, or keep the timeline tight*, with live-action.

 

How good/cheap do graphics need to get for this to be viable?

Just for the sake of comparison, star wars clone wars cost about $2M an hour 10 years ago (half that now with better quality). That was the same year that gaming graphics gave us the likes of Wolfenstein RPG, massively inferior to SWtCW graphics; whiclt last year gives us the likes of WolfensteinII.

Equally, the likes of the Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast show us top-end, photorealistic 3D CGI currently costs $80M per hour. Current expensive TV productions come in around $8-10M per hour, doubling that for tentpole TV, like GoT8, Westworld 1 or Altered Carbon.

 

I really don't want to see Wheel of Time done with Star Wars TV graphics (or voice talent); but equally, does it need to be full-on tentpole film photorealistic (or voice talent)?

 

* Let's face it, our 3 boys age from 19 all the way up to 21 over the course of what we'd want to be 6ish seasons.

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9 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

I've long been in favour of an animated format for any WoT TV show; I just don't think you can show magic system, or keep the timeline tight*, with live-action.

 

How good/cheap do graphics need to get for this to be viable?

Just for the sake of comparison, star wars clone wars cost about $2M an hour 10 years ago (half that now with better quality). That was the same year that gaming graphics gave us the likes of Wolfenstein RPG, massively inferior to SWtCW graphics; whiclt last year gives us the likes of WolfensteinII.

Equally, the likes of the Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast show us top-end, photorealistic 3D CGI currently costs $80M per hour. Current expensive TV productions come in around $8-10M per hour, doubling that for tentpole TV, like GoT8, Westworld 1 or Altered Carbon.

 

I really don't want to see Wheel of Time done with Star Wars TV graphics (or voice talent); but equally, does it need to be full-on tentpole film photorealistic (or voice talent)?

 

* Let's face it, our 3 boys age from 19 all the way up to 21 over the course of what we'd want to be 6ish seasons.

With the right cast and decent make up, someone starting out at 20-sh irl can still easily look 21-sh when they are 26-ish. I don't see this being a problem like it is when you start out with pre-pubescent children.

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While I hope they do go forward with this as I am a big fan of the books.  I would also be fascinated if somehow and someway they switched back to the original premise of Tam the beaten down war veteran being in the Rand spot.

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WoT certainly provides a rich setting. Not sure about the plot though. There are like 100 parallel plot lines, and almost all of them unresolved because of Robert Jordan's death. I don't see how they could adapt the One Power or the whole struggle against the Dark One. Their best bet is probably a Tudors-style costume drama with a little magic thrown in now and then. (Which is essentially what Game of Thrones is.)

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