Is the Wheel of Time impossible to bring to TV? Is AI our only hope?

[Cipher]

Is WoT too sprawling, does it have too many characters, too much internal dialogue to be adapted?

 

As big of a critic of Rafe’s/Amazon’s adaptation that I am I feel they proved it could be done IMO.  Every time they followed Jordan’s script I felt like it was possible.  I don’t know if that would have achieved an audience necessary for continuation though.

In the cancellation thread the discussion turned to speculation of using AI to bring WoT to video through computer animation.  Would such a thing be soulless?  We have endless ways of spending our entertainment budget, but could such a thing get a new audience?

 

Please no criticism of Rafazon in this thread as that is well trodden territory.

[Cipher]

After fully reading both the cancellation and most recent ratings threads I am very pessimistic.

 

The value of the IP was set so high at $250M I can’t imagine many other companies wanting to try to tackle such a story with such a steep investment.  That may be the cash out for those 2 guys.  Not much more may be coming from the license.

 

AI could save the money on production, but would there be mass apeal from viewers.  Probably not IMO.

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

Probably a bad idea to try.  An AI could go mad if exposed to all of the wildly conflicting opinions expressed on various forum sites.  Could be the trigger to bring down an age of legends.  🤖🤖🤖

[Raal Gurniss]

Removing the criticism bit rather hamstrings things....

 

But yes, WoT could work if you stuck to the story...As a film 90 minutes long you could likely cram in a book or three quite comfortably, but you would have to remove 2/3 of the storylines.

 

WoT has say 6-9 main character plot lines going on at the same time and then you need at least one or two antagonist plot lines.

 

 

Say 8 plot lines that need advancing per episode, thats a mere 6-7 minutes per plot screen time per episode...That is the pace they would have to maintain if they wanted to manage that.

 

It doesn't leave any time for vanity project episodes for instance, or time for anything that isn't in the book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WoTwasThat]

Re-reading EOTW currently and… absolutely the story could have been told, with minimal changes, in EIGHT HOURS of a season.

 

There actually isn’t that much “internal dialogue” - much of the lore is plainly spelled out through exposition of the characters.

 

I think a lot of the “this was too hard to adapt” crowd have forgotten that EOTW was a pretty simple, and great, story. The more significant cuts and changes would have happened in the latter half of the series (i.e. much of the AS politicking, Bowl of the Winds subplot, Andor Succession subplot, Faile Rescue subplot, etc.)

 

None of this requires AI - although reducing the cost of special effects would never be a bad thing. All it really requires is a showrunner and producers who actually want to tell the story.

[king of nowhere]

it's not much a matter of "possible", but of "economically convenient".

 

bringing wot to screen requires a lot of money. to do it properly, it also requires advanced planning - you have to make an outline for all the season and stick to it, you need to pay the actors in advance to avoid having to change the plot because an actor becomes unavailable, you need to film the seasons back to back to be able to make one season per year, because at the pace they were using the viewers had mostly forgotten that the show even exhisted, after two years since the previous season.

and this even reduces some costs - it's cheaper to gather all the actors and workers and film two seasons in a row than having to restart all over every time - but it involves considerable risk. it means pulling out 500 millions or more without any certainty that you will have a return on investment, and without having any way of recouping any of those if things go wrong. 

 

and then those costs have to be justified. the show must be successful enough to bring new viewers, enough to pay its cost. which is a problem of its own. there are hundreds upon hundreds of tv shows on amazon prime. how many people are going to pay the membership just for one of those? quite hard to establish, but with so much stuff being produced, it's kinda hard to justify a single project bringing in so many new viewers. 

GOT is often used as a benchmark, but GOT had it easy; at its time, there were no large fantasy projects, so people interested in those only had one choice. at the moment, how many fantasy shows are there? I don't know because i don't follow, but I know there are many. it's easier to attract new paying customers when you are making a big fantasy show where there are none, than when you are making a big fantasy show in addition to a dozen others. 

 

so, making a wot adaptation is possible; in fact, they were doing it.

But making a wot adaptation that is economically convenient? making a good wot adaptation with the restrictions placed by limited fundings, by a studio that is hedging its bets because it wants to be able to pull the plug on the project with minimal losses if things ever start going downhill? 

Finding a studio that is willing to bet the money on the production, knowing that most likely it won't be successful and will go at a loss?

Good luck with that.

And frankly, if someone pulled that kind of money and effort, I'd rather they adapt the mistborn trilogy or the stormlight archive - both of which probably would be a lot easier to adapt and work better on the screen, due to cinematic action sequences.

[WoTwasThat]

12 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

it's not much a matter of "possible", but of "economically convenient".

 

bringing wot to screen requires a lot of money. to do it properly, it also requires advanced planning - you have to make an outline for all the season and stick to it, you need to pay the actors in advance to avoid having to change the plot because an actor becomes unavailable, you need to film the seasons back to back to be able to make one season per year, because at the pace they were using the viewers had mostly forgotten that the show even exhisted, after two years since the previous season.

and this even reduces some costs - it's cheaper to gather all the actors and workers and film two seasons in a row than having to restart all over every time - but it involves considerable risk. it means pulling out 500 millions or more without any certainty that you will have a return on investment, and without having any way of recouping any of those if things go wrong. 

 

and then those costs have to be justified. the show must be successful enough to bring new viewers, enough to pay its cost. which is a problem of its own. there are hundreds upon hundreds of tv shows on amazon prime. how many people are going to pay the membership just for one of those? quite hard to establish, but with so much stuff being produced, it's kinda hard to justify a single project bringing in so many new viewers. 

GOT is often used as a benchmark, but GOT had it easy; at its time, there were no large fantasy projects, so people interested in those only had one choice. at the moment, how many fantasy shows are there? I don't know because i don't follow, but I know there are many. it's easier to attract new paying customers when you are making a big fantasy show where there are none, than when you are making a big fantasy show in addition to a dozen others. 

 

so, making a wot adaptation is possible; in fact, they were doing it.

But making a wot adaptation that is economically convenient? making a good wot adaptation with the restrictions placed by limited fundings, by a studio that is hedging its bets because it wants to be able to pull the plug on the project with minimal losses if things ever start going downhill? 

Finding a studio that is willing to bet the money on the production, knowing that most likely it won't be successful and will go at a loss?

Good luck with that.

And frankly, if someone pulled that kind of money and effort, I'd rather they adapt the mistborn trilogy or the stormlight archive - both of which probably would be a lot easier to adapt and work better on the screen, due to cinematic action sequences.

Somehow, other successful shows make this work. And funding was not the issue. The issue was that the end product and viewership didn’t justify the funding, in part because the production looked like cheap garbage. How they spent hundreds of millions on this is beyond me. 

[Sabio]

Just not sure if WOT can ever be adapted properly to the screen.  To me it suffers from what a lot of books suffer from when someone tries to make a movie or series from it.  Books can go into so much more detail that a series can't.  I think there is simply too much explaining that needs to be done that there isn't time to do on the screen.  The dream world, Aiel war, the Horn, heroes of the Horn,  Aiel, AOL, the Dragon, wolf dreams, Forsaken, one power, male half, female half etc.   Even Perin is a lot of internal dialogue which doesn't work well on the screen.  Game of Thrones was made in mind with it finally going to a series on TV. WOT wasn't.  I'm just not sure with the time constraints of TV series that is could ever be done properly.  

[Raal Gurniss]

4 hours ago, Sabio said:

Just not sure if WOT can ever be adapted properly to the screen.  To me it suffers from what a lot of books suffer from when someone tries to make a movie or series from it.  Books can go into so much more detail that a series can't.  I think there is simply too much explaining that needs to be done that there isn't time to do on the screen.  The dream world, Aiel war, the Horn, heroes of the Horn,  Aiel, AOL, the Dragon, wolf dreams, Forsaken, one power, male half, female half etc.   Even Perin is a lot of internal dialogue which doesn't work well on the screen.  Game of Thrones was made in mind with it finally going to a series on TV. WOT wasn't.  I'm just not sure with the time constraints of TV series that is could ever be done properly.  

Very true, I said something very similar on here before the show even premiered, filming fantasy books as a tv show is incredibly tricky even a movie is difficult.

 

I can't think of many successful ones that I am happy with...And they are based generally on short stories rather than larger stories....

 

I mean GoT is one I liked and was successful, but even that had room for improvement!

 

Not many others that were not also ruined due to showrunners or boardroom over reach, WoT is just another casualty of that.

 

 

[Samt]

19 hours ago, WoTwasThat said:

Somehow, other successful shows make this work. And funding was not the issue. The issue was that the end product and viewership didn’t justify the funding, in part because the production looked like cheap garbage. How they spent hundreds of millions on this is beyond me. 

Leaving story and characters aside, it’s a stark contrast to watch GoT or LoTR compared to WoT.  WoT was just so far behind in apparent production quality and polish.  I was also astonished by the amount of money they spent for that level of product to come out of it.  The lighting, special effect, fight choreography, and sets didn’t feel good.  Costumes were okay, but I don’t think they stood out as exceptional either.  They just wouldn’t have pulled it down if the other parts were right.

[Raal Gurniss]

2 minutes ago, Samt said:

Leaving story and characters aside, it’s a stark contrast to watch GoT or LoTR compared to WoT.  WoT was just so far behind in apparent production quality and polish.  I was also astonished by the amount of money they spent for that level of product to come out of it.  The lighting, special effect, fight choreography, and sets didn’t feel good.  Costumes were okay, but I don’t think they stood out as exceptional either.  They just wouldn’t have pulled it down if the other parts were right.

I don't think the showrunners were experienced enough, it seems they were flush with money and spent it so quickly that they had to cutback spending on actually making the show.

[WoTwasThat]

16 hours ago, Sabio said:

Just not sure if WOT can ever be adapted properly to the screen.  To me it suffers from what a lot of books suffer from when someone tries to make a movie or series from it.  Books can go into so much more detail that a series can't.  I think there is simply too much explaining that needs to be done that there isn't time to do on the screen.  The dream world, Aiel war, the Horn, heroes of the Horn,  Aiel, AOL, the Dragon, wolf dreams, Forsaken, one power, male half, female half etc.   Even Perin is a lot of internal dialogue which doesn't work well on the screen.  Game of Thrones was made in mind with it finally going to a series on TV. WOT wasn't.  I'm just not sure with the time constraints of TV series that is could ever be done properly.  

You need to go back and read EOTW. I was surprised upon a recent re-read how easily all the basic pieces of lore and mechanics are explained through exposition of the characters. It should have been easy to faithfully adapt the vast majority of this book in eight hours of runtime. Contentions to the contrary simply make no sense.

 

Much bigger changes /deletions were absolutely necessary to Books 7+, but the TV series never got there. 

[Kaleb]

8 hours ago, Raal Gurniss said:

I don't think the showrunners were experienced enough, it seems they were flush with money and spent it so quickly that they had to cutback spending on actually making the show.

I think "flush with money" is an absurd hyperbole, but it's true that Rafe did not come into this role with a lot of experience. He's a big book fan who worked himself into a position in the industry where he could pitch his dream project, and he may have over-reached professionally. Hardly unusual. They also lost a lot of money on things they invested in - like the location they booked to be the Blight - for the end of S1 and couldn't use due to COVID. That hit a lot of other shows hard too, but maybe it was a bit more out of balance for WOT.

[Cipher]

I do feel Wheel of Prime was probably not judicious with its budget, but I have no proof other than the final product and casting Pike as the lead.

 

A big problem was lack of extras.  Extras are supposed to be cheap, yet we had very little of them. ?!  Were they giving extras nice paychecks, so that they couldn’t afford to have many?  The world felt underpopulated and the battles were lack luster.  Modern AI could potentially fill that gap with convincing CGI IMO.

 

There may be conflicting opinions in the faults in Jordan’s work that need to be shored up for a definitive adaptation, but I think a poll on DM could give us the list things of things that need changing 🤣. E.g. Rand’s fight with Turak, the roll your eyes battle of the sexes, the battle in the sky, Moiraine’s and Thom’s relationship, etc etc etc.

Edited June 23 by Cipher
Small change in emote

[king of nowhere]

23 hours ago, WoTwasThat said:

You need to go back and read EOTW. I was surprised upon a recent re-read how easily all the basic pieces of lore and mechanics are explained through exposition of the characters

you keep repeating that, but i do believe you suffer from donning kruger effect here. you already know the lore, you already know which bits of exposition are important and which are fluff, and you already know how each bit fits into each other bit. you also know very well the main plot, so you are not distracted by trying to follow up what happens to rand & others while also getting blasted by seemingly random pieces of unrelated exposition.

 

it reminds me of my first teaching experiences, where I kept insisting that the stuff I was teaching was easy and I was summing up a whole topic in twenty minutes. sure, it's easy for me because I studied chemistry for years and sure, it can be summed up in twenty minutes if you understand each and every point and their logical relatonships at the first try.

eventually, I had to accept that if everyone was insisting chemistry was hard, it probably really was; that, and having worked in academia for years I was living in a social bubble of smart people and I was overestimating the average kid - who is the target of my lessons, they must be understandable by him, not just by the smart people I hang out with. if chemistry becomes easy after reaching a certain level of proficiency, well, that's what being proficient means. 

If I give a simple explanations, and the students insist that it's hard (the good students who put actual effort and have some brain, not the bad students who pay attention exactly once, the day before the test, and then get surprised when they don't pass), I learned to accept that the students are right, and try a better approach. because, due to donning kruger effect, I am not a reliable judge of whether some bit of chemistry is hard, or not. 

 

I suggest you do the same. If most everyone here insists that on their first reading they didn't get the lore, maybe it's because getting it on the first read is actually hard, and not because this forum is populated by liars and dummies.

If you find it super easy, maybe it's because you already know it, and not because it's actually easy.

 

 

[WoTwasThat]

52 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

you keep repeating that, but i do believe you suffer from donning kruger effect here. you already know the lore, you already know which bits of exposition are important and which are fluff, and you already know how each bit fits into each other bit. you also know very well the main plot, so you are not distracted by trying to follow up what happens to rand & others while also getting blasted by seemingly random pieces of unrelated exposition.

…

If you find it super easy, maybe it's because you already know it, and not because it's actually easy.

 

Nah, it really is that easy. RJ didn’t toss a bunch of red herrings into EOTW - aside from some of the Isam/Malkier stuff toward the end which was of marginal importance. And I suppose you could also add the Ba’alzamon-was-actually-Ishy headfake if you want, although I’m not sure that’s really a problem.

 

I keep saying it because that’s really all I can do when someone is misremembering. I’ll say it again. You really need to go back and read EOTW. RJ spends the vast majority of the book spoon feeding the core lore to the series. Give it a shot! I think you’ll agree with me. 

[Samt]

16 hours ago, WoTwasThat said:

Nah, it really is that easy. RJ didn’t toss a bunch of red herrings into EOTW - aside from some of the Isam/Malkier stuff toward the end which was of marginal importance. And I suppose you could also add the Ba’alzamon-was-actually-Ishy headfake if you want, although I’m not sure that’s really a problem.

 

I keep saying it because that’s really all I can do when someone is misremembering. I’ll say it again. You really need to go back and read EOTW. RJ spends the vast majority of the book spoon feeding the core lore to the series. Give it a shot! I think you’ll agree with me. 

You’re missing the point.  Dedicated fans re-reading the book and understanding all of the lore drops is not the metric here.  You need to find people with no context or history with the series and have them casually read TEotW.  Then, see if they can explain the details of the lore after reading through it once.  

 

17 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

you keep repeating that, but i do believe you suffer from donning kruger effect here. you already know the lore, you already know which bits of exposition are important and which are fluff, and you already know how each bit fits into each other bit. you also know very well the main plot, so you are not distracted by trying to follow up what happens to rand & others while also getting blasted by seemingly random pieces of unrelated exposition.

 

it reminds me of my first teaching experiences, where I kept insisting that the stuff I was teaching was easy and I was summing up a whole topic in twenty minutes. sure, it's easy for me because I studied chemistry for years and sure, it can be summed up in twenty minutes if you understand each and every point and their logical relatonships at the first try.

eventually, I had to accept that if everyone was insisting chemistry was hard, it probably really was; that, and having worked in academia for years I was living in a social bubble of smart people and I was overestimating the average kid - who is the target of my lessons, they must be understandable by him, not just by the smart people I hang out with. if chemistry becomes easy after reaching a certain level of proficiency, well, that's what being proficient means. 

If I give a simple explanations, and the students insist that it's hard (the good students who put actual effort and have some brain, not the bad students who pay attention exactly once, the day before the test, and then get surprised when they don't pass), I learned to accept that the students are right, and try a better approach. because, due to donning kruger effect, I am not a reliable judge of whether some bit of chemistry is hard, or not. 

 

I suggest you do the same. If most everyone here insists that on their first reading they didn't get the lore, maybe it's because getting it on the first read is actually hard, and not because this forum is populated by liars and dummies.

If you find it super easy, maybe it's because you already know it, and not because it's actually easy.

 

 

I agree with you except that I don’t think this is Dunning-Kruger.  Dunning-Kruger is when people who are bad at something are unable to accurately assess their lack of competence.  You seem to be using it to say that people who are good or experienced at something are unable to accurately assess the difficulty for the average person.  That seems related, but it’s sort of the opposite.

[WoTwasThat]

1 hour ago, Samt said:

You’re missing the point.  Dedicated fans re-reading the book and understanding all of the lore drops is not the metric here.  You need to find people with no context or history with the series and have them casually read TEotW.  Then, see if they can explain the details of the lore after reading through it once.  

K. I’ll just head down to the street corner… or I could use basic common sense. How about this: how about you set out, with citations, the stuff in EOTW you found to be a red herring or confusing?

 

I’m not saying there won’t be any mysteries left - it’s BOOK ONE of a planned series - but I’d genuinely be interested to see your list of what you found so confusing. 

[Yamezt]

On 6/21/2025 at 7:28 AM, Cipher said:

Is WoT too sprawling, does it have too many characters, too much internal dialogue to be adapted?

 

A lot of East Asian animation makes use of internal dialogue, and occasionally, live-action dramas from the region do too. In contrast, inner monologue seems relatively rare in Western TV/movie. I know I’ve come across them before, but none springs to mind immediately that I've seen recently.

 

One of my favourite web novels, Lord of the Mysteries (which spans over 1,400 chapters), is being adapted into an animated series. The first 200 chapters will be condensed into just 13 episodes, airing this weekend. (For comparison, Wheel of Time has only around 700 chapters.) I’ve been thinking about how the adaptation will handle inner monologues, since the protagonist frequently uses internal thought to solve occult mysteries - a key part of the novel’s tone and depth.

 

I recently saw a trailer where the main character walks the streets while his inner voice is narrated, which gives me hope that they’ll retain this important narrative device. Whether the adaptation will succeed overall remains to be seen.

 

But it also makes me wonder: Could Wheel of Time have been better adapted if it leaned more into internal dialogue rather than shying away from it?

[WoTwasThat]

1 hour ago, Yamezt said:

But it also makes me wonder: Could Wheel of Time have been better adapted if it leaned more into internal dialogue rather than shying away from it?

The internal dialogue in EOTW is pretty limited and generally useless. It’s about 90% one boy wishing he could talk to girls as well as Matt/Rand/Perrin.

 

The internal dialogue expands in later books when we start getting more female POVs… and it’s still pretty useless. 

[Mailman]

35 minutes ago, WoTwasThat said:

The internal dialogue in EOTW is pretty limited and generally useless. It’s about 90% one boy wishing he could talk to girls as well as Matt/Rand/Perrin.

 

The internal dialogue expands in later books when we start getting more female POVs… and it’s still pretty useless. 

Rubbish. 90% is an insanely epic over exaggeration. I would wager that just the internal dialogue for Perrin during the raven's pursuit completely outweighs the entire books wishing they could talk to the girls segments.

[king of nowhere]

On 6/24/2025 at 5:07 PM, Samt said:

 

 

I agree with you except that I don’t think this is Dunning-Kruger.  Dunning-Kruger is when people who are bad at something are unable to accurately assess their lack of competence.  You seem to be using it to say that people who are good or experienced at something are unable to accurately assess the difficulty for the average person.  That seems related, but it’s sort of the opposite.

the donning kruger studio showed both effects: ignorant people overestimaging their skill, and capable ones underestimating it. I assumed the effect included both, but apparently only the first part is generally referenced. weird.

[WoTwasThat]

11 hours ago, Mailman said:

Rubbish. 90% is an insanely epic over exaggeration. I would wager that just the internal dialogue for Perrin during the raven's pursuit completely outweighs the entire books wishing they could talk to the girls segments.

Obviously I was exaggerating for comedic effect. But there really isn’t any internal dialogue that’s all that important in EOTW. If so, name it. 

[Kaleb]

Just now, WoTwasThat said:

Obviously I was exaggerating for comedic effect. But there really isn’t any internal dialogue that’s all that important in EOTW. If so, name it. 

He just did. The Ravens chapter is foundational to Perrin's character in the books.

[WoTwasThat]

6 minutes ago, Kaleb said:

He just did. The Ravens chapter is foundational to Perrin's character in the books.

Okaaayy… and all that internal dialogue could be replaced with two or three sentences spoken to Egwene. “Gee I’m really sad and upset about violence. Woe is me. Etc.” It’s not that hard. This is how you adapt a book to screen. 

Edited June 25 by WoTwasThat