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Universal Studios buy WoT rights!


jezzahardin

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They would be better off leaving it as a book and not doing anything with it as my old mum says " if its not broken then dont fix it." the books are great as books but Hollywood will KILL the story in a film. They dont have the skill to take this work of are and do anything good with it, they will only destroy it...

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Hopefully they don't mild it down too far to make it a PG - 13 movie either instead of R as well.

 

The books are obviously PG-13.  The series is written PG-13.  Any movies will be PG-13.

 

Since when is nudity, sex scenes (only 2 - 3 were described, but still), and graphic battles been pg 13? The first book was pg 13, but the later ones weren't.

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They could always cartoon it up as well like the latest star wars (though personally I hope they don't), or go the Beowolf/300 route. Hopefully they don't mild it down too far to make it a PG - 13 movie either instead of R as well.

 

"cartooning it up" is just as dangerous as live action. Check out Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight and you'll see what I mean. Worst Book to animated movie EVER.

Although animating it would perhaps be cheaper and allow more creative freedom, they'd have to be careful how it's done. CG might be good though.

And it really would be interesting to see what Rating they would want to keep it. RJ does seem to be pretty honest with sexuality - even if he does give it other names.

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it could easily maintain a pg13 rating throughout.  That is if pipe smoking doesnt automatically give it an R rating, since smoking in movies does that these days.  aside from that there is no real profanity, blood and gore doesnt really do it these days, and the sex scenes are implied.  it really comes down to is the FCC going to make water all over it for pipe smoking.

 

seriously how are they going to cast the Aeil?  are they going to paint up Yao Ming and call him Bael?

 

I could see Johnny Depp as Thom, but aside from him I would make water all over it if they cast any other big name.

 

I will probably treat this the same way I will treat HW remaking all of my favorite anime.

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No Keanu Reeves to play Rand, for example.

 

:D :D :D Slightly off topic, but you know how the director of the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still selected Reeves to play Klaatu?  "I thought he could portray a lack of humanity."  :D :D :D

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Hopefully they don't mild it down too far to make it a PG - 13 movie either instead of R as well.

 

The books are obviously PG-13.  The series is written PG-13.  Any movies will be PG-13.

 

 

While there isn't any in the first couple of books that I remember. There is a fair amount nudity and sceens of torture of one kind or another in some of the books. Also given some of the sceens of violence, like the begining of Lord Of Chaos or the battle in the stone of Tear in Shadow Riseing, a good number of these films will have to be R rated fantasy film or not. Toneing them down to PG-13 will ruin the spirt of the message these books are trying to convey.

 

 

 

[glow=green,1,500]Darth_Andrea[/glow]starwars1.gif     anim-ring.gif

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Considering the FCC fined a tv add for showing a womans back... ya the US real leaniant on what they deem appropriate. Not so much in Australia, and toning things down to hit a certain rating level can ruin the messages the story is trying to portray. Or to be comparitive the US are like the villagers in The Two Rivers (Or Cairhens - At least in what the polititions allow =p) and most of the world are like the borderlander/Aiel.

 

Even the langauge is full of course langauge. The words themselves on paper are all G, but RJ created he own language in parts, and if you follow the meaning of the words you can determine their real meanings, and they are flatly under an R rating. Words themselves mean little, it is all in how they are used and what the author intends them to mean.

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Sure hope it would be R-rated throughout. And not for the sake of it, but the story is not about children's play so there is violence, fighting the shadow and all and not everyone being over-kind, like out of an Eddings book, and it is a different world with different cultures so the nudity and the like certainly should not be tampered with to do the world-building any justice. I simply cringe at the thought that things are softened down.

 

Like the scene I PoD, with Elayne, Aviendha and Birgitte in baths, where the last one tells her story of the woman who somehow got her head caught between fence slates-- nothing explicit there, though I'm sure the woman had quite a line of people giving a shot at pulling her out, but if such things were moderated down, the people would lose their characters. (The scene might be shown for some ten seconds I imagine.) Or if the Seanchan Cupbearers' robes are not transparent for example, the Seanchan culture loses character, the da'covale become more like servants and less like property.

 

There's enough trouble in adapting the book to the screen to make it work without intentionally toning things down on the impact that they make for the viewer.

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I'm pretty anxious about the prospect of a film version, but I think some progress has been made digitally that would facilitate a modern vision of RJ's world.

 

My chief concern has to do with the validity of Universal's deal with Red Eagle, which judging by RJ's comments before his death, poses problems.

 

Red Eagle's involvement leaves a lot of doubt, so much so that I don't see this project getting off the ground unless they are completely bought out of the picture and a legitimate production team comes into play.

 

As much as it may be controversial, I'd maybe even like to see Mel Gibson's Icon Productions give it a go. Reasons for that is because Gibson likes to take risks and outside of Peter Jackson's production antics, there aren't many who have the flexibility to handle such a far-reaching project.

 

It's going to take a very unorthodox style of film making to pull this project off.

 

I did a write through script of my own for Eye of the World and it took about 54 pages just to get through the Winternight section of the book. That's just under an hour of screen time.

By my estimation Eye of the World can be done in a two film format, and more or less faithful to RJ's cinematic style.

 

Things I'd cut would be minor cameo characters, like the fellow Rand landed on when he fell onto Bayle Domon's ship. That young darkfriend that tried to talk Mat and Rand into giving themselves up. I'd shorten the elaboration on things like Lan's history only because the fact that can be elaborated on in subsequent films. You could even cut out something like Narg, which I understand is very dear to many fans, but if you're objective about it, the scene doesn't really push the story forward. It's also kind of an exception to RJ's portrayal of trollocs. There isn't another time where a trolloc tries to speak to a character let alone a main character. He leaves most of that to the fades, darkfriends and the Forsaken.

 

I personally think that two movies would actually work.

 

I'd cut off the first movie with Thom getting "killed", leaving Rand and Mat to continue their long journey to Caemlyn by themselves.

 

The next movie would follow the parallel paths of the separated groups till they converge in Caemlyn, which would probably take two hours, maybe a little less, around an hour and a half. Then it's through the Ways, Shienar, the Blight and finally the Eye of the World.

 

These can be two pretty fun movies, I think.

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Hey, I want them to make a decent movie that has a nice, vanilla ice-cream appeal for the masses. Why? Because it will pass a huge pool of people to the books, generate a great deal of interest and hopefully put money into products I might actually like for myself:

 

Graphic Novels

Associated Trivia Books

Art Books

Updates for the RPGs

Fanon Sequals by Talented Writers (you know, like all the Star Wars books)

 

If a semi-decent movie can pull in even a couple of hundred new, interesting people who might have missed the series otherwise, well, then that movie did its job.

 

On the darker side I've often said to myself that if there was ONE book from this series I would hate to have to make a movie out of it's EotW.  The homages to LotR are going to have to be handled delicately or the whole movie could come off as a chintzy ripoff of Peter Jackson's LotR.  The villain is a little too persistently portrayed as a series of dream sequences. A lot of the action in the first book consists of our poor n00b heroes running from Trollocs while they meet a bunch of factions that will be very important later-But now? Not so much.  And then at the end Rand kind of goes boom.

 

I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would be challenging, and if you give Hollywood a challenge... Personally, I'd be sorely tempted to borrow like stink from the next book (TGH) or even try to squeeze the two together.

 

Long post short: I don't mind Hollywood being involved, but I hate having to ask it to think.

 

 

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I'm sure this has already been said but I think the best bet is to go with CGI animation like the Final Fantasy movies, which I think are awesomely done.  There is so much room in a film like that to depict channeling or whatever and not have to go crazy merging actual people with CGI effects.

 

That gets my vote - because then it's not even about casting look-wise, but more "who's voice most sounds like Nynaeve?" or whatever character.

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Well, we're getting to the point where we can digitally airbrush images into photo-real figures.

300 is a good example of this. On the other hand I don't think I want Eye of the World to look like that, but you get what I mean about the look aspect of the characters and the whole art direction.

 

I do think that you'd have to depart drastically from normal cinematic conventions to pursue the whole series as a project.

This would mean that you'd have to hire actors for the long haul, and that means largely unknown actors.

 

The Harry Potter series, by the end of its cinematic journey will have taken an entire decade to finish with largely the same cast, the notable exception being Dumbledore's original actor passing away, Richard Harris being replaced by Michael Gambon.

 

I think one of the things that can remedy the problem of aging actors is to simply adjust the time lapse. Make events in the book take longer in the film, if aging actors is a problem.

 

Taim managed to last 6 years with the taint from what I recall, correct me if I'm wrong. Making Rand survive longer with the Taint up until the cleansing would actually make his seem stronger which isn't a bad thing, plus his deterioration would be easier to swallow.

 

Also, in the books I always kind of thought it was funny how in stride the people would take the flux in weather and the basic chaos resulting from the Dark One breaking free gradually. If it took place over a slightly longer period of time, it would make a bit more sense how people seemed to have a hard time connecting these events with the coming of Tarmon Gaidon.

 

If this series takes off, you could then shoot movies back to back, with these more flexible actors and the production time line could work better with the narrative's.

 

Still the logistics are massive.

I foresee a minimum budget of $750,000,000 for a 12 film series released over 10 years. 

 

$120,000,000-$150,000,000 to start for just Eye of the World split into two films.

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wow.  i am very excited about this. i think colin farrel should play mat and maybe viggo mortesen to play lan.  who would play moiraine?

 

Colin Farrel 31 Mat 17 - 19 ><. Even if you expand it to book 11 Mat is only around 22 - 23 at most.

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