Interesting he shared the pages per episode stat, I did some calculations on words per minute between a number of series in a post last year that showed the same thing, I compared LOTR and Harry Potter as well. 
 

I am really concerned he is show running 2 major series, it just makes it feel that WOT is being pushed down Amazons priority list now it has LOTR. Yes he has worked on multiple projects before. But nothing as big as WOT alongside GOW which I hope will be given as much dedication as ROP and WOT, The game series is amazing. 

More mixing to deliver the story overall feeds into the idea that Falme and Tear will be merged in some way, or at the very least you won’t have the back and forth travel of the 3 women. I can see Min being sent with a message to the tower after Falme but Nyn and Elayne traveling to tear directly. 

That sounded more like an ad than an interview, no critical questions whatsover. I’d also very much like to see the source for that ”70% of people who’ve read all the books think the show is as good as or better than the books” claim because frankly, I don’t believe it.

6 hours ago, Bergioyn said:

That sounded more like an ad than an interview, no critical questions whatsover. I’d also very much like to see the source for that ”70% of people who’ve read all the books think the show is as good as or better than the books” claim because frankly, I don’t believe it.

Personally, I agree.  Just about everyone who I’ve spoken to that has read the books didn’t care for the show, and even those who did enjoy it didn’t think it was better than the books.  I’ve yet to hear one person say it’s better than the books other than on Twitter.  I’ve even heard people who didn’t care for the books (claimed they were too long, etc.) claim it was miles better than the show.

Interesting interview. 

Sad that we'll most likely have to wait till the end of 2023 for season two is depressing but not too surprising. I hope they at least do some additional mini trailers etc. 

I think the story has been altered so much it does not resemble the books. I think they borrowed the title and fan base of a well written story and hacked it to pieces. It is a shame. Will not bother to watch the second season. Can't imagine how they will back out of the parts of the story they changed so much.

They're changing the story even more. Wow. At least before, they were trying to sound like they were keeping to the spirit of the books. Now it sounds like they're dropping even a pretense.

Also, seems odd to cite that GoT supposedly covered 50 pages per episode, and WoT 200, while GoT was by far the better adaptation. I also don't remotely believe that claim. The first few seasons of GoT were very faithful to the books and left out little.

The Wheel of Time is my favorite fantasy world, so I knew I was going to be disappointed by the show.  Season 1 was not as bad as I feared, but two of the changes were incredibly irritating.  Mat is my boy, I know the actor dropped out and had to be replaced so him not going north I can understand.  But in the books, Mat was the most excited and upbeat of the three boys.  He wanted to leave home and go on an adventure, it was only due to the side effects of possessing the dagger that made him all moody.  So Mat's whole broken home situation and desire to return and watch out for his sisters was garbage.  Then the entirety of the journey through the Blight and the Eye of the World scenes.  Also total garbage.  Everyone goes to the Eye, three of thirteen Forsaken (now it doesn't look like we get the hilarious gender swap there) and the Greenman (I know the Nim or whatever they are called are only mentioned like one other time, but come on!)  Other than those two, I can stomach the rest of the changes and still enjoy the story.

In the books we basically get three different Mats: the first Mat is an incredibly immature boy who likes to pull pranks, and behaves like he is 10-12 years old or so. RJ probably wrote him this way to make him appear hobbit-like (Pippin?), since EotW was intentionally written to be close to LotR in tone and story line. Then we get dagger-Mat, who is somewhat matured, but also moody and cranky under the influence of the dagger. Finally we get the "real" adult Mat, who has matured overnight by at least 6 years compared to the first Mat. He is a flirtatious person who likes to gamble, but is also extremely caring and ultimately a responsible person.

I totally understand that in the show the first Mat had to be skipped. We go straight to the adult Mat. I thought that all three aspects of that character, flirting, gambling and caring, come across really well in ep1. It is hard to do that in an episode that needs to provide so much exposition, so the shortcut of using potentially neglected siblings as a target of his caring nature seemed fine to me.

I understand that some people would also have liked to see boy-Mat, but that was not practical for a live-action show. They would have had to hire a younger teenage actor, and that would have created regulatory problems once the show starts moving more towards intimate relationships, especially considering that a show with that kind of budget needs a worldwide release to break even, and regulations in different countries vary. They decided to play it safe and make everyone 20 years old. If a 20-year old had acted like a 10-12-year old, that would not have looked adventurous and carefree, but would have created the impression that Mat was suffering from mental or developmental problems, which is clearly not what anyone would have wanted. Adapting that part accurately in a TV show would have required an animated show, not live-action. "Arcane" did that pretty well with Powder/Jinx.

As for the ending of ep8. We need to distinguish between the changes to the story and the changes to the visuals. I like the changes to the story. The ending of book 1 never made much sense, and RJ had to press the reset button at the beginning of book 2 to rein Rand back in. That is not viable for a show. In a show you need more consistency, and I like the idea that Rand is tricked into breaking a seal, and that THAT causes the forsaken to be freed. I also like the way the theme of the ep8 scenes foreshadows the Last Battle. As for the visuals and the portrayal of the Blight: that was not planned this way. They had plans to shoot in a natural forest on La Gomera, which would have given them much wider shots, a more natural look, and more options to set up scenes. Shooting there became impossible due to COVID travel restrictions, so they came up with the idea of shooting a smaller version of this on a back lot using artificial trees. At the time that change was made they were close to the end of the production and almost out of time and money, having just enough to build 7 (or so) trees for all of the scenes. Everything else was computer-replicated. So, yes, this is not what I had hoped the Blight would look like, but I don't blame them given the circumstances.