Villains play lots of different roles in stories, and not all of them need to be well-developed.  Some of them exist just to be a vague background threat, until they show up and die, like Bel'al.  Some of them exist to be mere high-level minions, like Aginor or Bal'thamel.  Some of them exist to demonstrate the seductiveness and possessiveness of the Dark side (Lanfear), its self-serving nature (Asmodean), its forcefulness (Sammael), manipulativeness (Rhavin), cruelty (Semirhage), secretiveness (Moghedien), pridefulness (Demandred), insidiousness (Messana), or depravity (Graendal).

Let's say we have 7 seasons of TV.  Two main bad guys per season, with occasional appearances by a couple of others sprinkled in, can easily accommodate 13 distinct bad guys.  The biggest reason for me to not merge Moggy and Graendal is that their endings are both well-earned and deserve to be retained.  Moggy leashed and condemned to spend the rest of her life as damane, and Graendal Compulsed by her own weave into being Aviendha's gaishan for life need to be included, the former as the appropriate endcap to the Spider's story, and the latter as the appropriate endcap to Aviendha's.

I'm saving 'em all up for an utterly devastating "I told you so" in November.

I don't think we'll be getting an actual trailer until June at the very earliest, but more likely August, possibly even as late as September.  But then, I'm going on the assumption that a late November release is the most likely, at least late-ish Fall.  I think between now and then, we'll continue to get clips from their behind-the-scenes documentary, and maybe a few character, prop, costume, set, music or special effects highlights sprinkled in. 

Really, my hope is merely that you don't get frustrated with continually hoping for more and only getting these drips and drabs (or nothing at all, as in this Superbowl case) as these next few months wear on, and that you don't make others frustrated by getting their hopes up with yours.

Caemlyn I would think would be every bit as important a location as Tar Valon.  What would be strange to me is the complaint that there's too many locations in tEotW to include them all, so they're gonna cut one of the most important locations in the whole series for this first season, but then they're gonna add a location that doesn't even appear in tEotW.  When I think of places that could be cut from the Eye, I think of Baerlon and Whitebridge and the Grinwells farm and a bunch of the other little towns on the way to Caemlyn (though those should be amalgamated rather than cut entirely and not presented as a set of flashbacks within flashbacks), and even the campsite in Malkier.  Caemlyn is the second-to-last place I would cut, the first being Emond's Field itself.  It would make more sense to cut Fal Dara than Caemlyn, to me.  They could skip right past Fal Dara from the Waygate, do the stuff at the Eye, then go to Fal Dara to find Fain had been captured by a patrol or something.  Literally nothing important happens at Fal Dara prior to the events at the Eye, other than news of a coming battle at Tarwin's Gap.  And that could be delivered by Lan coming back from a scouting trip.

Cutting Caemlyn to make room for Tar Valon doesn't make much sense to me.  Caemlyn's a set we'll be returning to again and again, particularly after Rand's return from the Waste, but with two important scenes at least between the Eye and the end of The Dragon Reborn.  It, more than any other city, is the true center of political power in Randland; the only reason the White Tower still has the influence in the South it has is because of Andor's (waning) allegiance and its military and economic strength.

Because LotR sells itself.  Because memories, especially of things like upcoming TV shows, are short.  At least for the non-obsessed potential audience.  This far out, doing much more than letting the potential audience know it's coming (which has already been announced) is throwing money in a hole and setting it on fire.  They're just better off saving those marketing dollars for when they'll do some good, no more than a couple of months ahead of the release, and ramping up through the actual release.

And yeah, I didn't see a "coming this year on Prime" commercial.  I didn't think the odds of it were very good to begin with.  @WoTonPrime saying nothing was coming Sunday and not hinting that we should look for an appearance in such a clip-show commercial was pretty good reason not to expect it.

A scene at the Tower would be ok with me, presumably when the gentle Logain.  But Rand, and the rest of the Emond's Field 5 better come nowhere near it.  Thematically, narratively, symbolically, it's too important that the only time the Dragon Reborn ever enters the White Tower is under his own power, of his own free choice, once he's fully come into his power and destiny.

If the show was coming out in the next three months, then that argument would make more sense.  That they would be ramping up the mainstream hype levels to pull in viewers.  I don't think you can extrapolate viewership from twitter followers, though.  At least, it's not that simple.  Carnival Row has a couple million viewers, but fewer people follow their twitter than follow WoT's.

And Amazon doesn't need a Superbowl spot to hype a LotR series that's not even going to air for at least another 9 months.  But then, they don't really need a Superbowl spot at all.  If they have one, it'll be to show off that they can afford it, more than to actually sell anything.  Indeed the economics of Superbowl ads is such that they usually affect stock price more than real sales volume.  If a company can afford a Superbowl spot at all, they're already at or near the top of their market, in terms of volume and penetration, to begin with.  Which is why if Amazon does have a spot that includes a WoT reference, it will be as part of a series of clips of a bunch of their shows.  A little, "Look how great Prime is, look at all these shows and movies coming.  Better get/keep your subscription so you don't miss out" kind of thing.

If they take Rand to Tar Valon in the first season, it would make me seriously question Rafe's take on the series.  

It's a little bit silly to try to create a precise historical analog to the WoT.  There's not one.  There's bits and pieces pulled from several places, at various times, woven together to create something not really seen before in our history.

On 2/3/2021 at 8:09 PM, SinisterDeath said:

That's hard to say when it comes to Producers, Studios, and all those involved.
Showrunners constantly clash with those people daily over everything. Specially when executive producers promise garbage to investors. 
 

"Nothing Sunday (saving our copper for now)"
"our copper" as in "their $$". Show runner production budget =/= Amazon Prime advertisement budget.
 

"We're working on a new video".

Doesn't mean someone else isn't working on something, even if it's just the show's logo spliced into a slide-show.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that IF amazon does a big "coming to Prime 2021-22" ad, that Rafe hasn't seen exactly what they're putting together, or that they can even talk about it.

Yeah, I agree with most of that.  I wouldn't necessarily put it quite so cynically, I think if Rafe had any serious objections to including it, they'd probably maybe listen to him.  I don't know why he would, though.  I do think he'd be at least in the loop about it.  Maybe not have seen it, but at least has been made aware of it and has the general idea of it.  And I think if it is happening, your last sentence is probably accurate, they wouldn't be allowed to talk about it.

I dunno why it matters, though.  WoT's inclusion in such a promo spot would be the transcendent epitome of 'meh.'  For me at least.  It would be absolutely irrelevant to any of the questions about the series I have, unless they throw up the month it will be released along with all the other shows they highlight.  And I don't think they will.

The initial reports were that filming was shut down again.  Subsequent commenters have spoken of a "production shutdown," but typically in the sense of a shorthand way of referring to that event, not necessarily as a description of that event.  I'm sure that shutdown order did halt or delay a lot of the post-production work in Prague as well, but I'm also confident that they resumed doing anything they could do as soon as they could, that fits within the lockdown's guidelines, such as sound studio work where the actor, the sound engineer, and the director/producer don't even have to be in the same room.

I'd agree with it likely being ADR work.  And I don't think we've heard that all work in the Czech Republic was shut down, just filming, which usually has dozens of people working in close proximity to one another.  Re-dubbing lines is pretty standard post-production stuff, and it can be done in a much more socially-distant way.

They almost certainly have a screensplash logo, the Wheel with the Orobouros woven through it and "The Wheel of Time" in big font overlaid.  If they do anything at all to promote the WoT along with all their other upcoming shows for the year, it will likely just be a flash of that logo, possibly a tight shot of Rosamund's face immediately preceding or following it, in a sequence with all their other shows doing something similar.  And I don't think they'll do that, or they'd have teased something about having to be sharp-eyed to catch it.  And I doubt Amazon would put WoT even in something like that without letting the showrunners know they're doing it.  We'll just have to wait and see, though.  Doubts and speculation aren't evidence.

That's talking about post-production of episodes already fully shot, while filming other episodes, while yet other episodes are being prepped to shoot.  You can't do much post-production on an episode that hasn't been fully shot yet.  The filming reportedly being done in April is described as "pick-up shots." Additional scenes for episodes or re-shoots.  Without those scenes, the rest of the episode can't really be cut and edited together into the beginnings of a coherent whole yet, music for the episode can't be recorded or edited in, and it makes more sense to wait for effects to ensure consistency within the episode.  I'm sure they've got everything done as far as they can, and as far as it makes sense to do, for those episodes that are still waiting on these April shots, but that's not really much farther than having the existing film in the can, reviewed and ready to be cut and stitched together with the film they're still waiting on.  And there are wholistic targets, things like total runtime and placement of scene-breaks within the episode to make space for commercial breaks for future syndication, that can't really be accommodated without all of the film for that episode being available.

They wouldn't have 12 weeks.  If they have a month of shooting in April, they would have 8 weeks left in the quarter.  And you have to remember that they won't just be editing and processing those shots, almost the whole post-production process for those episodes will have been delayed, including for filming that's been in the can for months now.

My guess is that the series could be ready as early as late July or August if they really pushed and wanted to release that early.  But I suspect they don't want to, because of the Covid considerations for one, and for another, a Q4 release would put them exactly a year off from their original timeline, which helps alleviate a whole host of other scheduling and administrative headaches.

I don't think we have to worry too much about climate.  Say they release WoT on Black Friday, and drop the first three episodes, followed by one every Friday thereafter. The show would be done on New Year's Eve.  A good showing would probably have the announcement for a Season 2 greenlight as early as the week following Black Friday, but certainly before the last episode airs on New Year's Eve.  A mediocre showing might have that greenlight delayed until mid-January.  With the scripts already done, table-reads and rehearsals can begin immediately, and filming on the sets already built for Season 1 and on location could begin as early as February.  The biggest problem with Season 2 is that insofar as they follow The Great Hunt, that ends up in deep Fall.  If they're going to try for a late 2022 release for Season 2, they won't have a chance to film in the Fall.  

However, this year's production has been all over the place due to Covid.  If the production team is very confident in their show, and the focus groups and test audiences react favorably, they may announce a very early greenlight for Season 2 after filming and post-production of Season 1 is largely complete this Summer.  That would allow them to begin filming Season 2 this Fall, where they can shoot the Falme scenes first.

The argument for a combined Amazon Prime Original Series spot where WoT makes an appearance was compelling enough that I found it plausible.  But I'm not that surprised that there's no WoT specific spot for Sunday's game, and I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of combined promotion doesn't appear.  Note that the tweet, while confirming that there will be no WoT-specific material for Sunday, didn't rule out such a combined promo where the promo uses something like the WoT logo in a <1 second flash as they flash through all their other upcoming shows.  I don't expect it, but it remains a possibility.

My expectation for the video is that it will be yet another excerpt from the behind-the-scenes, making-of documentary they're clearly putting together, that will likely be released in full together with the first season release.  Those kinds of documentaries don't take as much to produce, and it gives the team something else to do during all the Covid downtime, so I wouldn't be surprised if that documentary is further along towards completion than the first season is.  It also gives something they can pull teasers from that don't risk spoilers, to keep us obsessed and impatient fans placated and engaged.  I don't expect the team to release much else except excerpts from their documentary until they're ready to drop the first trailer and begin the actual mainstream promotion for the show, likely no more than a couple of months ahead of the first season's release.  Incidentally, and pertaining to our conversation on the other thread, localizing this documentary is very likely also part of the work those voice actors will be doing for their extraordinary 6-9 month long contracts they've reportedly been retained for.

I think hoping for a Q2 release is still far too early.  Those pickup shots they have to do in April are in Q2, after all, and I find it unlikely they'll be able to finish post-production on those shots and the episodes in which they occur in the few weeks remaining in the 2nd Quarter after they finish shooting.  Moreover, as fans who are not just interested in getting to watch the show as soon as possible, but who also want the show to do well, who want the show to be renewed not just for a second season, but for the 6+ seasons it will take to come close to telling this story properly, we shouldn't want a Q2 or Q3 release, particularly this year.  People are not going to be wanting to spend their evenings and weekends this coming Spring and Summer inside in front of their TVs, after more than a year of lockdowns and social distancing, when those orders are going to be lifted and lessened due to the proliferation of the vaccine.  It sucks to have to wait, but it'll be better for the show to release in late Q3, or better, Q4, just in terms of maximizing their initial viewers.

There has been no official word that Season 2 has been green-lit, yet.  News of that, even credible hints of it, would be widely reported and repeated here.  The most we know of a Season 2 is that Rafe and the writing team have been taking advantage of the Covid delays to have all the scripts written and tightened up, ahead of any Season 2 production.

While I don't doubt that we'll see a renewal for a Season 2, pretty much regardless of how Season 1 turns out (unless, of course, it's a complete and utter bomb), I also don't doubt that Amazon will allow, and Rafe and the rest of the marketing team would want, news of a Season 2 to break as soon as it is made official.  Early renewals demonstrate confidence in their product only if they let fans know about that renewal early as well.  The only reason to keep an early renewal secret would be to retain the possibility that it might not be renewed after all.

My expectation is that they will begin actual filming of Season 2 possibly late this year, but more likely beginning early in 2022, with the anticipation that this will be a much more "normal" production run, so that Season 2 can air about a year after Season 1 will, which I believe will most likely be 4th Quarter 2021.  News of an official Season 2 renewal will precede the beginning of principle photography, but will likely not precede at least the setting of Season 1's release date, or the first trailers.  Even that would count as a very early renewal for a show that didn't start with multiple seasons ordered.  Usually, a first season is fully released, with much of the viewership numbers in, before a Season 2 is even ordered, let alone for production on it to actually begin, certain recent shows like The Boys and The Witcher notwithstanding.

I'm not saying it's the only reasonable conclusion to make from what's been revealed.  I'm saying it's the most reasonable conclusion.  Because any other conclusion depends on circumstances even more bizarre than Covid is making things already.  And contracts aren't completely inscrutable unless you read them and understand legalese.  Contracts are pretty standard things that have pretty standard terms and conditions, and going outside the bounds of those standards is not something anybody, particularly the lawyers involved, like doing because it opens up the doors for legal challenges.  You can't just have a contract do whatever you want, there are laws, regulations and precedents that limit contracts to protect both parties.

And I don't disagree that in normal circumstances, hiring localization voice actors is a signal that not only is principle photography complete, but so is nearly all post-production.  But these are not normal circumstances.  And a six to nine month contract for localization voice actors is not a normal contract.  Nobody's arguing that the bulk of principle photography is not complete, or even that post-production on most of the episodes isn't mostly complete.  But there is a reason to believe that not all principle photography is complete, because the WoT team is scheduled to resume shooting in the Czech Republic in April.  We don't have any reason to believe that shooting is for Season 2, particularly when we don't even know if there's going to be a Season 2 yet, and there's no additional shooting beyond that in April that even been hinted at, let alone scheduled, and there's no way they'll be able to shoot all of Season 2 in a month.

Literally all the evidence before us suggests a Fall release, and probably a late Fall release.  You have to engage in groundless speculation and sophistry to support the mere possibility of an imminent (as in, within the next three months) release.  It's simply not just as reasonable to believe in an imminent release as it is to believe in a Fall release.  Can you make up reasons to believe in an imminent release?  Sure.  But that doesn't make that belief reasonable.  It makes those reasons made-up.

To insist that you have to see the specific language of the contract to know whether a six to nine month long contract means the actors contracted for that term will be working in that term is some epic level semantic dodging.  If it means anything other than what the plain meaning suggests, it would be an even more bizarre contract than merely being much longer than normal.

And the point about our knowing about their hiring localization voice actors for a relatively smaller market like Portuguese is that they very likely have, or are in the process of hiring localization actors for the other, bigger language markets as well.  And since they haven't yet announced a release date for a primary, English-language release suggests that they're going to be releasing the localized versions at the same time, or very closely following the English-language release.  If they were ready to do an English-language release now, they wouldn't hire localization actors for such a long term into this year.  The only reasonable explanation for such a long term contract for localization actors is that they're ready to begin localization on some episodes now, and they're going to be getting more episodes ready for localization over the next six to nine months.  Which means that six to nine months from now is when we can expect the first season to be ready.

On the contrary, particularly for voice-over work, the length of the contract is revelatory, and you have to go through some bizarre semantic twisting to make the plain meaning of a six-to-nine month long contract possibly mean anything else.  It pretty clearly means they're signing contracts that will have them available for work and working for the next six to nine months.  They wouldn't be contracting voice actors for a month of work per year for the next 9 years when there's no official word they'll even have a season 2 yet.  A payment agreement doesn't constitute the length of the term for the work contracted.

And I'd like you to show me one example of a show that contracts localization voice actors for future seasons, before their first season is even complete.  Nobody puts too much effort into making sure the same localization voice actors are available for future seasons; it's too easy to find similar-enough sounding replacements if the actor who did it last time isn't available in the future.  That's different from making sure the same voice actor is available for the whole of one season.  The gap in time alone makes small differences tolerable that would be less tolerable from one episode to another.

Were this a normal production, with a normal filming and post-production schedule, I would agree that the mere hiring of localization voice actors for a normal, month-to-month contract, is evidence of a release that's coming sooner rather than later.  But this is not a normal production, and that is not a normal contract for localization voice-overs.  In any event, I would not expect a release until after those contracts have finished.  Even if this were a normal production, the hiring of localization actors for such a long term would tell me that something really strange was taking place behind the scenes.  And the fact of hiring localization actors, particularly for a smaller market language like Portuguese rather than a larger market French, German or Mandarin, before an English-language release date had even been announced, would signal that they want a minimal delay, possibly none at all, between the English-language release and the international releases in other languages.  Which means we shouldn't expect a release, in any language, until close to the end or soon after the end of the six-to-nine month long contracts for the localization voice actors.

Because it still takes some time, and by having a bunch of episodes already localized, when the last bits of the first season are finally shot, and the last episodes are finally edited and ready to go for release, they can quickly (as in, less than a week) get those last episodes localized and do a big, fully localized, same-day international release. 

If they had all the episodes ready to localize, they wouldn't hire voice actors for six to nine month contracts.  If they were going to have a delayed international release, they'd wait to have all the episodes ready before they contracted the voice actors.  The most reasonable theory is that they have a number of episodes ready to localize, and that there will be more localization work over the next six to nine months, as the final bit of filming and post-production work gets done.

I tend to agree with the author of the video.  I think the fact that the contracts extend so long indicates that they're anticipating needing them for that long.  And I think that suggests that the speculation that not all the filming and editing of Season One is done yet is accurate. 

Normally, all or nearly all of the filming is done for the season before very much post-production begins. And normally, nearly all post-production is complete before localization begins.  Normally, voice-over actors get month-to-month contracts because, as you rightly note, it doesn't take much time to do the work and edit it in.  Normally, all the episodes of a production like this are fully complete before the first episode airs.  But, this is not a normal production, and six to nine months contracts for localization voice actors are not normal contracts for them.  There were enormous delays in filming, to the extent that we still don't know whether it is yet complete.  That means weird and delayed post-production.  It's likely that they have maybe up to six episodes fully ready to go right now.  And that's why they hired these actors now and basically reserved them for the next six to nine months.  Because they can get these guys to work localizing those all-but-done episodes now, and make sure they still have them when the other episodes can get finished.  Then they might even be able to pull off something almost unheard of: a fully localized, world-wide, same-day release.

Put it this way.  If they had all the episodes ready to go for release at the end of February, or say March, as you would have it, why would they hire those voice actors for six to nine months?  Why wouldn't they just hire them for the month or two of work it would take, if all the episodes were ready to be localized?

About fifty cubic assloads.

They have control over it now.  Licensing authors to write spin-offs doesn't give them any greater control over the canon, it makes controlling the canon that much harder, to make sure the new author doesn't contradict the original author.  Fan-fiction is always going to exist, and there's a metric fuckton of WoT fan-fiction already.  But fan-fiction doesn't affect the canon.

As for why Harriet doesn't want to cash in and create a WoT Expanded Universe, I suspect it comes down to two things.  First, she's already financially comfortable, so there's no real need to cash in.  Second, expanding the universe to fill in the gaps, answering questions like "what happens after the Last Battle?" or, "How was channelling discovered in the First Age and how did that lead to the Age of Legends?" or, "How is channelling ultimately lost?" all misunderstands the draw of the world-building Jordan had accomplished.  His world-building is not like Tolkien's or Roddenberry's, where there's an elaborate effort to make a full and coherent universe, with a canonical explanation for everything that happens or could happen.  Jordan's world-building is vague and mysterious, with blatant gaps and apparent contradictions and even, if considered carefully, conceptual impossibilities.  The concepts that undergird his world are vague, metaphorical and more like riddles than answers.  This invites the reader into a different kind of wonder at his world, one full of speculation and diverging points of view, that would be dispelled if actual answers to those questions were provided.  "How did Rand light his pipe at the end of MoL," and "Who is Nakomi," are the epitome of the kinds of questions WoT leaves us with, and refuses to answer.  That refusal is important to capturing the reader's imagination.  Actually answering those questions in future spin-offs would deflate that invitation, dispell the compelling mystery, and keep readers from returning to the originals in the hopes of finding some hidden clue, some subtle foreshadowing, that would work to either support or defeat some fan-theory or head-canon.  Just wait for the next licensed sequel or spin-off.  At least until you get an answer you don't like.  And then you'll move on.

I don't think you have to relegate Moghedien to one or two scenes per season after she removes Nynaeve's block.  Moggy's one of the primary lenses into the antagonists.  Particularly after her failure and punishment, she's there almost any time Moridin is, and at every meeting the Forsaken have.  As readers, we come to know her more than any other Forsaken, her point of view, her motives and fears and her personality.  Of all the Forsaken, she's the one that demonstrates to the readers the fundamental humanity, with all its flaws of foibles, of those prominent followers of the Dark One.  Of course, that doesn't mean she's the biggest threat, that she does the most to thwart the good guys or that she's instrumental in moving the plot forward.  But telling a story is about more than just relaying events and their proximal causes.  It's also about the characters involved, and how they feel and grow with respect to those events.  Often, a story is better told through the perspective of someone more to the sidelines than through someone in the thick of the action.

Honestly, I feel like people are looking too high up for those characters that will be merged. Some of the Forsaken may be merged, but I haven't seen a very compelling reason why they'd need to, except to cut the number down to make the remaining ones seem more impactful.  But 13 is a powerful symbolic number, and some of the Forsaken are never really intended to be more than high-level cannon fodder, existing only to threaten from the background, and then be defeated and destroyed by Rand and his allies.  There's no real need to merge them, and doing so deprives the good guys of obstacles to overcome. 

Most of them have only a few scenes before their deaths, and one even has no scenes before his death, he just shows up, threatens Rand, and get balefired.  Aginor and Balthamel show up and die, then get brought back and recast into Halima and Dashiva.  Both would be recurring for a couple of seasons, and have sufficient scenes throughout to keep their actors attached.  Ishamael gets recast into Moridin and becomes a semi-recurring character.  Lanfear is recurring throughout, but she also gets changed into Cyndane, and she's fond of disguises, so it's likely that a handful of actors will portray her.  Bel'al shows up and dies immediately.  Rhavin has a handful of scenes then dies.  Sammael has a few more, then dies.  Asmodean gets a bunch of scenes as a background/supporting character in Rand's camp, probably a recurring character for a whole season, and then dies.  Graendal is trickier, because she gets a few scenes early on with Sammael, then nothing until Natrin's Barrow where she becomes more like Moghedien.  But one could either cut those earlier scenes and hold off on casting Graendal until Natrin's Barrow, or film the Natrin's Barrow scenes, and the scenes with Slayer after her failure with Perrin where Shadar Haran takes her for her punishment, early on and keep 'em banked until needed, and recast Graendal into Hessalam after her failure with Perrin.  Semirhage doesn't need to show up except for a couple of episodes, when they take her captive, when she's being questioned, and when she nearly kidnaps Rand with the sad bracelets.  Messana doesn't need to be specifically cast at all; she's always hidden or disguised.

I think the mergers are going to be more in the order of the tertiary named characters, especially the Aes Sedai.  I think we also see mergers among the nobility in Tear, Cairhein and Andor.  I have yet to see an argument for merging Gawyn and Galad that wasn't ultimately rooted in a shallow dislike of a particular character.  The perspectives they bring to the story, and they things they do in service to the plot, are too different and too irreconcilable for them to be satisfactorily merged.  And it shows, because most of those proposed "mergers" simply cut Gawyn almost entirely.  I suspect that were Egwene not such an obvious main character, many would try to cut or "merge" her too.