What do you mean by "if it's going to be a straight series order or going through an initial pilot stage"?

Depending on the network, they may ask for a proof-of-concept pilot episode, one episode to show what the series is going to look like, or they may just order the full first season immediately.

I'm not sure Peter Jackson would be available. He seems to make movies with very big budgets. I don't know what the budget could be per season for WoT. Maybe something like 50-100 million dollars? Just a guess, so I could be way off...

Jackson's next project is the second and third Tintin movies with Spielberg and the Temeraire TV series he is producing. No interest from him at all in WoT.

Just to reiterate, GRRM will not in a million years be working on this in any way, shape or form. Finishing ASoIaF is the only project he'll be working on for at least the next 5 years and maybe more.

The studio will announce it when they've worked a couple of things out, probably how many episodes, if it's going to be a straight series order or going through an initial pilot stage, and maybe a writer or showrunner announcement. That may be what they're locking down now.

They'll formally announce it a long, long time before casting. And from announcement until you see it on screen, will probably be between two and three years.

2. Is the director they bring on board a true fan, determined to hold true to the original story? - Based on rumors whose source I won't divulge, we have a good chance that he/she is.

The rumours at the moment are that some well-known fans/webmasters/people may be involved as creative consultants. For a project of this magnitude they will be wanting experienced personnel with lots of TV production experience or a significant track record in writing in Hollywood. I have no doubt there's plenty of scriptwriters around who have read and enjoyed the books.

They will also want to strike a balance between people who know the source material well but aren't precious about it: things will have to be changed, significantly, from the books to the TV screen even if we get 6-7 seasons at 14-16 episodes per season (which I suspect is the absolute maximum we'll get, credibly). If they're looking at 10 or 12-episode seasons, then the story will have to changed a lot more, and having someone who's wedded to the books is not a good idea at that stage.

As this is a TV show, there will be many directors involved over the course of the series. It's more important that the showrunner, producers and writers are more familiar with the source material, at least up to a point.

Get George R.R. Martin (or his crew) to help with the screenplays.

I don't think George has ever read past The Eye of the World, so that would really not be a good idea.

George RR Martin is too old to finish his own series.

That's really not true.

The ones who make game of thrones are in trouble because of their sexism and so on.

No, they're not. Maybe they should be, but their approach has turned GoT into the biggest drama show on TV in the world at the moment, so unfortunately HBO has concluded that this approach works.

+1 on this. I think HBO could be the studio. It makes sense. GOT has only one more season of filming. GOT has a huge audience that HBO will want to keep (I have HBO only for GOT). If HBO gets started on WOT now, they can start filming around the time GOT is complete. The team that built GOT at HBO could literally step into WOT development without missing a beat.

 

If HBO didn't pick up WOT it would be a huge loss for them.

It won't be HBO. There is literally no interest there, the team behind GoT already has other projects lined up (David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have a movie development deal at Fox and will be moving straight from GoT Season 8 into that) and the company that has already picked up WoT (this deal is done, we're just waiting for the announcement) has poured a lot of time and money into the project and must either have been in serious discussions about it previously or have swept in with a colossal truckload of cash. If it's the former it'll be either Sony or Universal, who are the last two companies we 100% know have had official discussions about optioning the series, or someone like Netflix or Amazon who have that ready cash lying around.

It's a good thing it's not HBO. Their modus operandi for how they develop shows has changed in the last few years, especially because of GoT and True Blood before it, and they now want their big-budget flagship series to have a lot of sex and violence in them. That's apparently part of the problems they've been having on Westworld, which didn't have those elements prevalent in the show and may have had to have been readjusted to include more. Having a WoT show that can depict the charnel house at Dumai's Wells would be good, but I certainly don't want one where we get scenes of Rand and his three girlfriends getting it on all together or a graphic Egeanin/Bayle Domon series just because the network has mandated it.

*double post*

Those 'battles' are hilarious.

Hardhome and the Battle of the Wall were hilarious?

The Blackwater was a bit disappointing (apart from the wildfire ship blowing up) and the stuff in Season 1 was awful, but since then they've done exceptionally well for a TV series. I've certainly seen big-budget movies that had worse battle sequences than those two.

Sony are the most likely candidates: they were in deep discussions with Red Eagle and with Harriet just before the whole legal battle thing blew up. Hollywood being Hollywood, they probably just said "Go sort this out, call us when you've done a deal and we'll move on from there." If it isn't Sony, then someone like Amazon or Netflix may have gotten involved.

Sony don't air shows themselves, so would have to work with a production partner and AMC is the likeliest candidate based on their previous relationships. However, AMC have a reputation for being quite frugal which WoT definitely will not need.

There is zero chance it's HBO. HBO only do one show in one genre at a time and WoT does not have the adult content they prefer, at least in the quantities they want.

As long as Red Eagle are not involved it is good news, the people at REE should be hung from their toes and beaten for their last monstrosity Winter Dragon...

It's likely that Red Eagle will have a production credit. They tried to sue Harriet for "defamation" and then withdrew that suit a few months later. That's a very traditional, tactical move in Hollywood: you don't have a leg to stand on so you either force the other side into expensive litigation taking years to sort out, even knowing that you'll lose, or you can say "Let's make a deal now and get on with things." With Red Eagle's option expired and their attempt to retain the rights by making a paid-for infomercial not likely to fly, that's the only option that they had left. Based on the rapidity with which things have happened (it may be 14 months, but that's really fast compared to how quickly Hollywood lawyers normally move), I suspect that they made a deal where Red Eagle still gets a slice of the pie, but (hopefully) no control.

There is also the fact that, if this is the Sony deal Red Eagle were pursuing in 2014, they did set up the deal in the first place so actually some form of credit would be appropriate even if they are no longer directly involved.

(On "it has a lot of effects": many friends of mine refers GOT as the "talking heads" show)

That was a fair assessment in Season 1 or maybe as late as early Season 2. For the last couple of seasons? Nope, they've thrown masses of huge battles, elaborate CG establishing shots and other elements that are extremely expensive. That's not just GoT, a whole bunch of shows have massively upped their CG and effects content recently, and done as good a job as any Hollywood movie. It actually makes WoT fairly credible as a TV project, whilst even 5-6 years it might have been more dubious.

The Alloy of Law

Three centuries have passed since a young woman named Vin and a band of assorted thieves used the powers of the Mistborn to save the world of Scadrial, dispersing the ash-clouds forever. Vin and her cohorts have become figures of myth or religious awe, but time has moved on. Great skyscrapers are racing for the sky whilst steam and electrical power are becoming more commonplace.

 

 

Out in the Roughs, Waxillium Ladrian has spent twenty years trying to bring peace and order to a rough, frontier land. Called home to the city of Elendel by the death of his uncle and forced to inherit his family's estate and business, Waxillium finds trading his six-shooters for cost ledgers to be harder than he'd expected. A spate of kidnappings and disappearance soon tempt him back to a life of law-enforcement, but Wax needs to face his own guilt before he can face down an old enemy.

 

The Alloy of Law is a (mostly) stand-alone novel set in the same world as Brandon Sanderson's earlier Mistborn Trilogy. Sanderson has previously announced that he plans three trilogies set in this world, one set in a medieval era, one in a contemporary setting and one in a futuristic milieu. The Alloy of Law is a side-story unrelated to these planned future works, though Sanderson layers some hints for the second trilogy into the narrative and also sets up a sequel (or potentially several sequels) for this book in its closing pages.

 

Written as a side-project to help the author stay fresh whilst bringing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time sequence to its long-awaited conclusion and coming in at barely a third the length of his last novel, The Way of Kings, it'd be easy to dismiss The Alloy of Law as a bit of fluffy filler to tide his publishers over for a year. This would be a mistake as The Alloy of Law is one of Sanderson's best novels to date.

 

Sanderson has always been a solid, entertaining author but his most laudable aspect has been the way he's grown and learned with each novel. Arguably his biggest problem has been the length of his books: the Mistborn volumes and certainly The Way of Kings, whilst good books, felt overlong for the amount of plot in them. With The Alloy of Law written as a short side-project, Sanderson has forced himself to write much more concisely, tightly and efficiently than normal, resulting in his most focused, page-turning novel to date. Sanderson has also learned a lot about how to deploy humour in a book (probably learning from his issues - eventually resolved - with handling Mat in the Wheel of Time books), with this book also being his funniest.

 

Although Sanderson's lightest and most humourous book to date, The Alloy of Law has its share of darker moments, opening with Wax accidentally killing an innocent person and being haunted by it through the book. It also touches upon more epic elements, with several potential references to upcoming storylines in the second Mistborn trilogy. The book also continues Sanderson's tradition of featuring minor links to his other fantasy novels with the appendix apparently being written by the world-hopping Hoid (and featuring a reference to the events of Elantris). The updated setting is another plus point, with the mixture of magic, steam trains, guns and electricity being unusual for a fantasy and blurring the lines between epic fantasy, steampunk and urban fantasy to create something that is more interesting than the norm. Action sequences - something Sanderson has handled quite well throughout his career - are also very strong, with some of his more colourful and memorable battles and duels being depicted here.

 

Sanderson delineates his main three characters - Waxillium, Wayne and Marasi - well, though the POV structure is a little distracting. The entire first half of the novel is from Wax's POV but suddenly switches over in the latter half to include Wayne, Marasi and the main villain. It feels that Sanderson could have found a more consistent structure to use than this. He also nicely inverts some cliches, such as when Wax finds himself betrothed to a woman who initially appears to be a severe harridan but becomes more well-rounded a character as the book proceeds.

 

On the negative side, some of the secondary characters aren't as well-defined as the three heroes. In addition, there are moments when it sounds like the lawless frontier would have been a more interesting setting than yet another fantasy city (albeit one that more resembles turn-of-the-century New York than a typical fantasy conurbation), though the culture clash between the two settings is something Sanderson handles well.

 

The Alloy of Law (****½) is a tight, well-written fantasy novel that uses traditional tropes and ideas but combines them with an unusual (for epic fantasy) setting to produce something fresh and engaging. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.