On 5/28/2019 at 11:59 PM, RDY said:

I wonder if they'll keep the part about Two Rivers people not being lily-white, race-wise. I mean, Rand says he's surprised to see someone with blonde hair for the first time in his life when he meets Else Grimwell's mother. And some people bullied him because he had grey eyes, which only peddlers or other foreigners had, no Two Rivers person had that. 

 

I wonder how the fandom will react to having lots of Latinos or Middle Easterners for the main cast, for example (not Rand, since he's clearly a foreigners, but basically everyone else in the Two Rivers). 

It's a common misconception that people from the Two Rivers have "brown" skin (which is a fairly useless description but whatever). They in fact have fairly light skin, just slightly darker than Rand's. This is specifically stated regarding Egwene, she has to spend months in the Aiel Waste to get tan enough to pass for Aiel (and she already had a farmer's tan to begin with). They do indeed have dark hair and eyes, just like pretty much all of Southern Europe. They are most likely intended to look like Europeans living close to the Mediterranean, such as Italy, southern France or Spain.

Now, I don't care how they cast the show as long as they keep to the iconic appearance of Rand and the Aiel and there is some realism in that the Two Rivers people look somewhat homogenous, different from Rand but not so different to make it laughable that Rand could believe Tam is his father. I have myself suggested Southern Europeans or Latinos (which fundamentally tend to overlap) could work perfectly fine. I don't think people would mind as long as it doesn't feel forced and is coherent with the books.

1 hour ago, Tomp said:

There is a business sence if they want to drastically increase their streaming subscribers.

 

If they get 20 million new subscribers worldwide with a $10 monthly subscription they'll get 3,6 billion dollars a year for their new subscribers. If you consider that LOTR will go on for 5 years then there's plenty of dough left for the other Projects.

 

I think Amazon may be doing a big effort to seize a big part of the streaming audience with both Netflix and Disney having their own straming services and are creating a lot of new content. I heard that Netflix were planning to spend 8 billion dollars in 2018 on original material. 

 

If Amazon want to be part of the streaming services they have to go big or be left behind. 

You are assuming that WoT would be their only option though. With LOTR they still have an extremely strong epic fantasy show and WoT would be hugely expensive to produce. For the price of WoT they can probably have 5-10 "normal" TV shows, aka drama, crime, comedy etc. That is the same reason why Netflix has been mostly doing many cheap TV shows and canceling the expensive ones such as Marco Polo and Sense8, you simply get more bang (subscribers) for your buck. I certainly hope I am wrong and Amazon end up dumping a billion or two into WoT over 8-10 season but I am sceptical.

12 hours ago, wheeloftimetv said:

Amazon have confirmed that The Dark Tower TV show is in development with them but not green lit yet, which gives the deadline article from feb that mentioned both DT and WoT more credence. If WoT is at Amazon then it is most likely in the same situation. 

If that's the case we can only hope that Jeff Bezos personally champions it because I can't see it making any business sense for them to green light both this and LOTR and they have already committed to 5 seasons of LOTR...

Okay, so I have a little (VERY little) bit of information to add.  This is unofficial, and maybe it is already known by many, as it's been a while since I've followed "what is known and not known" about the Wheel of Time TV series.

 

What I can confirm comes from a personal connection that I cannot divulge, which I know makes this post reek of tinfoil-hat smell.  I have a VERY tenuous and indirect connection to... someone at Sony Pictures Television Studios (more of a "I know someone who knows someone"), and that person is bringing this monster of a show to television.  Acknowledging that, you can choose to believe me or not.  This probably isn't even really news.

 

The series is being developed by Sony Pictures TV (we knew that, right?).  There's no cast yet, and to be honest I do not even know how far along they are, but I know they're still early enough in development that no one at Sony is even discussing casting yet, but the feeling is that the show will star mostly unknowns with one or two somewhat recognizable names, but probably not huge stars, unless the show ends up being wildly successful.  But it is absolutely going forward, enough so that some folks at Sony (and people connected to them) are all reading the Wheel of Time, many of them for the first time.  There is at least one extremely high-level executive at Sony who is directly involved in the show's development.  I can't name the person without breaking a confidence, but I do know who the person is and what their position within Sony is, and when I found out who it was, and I saw their track record on other TV shows, I was happily surprised.

 

I can say with some degree of certainty that the folks in charge of the TV show are taking it VERY seriously.  They are all keenly aware of what the series means to its fans.  They might not be able to accomplish everything that fans want to see (some corners are going to have to be cut, considering the medium of television), but they're really trying.  They're moving carefully, and thoughtfully, and the last thing they want is to release the show and have it reviled and denounced by the WoT fan community.  They do feel the pressure to make it something people want to see.  I couldn't begin to guess about when it might be ready for broadcast, but barring some kind of catastrophe, it seems inevitable to my untrained eye that this will be on your TV eventually, and not necessarily as a low-budget affair.  They are also aware of the Red Eagle "Dragonmount" pilot debacle.  They are keeping that in mind as a cautionary tale, to remind them that they can't just release a crap show, slap a WoT sticker on it and call it good.  They do want this to be something special.  They have ambitions for multiple seasons, but at present all their efforts are being directed towards making season 1 something they they can be proud of.

 

I hope this helps.  And I apologize if it does not.

Well, as you wrote we can't really trust any "I know someone"-information but assuming what you write is legit:

It isn't really any news but at least it sounds good that it is taken seriously and people are working on it. As as been said many times before, if it is low-budget they shouldn't bother at all (and by low-budget I mean less than GoT season 1 had). The first season needn't necessarily be hugely expensive (but I believe getting some battles in there, ex. The Fall of Manetheren, The Battle of Tarwin's Gap and/or possibly The Battle of Falme depending on if it is 1 or 2 books, would really help and there is of course some CGI needed for the sparse magic). If it is successful they can always get a bigger budget for when it actually matters (books 4+).

Obviously they have to plan one season at a time, that's how tv works, but there is really no way to make season 1 completely self-contained so they shouldn't try, they need to plan the story for the long haul like the books.

In the end, whether this show is ever produced or not is up to whether they find someone to pay for and air it. At the moment this is sadly looking doubtful due to so many other shows having beaten WoT to the punch (Kingkiller, LOTR, Shannara, GoT, the Witcher etc.). We can only blame Red Eagle for having sat on the rights for so many years without doing anything productive, making it by far the best selling fantasy series in history to never have been adapted for the screen.

REE or their fanboys respond:

 

"I agree with a few statements above. Terez and anyone from Dragonmount would not be considered reliable sources. Harriet has not released any official statement, and "hearsay" that was spoken at JordanCon is simply just personal opinion, not confirmed factual information. Reality check -- REE are absolutely 100% involved in the Creative production of the show, along with Radar undet the Sony umbrella. Furthermore, Dragonmount needs to step back and stop acting as an official spokesperson for Harriet and/or anyone involved the show. If she wants to confirm information, let her do it. For now, it's all speculation on her half and everyone else posting false facts"

 

Meh.

Probably just a fanboy blowing off steam. I can't imagine Sony letting them be anywhere near the production with their track record, usually not even authors themselves are allowed into the creative process, let alone Random Rights Holders With Terrible History And Hated By The Fan Base. However, if they are, the project is dead before it's even begun. They have held the rights for over 10 years and haven't managed to do anything with it except insulting the author's work and his widow, and we fans have long memory....

 

This is an attempt to sum up the suggestions/desires of the fans (10+ msgboards, forums):

 

no book after LOC

no Perrin

no Faile

no Aviendha

no Min

no Wondergirls

no Asmo

no Siuan

no battles

no Fain

no Gawyn

no TAR

no BA

no SF

no WC

no Seanchan

no Ogiers

number of AS is limited to <10

number of Fs is limited to <3

number of WOs is limited to <3

 

This will be so much fun!

If they cut all that, what will it be about? It will only loosely based on TWoT...Oh well, they did the same thing with The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith on CW, and it's an excellent show. I guess it all depends on whether the script writers are fans.

 

All of the above are horrible suggestions. If I wanted to make a list of how to ruin the show and have it cancelled immediately it wouldn't be much different. A faithful adaptation is the only way to succeed with this series, naturally you would cut out a lot of less important scenes and background characters and even some of the late-mid story arcs (I'm looking at you Faile/Shaido mess) and a fair amount of minor changes will have to be made (which could very well be improvements in many cases). but all of the above are important elements to the story and what makes WoT my favourite fantasy series.

And seriously, no battles!? Who doesn't like battles!? Naturally you can't have them all the time but in the first half of the series at least they are usually limited to one per book which should be easily manageable with a decent budget. 

And seriously, in this day and age people are suggesting that we remove virtually all important female characters from one of the most gender-balanced fantasy series of all time, turning it into an all-male main cast? Really?

Patience, p<tience, abd stull more patience. (I don't know what gets by the way) vut patience, abd vut in the greek way where v in an en an and a u is a i. I by the way still want penies, but guess production takes what it takes. Penises, penises, penises. one must make a point. Penises!

Best post of the thread! Couldn't agree more, 10/10

 

Re it seeming too much like LotR I think that's more of a selling point for an adaptation than a negative.

 

That's the big question.

 

I definitely believe LotR is much more of a selling point than a negative, there hasn't really been anything LotR-esque (by that I mean like the movies, not books) on TV yet. Game of Thrones has in setting, tone etc. virtually nothing in common with LotR in my opinion and SoT/Shannara didn't even try to reach that level. It's not like the Hobbit movies didn't perform at the box office the last couple of years, despite their obvious flaws. I believe there is a much bigger audience for a high-quality, truly epic and unapologetically uncynical/romantic* fantasy TV series than most people believe. But "high-quality" is the key word, whatever one might think about it mainstream TV watchers are extremely turned off by low production values, especially when it comes to fantasy/SF. 

You can't go into filming this series thinking "We are going to make a good fantasy series". You need to go into it thinking "We are going to create the most epic. high-quality, award-winning tv series ever made. Nobody is even going to care which genre it is because they are going to be too busy telling all their friends how awesome it is and if they don't start watching it too they are going to be lost at every dinner/party/lunch break for the foreseeable future." That is what Game of Thrones did and whatever one's opinion of that show it has worked.

*Romantic as in marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealised (Merriam-Webster)

1. It makes more sense. the whole Shara thing was crud anyway.

Second that, I believe it will work the best on screen and will also merge two characters. Merging characters will probably be necessary to a great extent in order to keep the cast remotely manageable, even though that's hard both practically and emotionally in a story this detailed and complex.

 

 

Happy New Year! Where’s our TV show?

The latest rumour for the rumour mill...

http://www.wheeloftime.tv/2017/01/has-good-ship-amazon-sprung-leak.html

 

 

 

Amazon would make a lot of sense because they would make money off the book sales, the show, and any merchandise that they would sell also. They would do much better than HBO because so many people already buy stuff from them.

 

Let's hope that the rumour is true and Amazon is making the show. They would have the most to gain from making sure it's successful and would also have the best reason to keep it faithful to the books (since they will want to push book sales in parallel). They certainly have the money to take the risk and desperately need a high-profile show to put them on the map, tv-wise.

 

 

 

There is the possibility that the deal was with Sony Starz and lionsgate taking over Starz just a month after Harriet's announcement put a hold on anything being announced and lionsgate then decided to shelve WoT in favour of there Kingkiller project.

 

 

 

If this is the case we can pretty much say goodbye to any chance of a WoT adaptation ever happening. The tv fantasy high will be well over by the time (10+ years) anything might happen with the rights and the books themselves will be too old/not current enough and all fans will have moved on. It would be a depressing end well fitting the curse-like bad luck this series has had regarding adaptations. Really hoping Starz didn't buy the rights.

 

As far as I see it WoT has a really short window to get on the air in order to be successful. It pretty much closes one year after GoT ends (barring some other fantasy tv show of similar popularity coming and keeping the flame alive). Once the GoT crowd stops longing for something new and moves on it's over.

 

 

 

Wheel of Time will likely arrive as a last gasp for high fantasy shows unless something happens beforehand. Which is very unfortunate. The series could make for an unbelievable show not to mention you could take the entire world and create many new and unique 'Final Fantasy' types of games that cover different characters and periods. 

 

I am actually starting to lean more and more towards wishing for an animated series. There would be far fewer moving parts and quicker to get into production and a greater likelihood that it would actually be finished.

 

CW could do a fun, lightweight version of WoT: The 100 is a decent show that doesn't hold back on ruthlessness, character deaths or difficult storylines. But it is very much an exception and you'd lose the opportunity to do a decent version of WoT elsewhere.

 

Based on the negotiations that were underway with Sony, my guess would be that Sony has bought the rights and would be discussing the project with AMC (their partner on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul). Amazon I think would be very interested as they likely want a tentpole fantasy series. Amazon have also had a massive upheaval in the way their shows are bought and operate recently, which has put a lot of projects on hold, which would also go some way to explaining the long delay since there was any news.

There is the possibility that the deal was with Sony Starz and lionsgate taking over Starz just a month after Harriet's announcement put a hold on anything being announced and lionsgate then decided to shelve WoT in favour of there Kingkiller project.

 

If this is the case we can pretty much say goodbye to any chance of a WoT adaptation ever happening. The tv fantasy high will be well over by the time (10+ years) anything might happen with the rights and the books themselves will be too old/not current enough and all fans will have moved on. It would be a depressing end well fitting the curse-like bad luck this series has had regarding adaptations. Really hoping Starz didn't buy the rights.

As far as I see it WoT has a really short window to get on the air in order to be successful. It pretty much closes one year after GoT ends (barring some other fantasy tv show of similar popularity coming and keeping the flame alive). Once the GoT crowd stops longing for something new and moves on it's over.

 

It is curious. My guess is that there was some kind of last-minute legal hitch. As far as I know the deal was done, but the company involved has chosen not to announce it yet. There may be issues getting writes/directors/produces of the calibre they need. I also get the impression they haven't gotten an excited, involved showrunner on board and they really need that to move forwards.

 

Well, it's only been 6 months. Although we are all very excited about this and want more news there probably isn't much for them to say at this point. Some info on showrunner and writers would be nice and an indication of which direction they are going, as would info on which tv company is involved. It's possible some or all of these are yet to be decided and/or they are waiting for more to be done before making an announcement. That said, some life signs would be great to know the project hasn't just died...

 

Honestly, I don't think that they got/will get more than 20-25 million for the first season. And they will screw it up, royally.

 

That would be ridiculous, though. The Shannara Chronicles had a budget of 40 million for its first season (and it still looked terrible). The first season of Game of Thrones got a 60 million dollar budget and that was before anyone knew if a show like that was even viable. After Game of Thrones companies should be willing to invest a good deal more than that since the risk has to be considered significantly lower. If they aren't they shouldn't even bother, frankly, since there is virtually no chance of it succeeding.

 

 

Ameratsu, Shiva and Kali showing up are kind of a big hint. So is the Mercedes Benz hood ornament, and the giraffe freize, and the aircraft contrails. I agree, the mythological backstory should remain hinted at, but it shouldn't be removed altogether.

 

I suspect RJ would have included a few more hints if he had lived (he seemed to be going somewhere with the Ogier and the Book of Translation in KoD, but Sanderson never picked up on it), but ultimately it's irrelevant to the main storyline.

 

That's exactly what I would prefer and am advocating for.  I just think that a Prologue scene set in what is supposed to be clearly a futuristic version of our world, followed by a CGI depiction of our world's geography morphing and changing catastrophically into Randland to depict the Breaking, is not just unnecessary, but actively distracting and confusing.  I really don't think the Prologue has any place in a TV series in the first place, except as flashbacks Rand has to both depict his madness and to fill in that backstory when it becomes relevant to the story and the weight of guilt and responsibility Rand forces himself to carry.

 

I am ambivalent about the Prologue (which takes place entirely indoors and doesn't hint at any form of relationship with our reality, I would like to remind everyone). I think it is a great scene and really draws you in to the story/world as well as giving a lot of necessary exposition even though you may not realise it immediately. It will also provide an opportunity for some early magic/special effects which is scarce in the beginning and might help to keep people tuned in (but would also be expensive). However, it will take about 5 min from an already overfull first episode where you basically have to cross the Taren to not be hopelessly behind, and there's a lot of story before that which is hard to skip since it sets up the motivation for them all leaving. I would probably end up keeping it if it was my call but I can definitely see a professional screenwriter cutting it (or condense it into a 30 sec flashback/dream sequence).

 

While there isn't as much obvious fat to cut in the first books as in the latter

 

Oh, there are many thing which should be cut. 

 

 

 

By obvious fat I mean entire story arcs or characters that can be removed without much consequence (see books 7-10 especially). Of course everything would have to be made shorter and many scenes removed but you really have to hit all major story points in the first book or you will send chock waves throughout the entire series. Basically you have:

                                                                  -> Wolfbrother and Travelling People (Egwene and Perrin)

Two Rivers -> Baerlon -> Shadar Logoth -> Nynaeve learns she can channel (Moiraine, Lan and Nynaeve, could be short) -> Caemlyn -> the Ways -> Fal Dara -> The Blight

                                                                  -> Rand and Mat's journey  (could be cut down a lot but some would have to be there, ex. Four Kings)

All you these are really necessary if you don't want to completely rewrite the story.

I think they should steer clear of the "our world in the distant future"-thing. Screen time will be extremely limited as it is and it has no bearing on the story whatsoever. The world is so well-made and powerful that there is no need to go all Shannara with it. I think it would just be a distraction and confuse people who haven't read the books.

Focusing on the first season (since it will be by far the most important for the long-term survival of the series) I don't think there is any real alternative to fitting both of the first two books in there. Even if the series becomes wildly successful we can only really hope for 7-8 seasons. While there isn't as much obvious fat to cut in the first books as in the latter I went through the books quickly and it was quite easy to divide them into 8 hour-long episodes each (for a 16 episode season, which to be fair is pushing it). There would also then be a natural mid-season finale (fighting the Forsaken at the Eye of the World/Battle at Tarwin's Gap) and season finale (Battle of Falme). It would also allow for a high pace and action scenes in every episode (in contrast to entire episodes of walking and singing in taverns) which is probably necessary to keep the non-bookreaders interested. The big challenge will be to get all/most of the exposition and internal dialogue/dream sequences in there or something that does the same for character and world development.

Unhealthily excited about this and also scared it might never actually happen. It will require tremendous risk-taking from everyone involved to be able to do it well. Hopefully Team Jordan will make sure it is reasonably faithful to the books.