Wheel of Time TV Series

[Breakdown]

Sony have bought the rights to the Wheel of Time and hired a show runner. It looks like the series is pretty close to getting made.

I'm not sure how well it will translate to television though. It's been a while since I read the series (and I only made it to book six), but from what I remember the pace is really slow and it's very heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings to start with.

 

[jklinders]

As long as it's not as bad as Legend of the Seeker. Not that those books needed any help in being shittier.

Wheel of time, from what I read would need the ever loving hell adapted out of it to make it work. I wouldn't mind the whole battle of the sexes crap indulged in by most of the cast being written out as well. The series wouldn't need any filler, that was taken care quite nicely in universe.

I gave up on the series after the 6 th or 7 th book. It was just dragging out too much. But maybe in TV format it might be digestible for me.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Well I'm excited. I love The Wheel of Time, and I actually finished it too!

It certainly does sag in the middle though, with way too many characters and plot threads that move too slowly. That would need to be trimmed. And the "battle of the sexes" part sure did get annoying fast. It felt very much like overcompensation by Jordan to prove he was totally not sexist.

But I've been wishing for a WoT tv series for years, and if it's done well I will be ecstatic. It will need to work hard to preserve the scope and mystery of the setting, and hopefully will have enough of a budget to display all the crazy magic and make the monsters convincing.

 

[DarthCoercis]

I actually finished it too!

Did WoT actually finish? I vaguely remember reading that the author died after the 11th or 12th book.

I never got past the 8th, myself, as I got tired of the constant introduction of plot threads that never got resolved as well as the bland characters.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I actually finished it too!

Did WoT actually finish? I vaguely remember reading that the author died after the 11th or 12th book.

I never got past the 8th, myself, as I got tired of the constant introduction of plot threads that never got resolved as well as the bland characters.

Yeah, he died after the 11th book. But he left a lot of notes behind and his widow found another fantasy author to finish it. The 14th and final book was published 2 years ago. The writing is noticeably different at times, but I still liked it.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I haven't touched that series in over 17 years. Not since High School. I made it to something like the 7th book before I got tired of it. From what I remember, I don't think it'd translate very well to a TV series.

 

[kasperbbs]

I just hope that they wont make women as annoying as they were in the books. Having read all 13 of them i could swear that 1/3 of the content was them doing some stupid shit and then blaming some man for it.

 

[rodneyy]

hopefully they will take out or change the mat rape scene and the response from the rest of the people to it. that might make the internet explode the way people overreact to stuff these days.

i could see it being very cgi heavy thing to make what with the trollocs, ogier, magic and whatnot. thats all before the seanchan show up with all their stuff. fingers crossed they get the budget to make it look good

 

[bobdark]

I'm looking forward to it, and yes I read all the books.

 

[DarthCoercis]

hopefully they will take out or change the mat rape scene

Mat got raped? Which book was that in?

 

[rodneyy]

hopefully they will take out or change the mat rape scene

Mat got raped? Which book was that in?

umm i think it was around the 7th or 8th book, its after his night of drinking with birgitte. its never outright called rape and it played very much for laughs

Spoiler

basically the queen of ebou dar stalks him for a bit tries to enter his room at night after after he moves into the palace. then after a few nights of fending her off she unlocks his door with another key, pulls a knife on him uses the knife to cut off all his clothes ties him to the bed with the strips of cloth and has sex with him all night long. he says "no" a few times and in the morning he says its not right and she goes something like well you liked it in the end didnt you.
also when elayne and nynaeve find out about it they laugh at him and say the queen is very naughty to have done what she has done

its not so much done for the shock value more to illustrate just how dominant the women of ebou dar are but still it is what it is. thankfully it is a long way off tv time wise. they can probably just make it consensual and not change too much.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I'll be honest... I did my best to read the Wheel of Time books, gave it multiple attempts but it felt so very much a slog. Mind you I'm the type of person who praises detail-heavy-done-right like Tolkien (who even still had some dry material like the Silmarillion that was difficult reading). But for some reason, Robert Jordan's work just did not hook me, for reasons I cannot particularly elaborate fully.
That being said, maybe a TV series would help me enjoy that universe better.

 

[LostCrusader]

I just finished the books a few months ago and I don't know how well the series would translate. I really enjoyed the series but it is really slow going at times, especially after the first 2 or 3 books. Plus all of the fantasy series I have seen on TV have been pretty bad.

 

[Xerosch]

I'm currently in the 8th book and enjoy the series very much so far. Though it definitely helped I knew about the pacing before from non-spoilery book reviews.

As to the TV show I'm very excited. Though I highly doubt it will come close to the production values as in Game of Thrones. I just hope we'll get something semi-decent and not another Shannara Chronicles.

 

[Baffle]

Bob Jordan had women issues. Like, he'd never met one. Really, he was raised on the same island as Schwarzenegger in Twins.
s
I'd probably watch an episode or two of this, but my expectations for a good show made from books I liked when I was 14 (I think it was good up to around Lord of Chaos) are very low. Still, I like an attempt to make a good fantasy show - hope it's good.

I wish someone would make one of Robin Hobb's Assassins Trilogy. They could even just use outtakes of Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator for Regal. Would save a few quid.

 

[WolfThomas]

I wish someone would make one of Robin Hobb's Assassins Trilogy.

I like Wheel of Time, but this is a much better idea for a show. It's so much more workable within a budget too. Would really fill a post game of thrones void in people's lives who haven't read either books too.

 

[Kyrian007]

As long as it's not as bad as Legend of the Seeker. Not that those books needed any help in being shittier.

I actually wound up liking Legend of the Seeker, it was a TV series that was almost the exact opposite of the books. The Sword of Truth series started out strong and got worse and worse as it went on. Legend of the Seeker started poorly by trying to stick to the storyline of the books, and improved with every different direction they went. I actually still prefer it to HBO's take on A Song of Ice and Fire which was such a cookie cutter snore fest I didn't watch much more than the first season. Didn't have to, I always knew what was going to happen next... boring.

As to Wheel of Time on TV... I'm sure it could be done well, but I'm thinking it would take something like a once or twice in a generation creative team to do it. Basically there's some way to translate it to TV well, but I'm not sure there's a talented enough creative team to actually pull it off.

 

[Elijin]

Man the, battle of the sexes bits in that series were so clumsily done. Just huge swathes of 'Assume the other side is an idiot and never speak to them honestly in order to work well together'. I felt like adding a Benny Hill soundtrack to most of the instances.

 

[Hawki]

I read the first three books and 'The Eye of the World' graphic novel and...I just couldn't get into it.

A TV show could trim the fat, mind you, because by god, there's a lot of fat. I could probably tell you more about the descriptions of Lan's fighting styles than I could about Lan himself.

but from what I remember the pace is really slow and it's very heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings to start with.

As I said, only read the first three books, but, yeah, the pace is slow. As for Lord of the Rings...well, there certainly is influence, especially in the first novel, which is basically Lord of the Rings compressed into a single volume. There's lots of other similarities (Emmon's Field = The Shire, trollocs = orcs, Dark One = Sauron, Morraine = Gandalf, Lan = Arragorn, Rand and co. = hobbits...sort of...), and yeah. That said, it's far more its own Lord of the Rings-inspired piece of fiction than, say, Shannara. While the world is very binary, there's a lot of inter-factional disputes between the 'good guys' as well. 'Shades of light', rather than shades of grey, so to speak. Also, Lord of the Rings draws influence primarily from European and Christian folklore, while Wheel of Time has a bit more Eastern influence (e.g. sadin and sadair arguably bear resemblance to Ying and Yang).

Or at least that's just me. You're probably far better equipped to describe the series than me.

 

[jklinders]

As long as it's not as bad as Legend of the Seeker. Not that those books needed any help in being shittier.

I actually wound up liking Legend of the Seeker, it was a TV series that was almost the exact opposite of the books. The Sword of Truth series started out strong and got worse and worse as it went on. Legend of the Seeker started poorly by trying to stick to the storyline of the books, and improved with every different direction they went. I actually still prefer it to HBO's take on A Song of Ice and Fire which was such a cookie cutter snore fest I didn't watch much more than the first season. Didn't have to, I always knew what was going to happen next... boring.

As to Wheel of Time on TV... I'm sure it could be done well, but I'm thinking it would take something like a once or twice in a generation creative team to do it. Basically there's some way to translate it to TV well, but I'm not sure there's a talented enough creative team to actually pull it off.

Legend of the Seeker suffered greatly from low budget and some weird insistence on making Richard as dumb as humanly possible. Yeah he was too fucking perfect in the books but did they have to give him a full frontal lobotomy? With talent you can get around a shitty budget but when the characters have no charm to them at all you have a problem.

There's plenty of good TV writers out there. Not sure if Sony employs any of them though. I want to see this work. I kinda need to see this work because i was at one time highly invested in Wheel of Time but never finished it. But right now, it's a lot of really low production budget shows and Game of Thrones for any sort of TV fantasy. They all have different flavors of problems. ASoIaF is so goddamn grimdark I never got past the prologue to the second book. Wheel of Time struck a decent balance but got bogged down in at least as many subplots and side characters as ASoIaF. Once that happened I lost interest in waiting years upon years for the plot to actually move forward as it stalled for over 3 books. TV could eliminate that with decent writing, but this is Sony we are talking about here.