Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

If the Wheel of Time fell in a forest and there was no one to hear it, would it make a sound?

This is weird. Apparently a mini-prolog for the Wheel of Time ran on the US FXX cable network in the early hours of this morning, without appearing on the network's schedule. (Preempting an infomercial.)

Apparently Robert Jordan's estate (aka "Bandersnatch") knew nothing of it.

Titled "Wheel of Time: Winter Dragon" made by a production company named "Red Eagle" (which a quick search finds is a video production company in the UK that owned the Eye of the World rights years ago). The video ran 30 minutes (21 minutes without commercials) and was a single set wonder + voiceovers featuring Billy Zane & Max Ryan in a long conversation with crazy Dragon Lews Terrin, and a single visual effect that'd look cheap in a videogame.

Also interesting was the choice of set and costume, which seems sort of early Victorian era.

I have a suspicion it was thrown together and tossed out there by Universal just 2 days before the movie rights are scheduled to revert to Bandersnatch just so Universal can claim they made a movie and can keep the rights. (1994 Fantastic Four movie, anyone?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvNYI...

Likely right about the movie rights stuff.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/whee...

Jordan's widow made a statement about how nobody knew anything about this and the credits say nothing about being connected to Universal in any way.

It's like Billy Zane grabbed a few buddies and a camera and spent a weekend hanging out in some cool old building LARPing.

Somebody's going to be in trouble for this one I think.

I should hope someone gets in trouble. I know WoT has been much-discussed, and people either love it or hate it, (or just got tired of the meandering route it began to take) but it's been a hallmark of Fantasy since 1990.

If anyone does a film adaptation, or a tv-whatever, then they had better flaming do it well. This doesn't exactly sound like that.

*tugs on braid, sniffs*

Grantland has an interesting coverage of the facts about FXX Aired a Stealth Pilot for a ‘Wheel of Time’ Series Starring Billy Zane, which adds that the WoT "pilot" was filmed in a single day with two weeks of total production only a week before it aired.

IO9 offers The Real Story About That Wheel Of Time Pilot That Aired Last Night, which reveals it was not "FXX programming", but rather they were paid to air it, like the infomercial it replaced.

Just listening to the opening being read made me think they have taken Galadriel speech from the beginning of Fellowship and mangling it.

I agree with Donna. Granted it's been a while since I've started my re-read, but listening to the voice, pace, and words, I had to double check my browser to make sure I hadn't been redirected to a Tolkein fan page instead of the one you'd put up Garyjn.

And, since I am one of the ones that loves WoT, this was just slightly disappointing. However, I am also willing to wait for a properly done episode. I like the fact that they are talking TV, rather than movie. It may be 14 books, but I can almost guarantee it'd be more like 28 movies, unless they wanted to cut way, way too much stuff.

I won't lie, I'm excited to see these guys get taken to court. Jordan hated the group that pushed this, they've botched WoT before and if they don't have his estate's blessing, I don't see it making many people happy with the end product. That's assuming they even have the money for it, which has been a problem for Red Eagle historically.

I agree that the series would be great for television, there's just simply too much for film adaptations, like you said. It'd be a great way for unknowns to make a name, like some of the faces from HBO's GoT.

When it's all said and done, I'd love to see the books brought to life - I just want it done well, and by someone who cares. Too much of Hollywood these days is treated like a business - check out another of Grantland's articles titled "The Birdcage" for a better idea of what I mean: http://grantland.com/features/2014-ho...

Leo (Rahien Sorei) wrote: "Too much of Hollywood these days is treated like a business..."

Book publishing is a business, too. In the context of a 15-book WoT franchise, it's hard to complain about Hollywood's love of movie franchises. There are a lot of very profitable SF/F book franchises, too.

Leo (Rahien Sorei) wrote: "I'd love to see the books brought to life.."

I'm pretty happy with the "movie in my mind" left by the WoT books, and I'll be satisfied if there's never a TV or movie adaptation. (And you're right, movies would never really work for a story that long. But would a TV series ever last that long, either? it would have to run as long as ER.)

Well, I imagine that it would undergo the kind of trimming that Jordan didn't quite exercise in the books #8-11. A lot of the plot gets dragged out needlessly, and this is coming from someone who loved it dearly, and reread a few times. I could see any TV adaptation making like the Thrones production - throwing their own spin on it while still adhering to what Babdersnatch decrees as "canon." After all, it's a different medium so any artist is entitled to express themselves a bit differently (which sounds contradictory to my earlier remarks about Red Eagle's "production," but differs in that these guys are pulling some rather unsavory moves to hold onto rights they may or may not be entitled to instead of making something to be proud of).

Well this might be a controversial opinion but I just dont care much for this series. I only read the first book and a little bit of the second but there was a huge more of the same type of vibe to it so i didn't even bother finishing it. Its a bit to formulaic for my tastes.
But I may watch the TV show if it ever gets off the ground. We need more quality fantasy programming and the industry has just not been delivering.

Well, here's a plot twist you didn't see coming: The company that made & aired the pilot, Red Eagle, is suing Robert Jordan's widow: FXX Pilot Airing at 1:30 a.m. Leads to Eye-Opening Slander Lawsuit (Hollywood Reporter)

Wow. What a mess.

That happened fast. One has to wonder if they had contingencies in place for it. Kinda sounds like a money-making scheme at this point instead of an actual effort at cranking out a legitimate WoT TV series. Plus, suing Harriet is only going to turn fans even more against them.

For anyone who's wondering where the rights to the Wheel of Time are these days, the answer may be Amazon.

In a recent interview with Deradline, Amazon's new studios boss Jennifer Salke commented:

DEADLINE: What is the status of other high-profile genre projects that have been in early development at Amazon or stuck in deal-making limbo for a long time, The Wheel of Time (based on the fantasy books), and The Dark Tower, (based on the book and the movie)?

SALKE: Those are scripts that I haven’t gotten yet. I’ll be seeing those, that material, in the coming weeks. None of those things are dead. They’re very much alive.

So, "not dead"; perhaps just "mostly dead?" Salkie's been on the job 4 months, so not top priority, at least. Amazon already has a huge commitment to The Lord of the Rings, so probably in no hurry for a second really long sword & sorcery investment until they see how the first one works out.

It's possible Universal still holds the actual rights and is pitching the series concept to Amazon.

I hope it never happens. I don't think anybody would have the patience or put up the money to do it right.

Book Nerd wrote: "I hope it never happens. I don't think anybody would have the patience or put up the money to do it right."

To be fair people would have said the same thing about GoT. Now they know that if they do it right, they can milk the cow for years (and well over a decade in the case of WoT).

ASOIAF only has five books so far. WoT has fourteen. At ten episodes a year, it would take roughly 25 years to do the whole series. Also all the use of the power would require a lot of effects.

I don't see WoT as very cinematic or adaptable, to be honest. The story is very spread out and if it were to come to the screen, it would feel very soap-opera-like, with random new characters showing up and disappearing for episodes at a time. After all, there are dozens of people we follow; a one-hour long episode could fit only five or so, so some characters would get kicked out of an episode altogether. Finally, the effects. Yes, Game of Thrones has a lot of special effects, but it's far more grounded in reality than WoT. I actually saw the pilot and man was it bad. It dragged the prologue for Eye of the World for THRITY MINUTES. That should take 5 minutes tops, not half an hour! If the rest of the show were to be like that, it would take literal decades to get so much as the first half of the show out.

Saul wrote: " I actually saw the pilot and man was it bad. It dragged the prologue for Eye of the World for THRITY MINUTES. That should take 5 minutes tops, not half an hour!..."

To be fair, that's exactly what the goal was for the pilot: fill 22 minutes on the cheap: one set, two actors, stock costumes. It's not like they put Peter Jackson on the project :)

If they started the project today, I wouldn't expect to live to see the finale.

Generally when you take something big and epic with tons of characters and put it on screen it needs to have a lot of the extra plotlines cut off. So take the LotR movies, they left out many characters and scenes but it still worked out well. Tom Bombadil may be a loved character, but in truth he added nothing to the story so that whole section could be cut. I'm sure there's plenty of that in a big series like WoT.

Also can tweak timelines a bit so you can keep to the same characters for a while, and then roll back in time a bit and follow the other set, rather than flip them in and out in the same sequence they are in the book. Or the reverse, in LotR we are left hanging wondering what happens to Frodo/Sam while we follow the other characters, I think the movies switched back and forth better?

Or take the Magicians where a LOT was changed around so it would make more sense. It was even a case where I thought the TV show was better put together than even the book, but the TV show was definite only "inspired by" rather than "based on" the books, the show inventing all kinds of stuff that didn't happen in the books (though always, underlying it all, ultimately following the key book events). Or True Blood which has almost no correlation to the books other than setting and character names/species (not even personalities).

Of course I could probably list as many really bad adaptations, or shows where they changed things that really bugged me (sometimes as minor a thing as changing hair colour...*especially* since easy to give an actor a wig). Sweeping changes can be more acceptable than meaningless minor ones.

So could WoT be done? I don't know, haven't read it, but if someone carefully trims the non-essential bits and combines several characters into one probably almost any book can be brought to screen. But then can the hard-core fans accept the changes that were necessary? And of course, were the right changes made.

Anyone seen Shannara? That's another huge story, how well is that one handled?

Andrea wrote: "So could WoT be done? I don't know, haven't read it, but if someone carefully trims the non-essential bits and combines several characters into one probably almost any book can be brought to screen. But then can the hard-core fans accept the changes that were necessary? ..."

You can trim, but at some point the source loses the essence of what you're adapting (at which point it becomes "inspired by...".) WoT has a dozen characters of major significance. Off the top of my head: The gang from Three Rivers (Rand, Perrin, Mat, Nynaeve, Egwene), Moiraine, Lan, Elayne, Thom, Aviendha, Elaida, Birgit, Mazrim, Logain.... The story as written is about discovering the Dragon Reborn (several characters are reincarnations of past heroes/villains) and uniting the various competing and confliting nations and organizations (Aes Sedai, Children of Light, Aiel, Seanchan, Sea People, Tuatha'an, Ogier, Asha'man...) for a prophesied battle, Tarmon Gai'don.

And then there are the bad guys...

In the beginning the main WoT characters are either together or as yet un-met, but eventually everyone is off on their own adventures that will circle back into the main story. The usual TV show technique is to hit each character/storyline for a few minutes in each episode, but focus on one or two arcs per episode, but it's hard to see that working with so very many characters. The Lord of the Rings has a 3-storyline split; A Game of Thrones quite a bit more, maybe giving some clue how WoT might be approached, but even so in WoT I can see characters disappearing for entire seasons. That might or might not work for viewers — I can also see fans taking whole seasons off because their favorite character aren't featured. I'm not sure how it works for actors, who need steady work and aren't likely to reject a job offer because they're supposed to do more WoT in 2 years. Maybe that's just a matter of scheduling.

I've seen the 1st season of Shannara Chronicles, (it's based on the 2nd book which I haven't read. Not a Brooks fan.) It was a pretty linear quest plot, not a lot of side-stories. Follow the trio as they search for the McGuffin. I've read that the 2nd season pulled some characters in from several different books, but I've neither read those books nor seen the 2nd season. It's cancelled now (when Viacom moved it from MTV to Spike it lost over half its audience. Nice move, Viacom. That's why they pay those execs the big bucks. :)

Well, Amazon has given the Wheel of Time series a go for season 1.

Amazon Orders Adaptation Of Fantasy Drama ‘The Wheel Of Time’ To Series

I'm surprised, given they're already investing a billion in a Middle Earth / Lord of the Rings prequel.

I'll be fascinated to see what they do with it. (I am not expecting great things...)

Cat wrote: "I'll be fascinated to see what they do with it. (I am not expecting great things...)"

Dragonmount has some thoughts on the adaptation. I think most notable, apparently based on some contact with Amazon's show-runner Rafe Judkins, is the following:

Rafe Judkins has indicated that this first season will focus primarily on the events found in The Eye of the World, but viewers should be prepared for anything. And while the specifics of the plot won't be revealed until the show airs, the clues we've had so far hint at larger roles for the primary female characters (Egwene, Nynaeve, and Moiraine) along with an emphasis on the positive feminist aspects found in the books. The WoT book series was first published in 1990, and at the time, Jordan received heavy praise for his forward-thinking portrayal of heroic women. Time and evolved thinking has softened those views somewhat, but it's clearly Rafe's plan to once more put Wheel of Time at the forefront of the discussion. Multiple news outlets emphasize this point.

Rafe Judkins has been a writer on Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and Chuck TV series. (He was also a contestant on Survivor, 2005. Wikipedia has an episode by episode recap if you've finished reading every SciFi & Fantasy story ever and desperately need something else.)

I have not read the books - could not pass the first few chapters - but I am looking forward to see the "positive feminist aspects".

Not a huge fan of the books, I gave up halfway through. but I am looking forward to seeing what Amazon does with this. Well perhaps its more accurate to say that I am cautiously optimistic about it.

Tor.com is of the belief that the story will be told from Moiraine's Point of View, adding "a television series is less likely to switch perspectives per-episode in the way the novels do with each chapter. " That seems dubious logic to me, given the number of shows these days that use an ensemble cast to weave plots that diverge and intersect a couple of times per hour.

According to captured secret darkspawn documents, production is scheduled to begin in the Czech Republic in September. However, I've yet to read any casting announcements.

G33z3r wrote: "Tor.com is of the belief that the story will be told from Moiraine's Point of View, adding "a television series is less likely to switch perspectives per-episode in the way the novels do with each ..."

I doubt that it won't switch POV. Have they never watched a soap opera?! It's pretty common for POV swaps in many different genres of TV.

I feel like this is a show that's going to get stuck in pre-production forever...

It's interesting that they flagged that somethings are going to change. I mean I guess they have to. But as long as it doesn't change entirely which the Shannara chronicles did - apart from keeping a few character names and places names, there wasn't a lot in common!

M.P. wrote: "I wonder if the TV series will be faithful to the book(s). Anyone heard?"

What's been made public indicates the initial videos will focus mostly on the The Eye of the World, and will be centered more on Moiraine (played by Rosamund Pike) than the novel's Rand-PoV. So far Pike is the only casting news made public. The trade press is currently inferring a 2021 release.

Amazon & Sony (the production studio) announced a bunch of WoT casting today. deadline. (Corrected: The picture, left-to-right: Egwene, Perrin, Mat, Nynaeve, Rand.)

I haven't seen anything about Lan, which would round out the initial main cast.

Ugh, forced diversity ruins everything. Rand is clearly stated to have red hair. If anything Rand and Perrin should be reversed. That guy in the middle looks way too skinny to be a blacksmith.

Book Nerd wrote: " If anything Rand and Perrin should be reversed. That guy in the middle looks way too skinny to be a blacksmith."

Well, it seems I took those photo IDs from an unreliable geek site (the Deadline article doesn't caption the photo with actor names.) I went back to Amazon's official WoT Twitter Feed to check, and the corrected order is, left-to-right: Egwene, Perrin, Mat, Nynaeve, & Rand. ( So, you get your wish for a more muscular blacksmith. Also, Nynaeve already has braids to tug. :)

That's good they're not totally ruining the character types. I still haven't recovered from Spiderman's Aunt May becoming a young enough hottie for Tony Stark to hit on. That had to be one of the worst casting decisions in history.