Or I guess, technically, early this morning.
This is pretty much in the WTF!!! category.
— Alan
Man, the intro is like late 90s Silliwood-level of animation
Part 1
Part 2
I heard about this so I DVR’d it. The first 30 seconds of the intro had no audio so I was worried DirecTV screwed it up. However, before the intro ended things got “better” so… that was a close one!
So I was able to watch it. It was something, that’s for sure.
Here’s the best part: it was “paid programming”. They had to air it before Feb 11, 2015 or the license expired. Nobody would. So they paid FXX to air it.
When i was reading this series, i always remember thinking how a movie/tv series would never work due to how so much of the “magic” is described as being low key, if not completely invisible.
This is just too low budget. It is very hard to make magic not look overly stupid in live action movies. It is probably just as hard to make monsters the same. I can only imagine how stupid the non human enemies are going to end up looking if this ever gets a tv series.
The io9 article had a quote from Jordan’s widow (who administers his estate, apparently) saying that it wasn’t licensed at all and they’d never even been approached by the people behind this project.
I suppose this could work if you edited it down to uh… 2 minutes, and made it a flashback later in the series that should never ever be made because its way too fucking long. Their may be a market for epic fantasy on TV, but I think the WOT is not the solution.
Better to find a trilogy for your GoT knock off, so the series can finish in our lifetimes.
So, according to this (and a few other corroborating sources, including Dragonmount), Red Eagle were the primary rights holders for the purposes of getting film/TV/games made, but after multiple failed attempts (including a couple of ridiculous game boondoggles), they sold some/all of the rights to Universal Pictures to see if a larger, more established company could swing it. Which, given the complete lack of Universal branding on the pilot above, seems to have not happened.
Instead, it looks like Red Eagle decided (with good reason or not; we won’t know till lawyers get a hold of the contracts involved) that they still had enough of a hold on the rights to extend them by producing and airing a pilot in the nick of time. So they hired a director, had the episode written in a day, filmed the next day, and aired as paid programming on the first network that would take them less than a week later.
In essence, Jordan’s widow is technically wrong; Red Eagle was definitely a legitimate holder of the rights for many years (even if they were a shady company that never got anywhere within striking distance of producing viable content), so she should have heard of them (or at least people with a controlling and active interest in the estate should have). Now, they might not have come to her to sign off on this specific project, and it may be the case that the partial/whole sale of the rights to Universal invalidates this attempt in the end, but otherwise, these guys might have just pulled off the most ridiculous fantasy novel TV rights heist in history (although the unreleased 1966 rights-grab for The Hobbit will give it a strong run).
Yeah, reading those articles seems to make it clear that Red Eagle Entertainment not only failed miserably for a decade to gain any traction with the Wheel of Time franchise either in games or in television, but is now intent on essentially “hijacking” the rights they were set to lose tomorrow by exploiting a technicality in their contract. I sincerely hope that there is language in there somewhere that stipulates Bandersnatch Group (the Jordan Estate’s holding company) has to approve anything made with the rights, or at least see revenue from the project in order for it to “count” towards extending the contract.
Essentially, Red Eagle made a ridiculous ashcan pilot for a show it has no intention of shopping to networks for the sole purpose of retaining their TV/Film rights through a loophole in the contract. Wheel of Time fans already apparently despised Red Eagle, I’m sure once this gets around the hatred will only intensify. The sad part is that the legal wrangling and fan outrage at this will likely make Wheel of Time fairly toxic in the eyes of studios that might have been willing to buy the rights and actually do something with them, as WoT was literally the #1 choice for “next in line” once Game of Thrones proved to be a runaway success. The fact that Red Eagle has had years to take advantage of this and failed miserably (usually because they wanted insane amounts of money for leasing the rights) only shows how utterly incompetent they are.
Also, I noticed Billy Zane was credited as a producer. I wonder if he was the financial backer on the project, thinking it was going to lead to a Game of Thrones kind of deal down the road. I wonder if he has any idea how awful Red Eagle really is?
Billy Zane’s not particularly bright himself, so who knows.
Maybe they filmed it in his house.
This thing was mass produced.
This Wired article has a bit more about it:
Among other things, the director James Brian Howell–who apparently had his named changed to Seda–“died” in a car accident the day after production. Though I’m thinking maybe it’s actually a sarcastic RIP for Seda name more than anything else (I could be wrong, the article isn’t entirely clear either).
— Alan
I had read that his organs were donated, so it sounds like he’s really dead.
Holy crap, there’s more of them?!
That was incredibly boring.
Its a for real dead. His facebook page is full of tributes to him, and they had a memorial service. Poor guy.
No. The story goes they filmed got it set up one day and filmed the whole thing the next. There is not more, though the media company says they will talk about it soon and have other announcements, or some such.
— Alan
Uh, I know. I was just poking fun at marxeil’s misuse of “mass produced”.
I only got through the first WoT book. I think I lost interest around the point where our heroes show up in a town where it turns out everyone wants to kill them.
Well, I was trying to poke fun at the number of credited producers but my bad English failed me somehow :(