You people and your bad English!
— Alan
You’re
The Twitter feed of the director, James Seda, who tragically died days ago from injuries sustained in a car accident, confirms that the project was rolled forward with uncommon haste. Based on Seda’s tweets, it appears that the entire project, from preproduction (location scouting, casting, costumes, script) to principal photography (which, according to Seda’s feed, included 22 scripted pages filmed IN A SINGLE DAY) to postproduction (sound, special effects) was completed in something like two weeks (!!!), from January 15 to February 4, for an airdate five days later. This is like doing a term paper in 45 minutes.
— Alan
I knew it was going to be bad.
I did not know it was going to be that bad.
Word now is that Red Eagle is suing Jordan’s widow because of a nondisparagement clause in their agreement; not to mention contend that McDougal (the widow) knew precisely that a production was in the works and even when they planned to air it.
— Alan
Are you talking about Lord of the Rings instead of WoT? It’s been a while since I read them, but my recollection is the magic in WoT was pretty in-your-face. Fireballs, the ground erupting, and lightning leaping about.
It is at the start at least (IIRC Mat gets stabbed by the blade or whatever in EotW, which may be about as magical as it gets in that book) but when you start talking about embracing sai’dan and Rand starts whipping balefire around, yeaaaah. Oh, there’s also The Ways, which is fairly early as well (again IIRC).
— Alan
Wasn’t Moraine (sp?) throwing around fireballs and lightning during the Two Rivers attack really early on?
Wow! And here I thought Billy Zane was a lousy villain in Titanic.
Yes. And the Ways are in the first book, as are the Black Wind, Mashadar, two of the Forsaken and an intense (albeit only lightly described) magical battle between Rand and one of said Forsaken, including Rand singlehandedly blowing up most of a Shadowspawn army. Things definitely get a lot more magic-intensive and high-powered the further into the series you go, but it’s there from the start.
Moirane actually does most of her flashy channeling during battles while they are pursued post Two-Rivers
(before they get split up), and in the end fight at the Eye of the World, but there is quite a bit of it. I specifically remember fireballs, a wall of fire, her hitting people with a switch but leaving flaming trails on them when she did so, and some funky stuff at the Eye. The escalation of magical power in the series is given a pretty good thematic backing, which I always appreciate.
So it looks like Red Eagle is no longer in the picture, and this is moving forward.
Makes sense to me, with GoT’s success.
Terry Brooks probably thought the same thing.
Brooks wasn’t wrong. Problem is, MTV is not exactly HBO.
I have not completely given up on Shannara, though it failed to grab me. For all that, it was better than I had hoped for - and it sure is pretty.
It’s getting a second season, so if Shannara Chronicles can get THAT, Wheel of Time can surely pull off the same.
Yes, shouldn’t need to be said, but execution matters.
Marvel can produce awesome movies off silly throwaway material like Guardians of the Galaxy. Execution matters.
I am sure this has been flogged to HBO as their savior after the end of Game of Thrones. We can only hope. To see Cogman at the helm and Nina Gold & Co. casting with all the gravitas that HBO has earned, it could actually be awesome.
Forgive me my fanboi fantasies. sigh
But is HBO going to do WoT? Hell I think a proper, idealistic WoT production would be even more expensive than GoT!
At this point, we have no idea if anyone is. We have Jordan’s widow suggesting something is in the wind. Bu no announcement. An announcement of an announcement.
The following is a press statement that has been approved by the studio involved in contract negotiations: “Update: Wanted to share with you exciting news about The Wheel of Time. Legal issues have been resolved. The Wheel of Time will become a cutting edge TV series! I couldn’t be more pleased. Look for the official announcement coming soon from a major studio.”
What does that mean? You tell me. Harriet McDougal previously stated that Universal was involved in the plans, but who knows if that is still in the cards. We just don’t know anything really, other than Red Eagle appears to no longer be involved (and even that we don’t know for sure).
I doubt it’d be HBO; GoT appealed because not only was it epic fantasy with a lot of source material they could delve into, it was adult, meaning they could appeal to a more mature audience which is their bread and butter. WoT (like Shanarra) doesn’t really have this same level of appeal. I could imagine them doing Malazan or First Law or Black Company instead (not that they are talking about doing any of those).
My first guess would be Showtime, because they directly compete with HBO, but for the same reasons and similar audiences they’d probably pass. I think Amazon would offer quite a bit of money, because they can directly do book cross-marketing easily (though McDougal I believe hates e-books) and a number of their series are based on books anyway (Bosch, Man in the High Castle, Jack Ryan). Netflix because… well… Netflix. They want variety and exclusivity and nothing really in their stable hits the high fantasy mark. Hulu perhaps because they want to play with the big guys.
Anyways, I see these five as the big players. Plus Starz I suppose, but again I think their philosophy kind of goes in line with HBO and Showtime… though they do a lot of book tie-ins as well.
— Alan