The Wheel of Time is as adult as you want to make it. There is no swearing in the novel and the sex is mostly off screen – because that was the nature of the genre in the decade before Tor emerged and squeaky clean Del Rey dominated the shelves.
But a man with three wives, women expressing their love for their Spear Sisters, the Red lesbian fanatics in the tower? And Matrim Cauthon? Not to mention the Seanchan’s bed slaves? Honestly, it’s as adult as the adaptation wants to be.
As for fantasy being the stuff of HBO? Honestly, it is. HBO has been dominated by two genres: organized crime and fantasy. Whether that was The Sopranos, The Wire and Boardwalk Empire or True Blood and now Game of Thrones, it sells. And more importantly - fantasy sells internationally very well in a manner that other more modern focused American shows (police procedurals and organized crime) do not. International sales is not something HBO is going to forget now with the success of GoT.
If done well it’s a good fit. If done poorly? It’s a disaster. But for all of that, to assess the fantasy genre over the past few decades, it isn’t wrong to note that Wheel of Time outshone ASoIaF until about 2001 and remains a huge seller. If they approach it in an adult manner, it could fit with HBO very easily. If not, then most decidedly not, I agree.
Thats a pretty good summation of how I feel about a WOT series. This doesnt have to be a ASoIaF VS WOT contest, both series, while in the fantasy genre are adult but very different in tone. Sometimes I feel like ASoIaF trys too hard to be super adult and shocking, WOT is adult enough without pushing the boundries. I believe it would do well on its own merits, without trying to replicate what HBO’s ASoIaF is doing. Of course, this comes with that all important caveat, the script writing needs to be top shelf. If not, I see no reason to do the TV series.
Done properly, a WoT series could blow the Game of Thrones stuff out of the water. The books are done, the evolution of the various plot lines and characters are known, and there’s as much or as little grand politics as the series runners choose to include. I, personally, hope they cut down tremendously on all the White Tower fluff, but I do hope they don’t ignore the cutthroat nature of Seanchan politics.
Unlike Game of Thrones, the effects budgets will need to be significant from the start. Channeling is flashy. But potentially very cool, if they go the Avatar / Legend of Korra route.
As much as people hate on the Dornish faction, Brienne’s chapters in book 4, etc., this proposed TV series would do well to cut entirely books 7-10 from its WoT production. And I doubt it would take off and become anywhere near as popular as GoT, which, and this is easily forgotten, has subverted so many genre tropes as to feel new and fresh. WoT, in contrast, is a much simpler story in terms of depth. It’s quite wide when you consider the cast of characters and various factions, but the story it tells is far more binary and shallow compared to ASoIaF.
I guess I’m just a sucker for the big set pieces that I know could potentially be included. Falme, Dumai’s Wells, the Cleansing, the creepiness of Shadar Logoth. Yes, it’s not as grey as GoT, but there’s plenty of non-black and white. Siuan Sanche, for example. Mat the trickster, the Seanchan princess, etc…
WoT is simply not the kind of show HBO would invest time and money in, sorry. HBO’s fantasy sells because a) it’s well made generally b) it’s well acted and c) it takes established fantasy genres and sub-genres and the additional adultness of material to carry them to the next level.
Sure you can put those elements into WoT–the sex, the gore, extreme violence, the language–but it wouldn’t really feel right. Like… adding sex, gore, language and extreme violence to Harry Potter. I’m not saying the audiences were intended to be the same, but it’s not HBO’s audience for series. And original fans would throw a fit if you put all those elements in.
Eye of the World came out in 1990. I’d say frankly that Tor was fairly well-known by then.
Honestly, this show will never be able to compete with GoT, as they were able to get the budget they needed to get the show done right. And the first season is low on effects.
Though… as an animated series… Wheel of Time would be very interesting, in my opinion.
Count me in the camp that doesn’t see HBO as interested in WoT. I think that to produce a WoT series that met HBO’s criteria for mature audiences, they’d have to change so much that it wouldn’t be recognizable anymore. The difference between GoT and WoT is one of underlying thematic core. Game of Thrones is a very adult story from the start, and everything about it, from the overarching struggles between the kingdoms, families and factions to the individual relationships between the characters is layered with complexity and nuance that it takes a certain maturity to grasp and understand. Wheel of Time is much lighter, with far less of the complexity and machinations that make Game of Thrones so appealing for HBO’s audience.
I think Amazon would be a much better home for a WoT series. They could put the proper budget in place to have decent CGI AND decent actors while making a series that could appeal both to adult fans of the genre and lure in teens and young adults who might see the appeal of a “Game of Thrones for their demographic”, sort of what MTV was shooting for with Shannara Chronicles but somewhat less heavy handed with the teen angle. Amazon would also be in a better position to promote such a series, working directly with Jordan’s estate to offer special editions of the books leading into the release of the series.
I could see HBO being more interested in making Zelazny’s Amber series into a TV series. It shares many of the same adult themes and layered plotlines of a series like Game of Thrones, and it’s easily updated to a modern adaptation (the originals were written in the '70’s, and the Merlin series in the 80’s, so you’d want at least the shadow Earth stuff to take place now, in modern times). Production costs might be prohibitive though depending on how you wanted to depict some of the other shadow worlds and Amber/Courts of Chaos.
It will never happen, but if HBO or another company with deep pockets and a good production team ever tackled Cook’s Black Company series I could die happy. ;-)
No, definitely not. GRRM is a far better writer than RJ. Though the Sanderson books bring the overall writing level of the WoT up, it’s still no real comparison, it’s minor vs major leagues. But thinking more visually, the WoT series, with an appropriate budget, could be far more epic than what HBO is doing with GoT. I agree with what everyone is saying about the adult and complex nature of ASoIaF relative to WoT, but in return it’s far less fantastic. I’m ready for some non-Lord of the Rings epic fantasy, done right. With big magic and big battles, instead of the BS we got with the Blackwater a couple of seasons back. I’d really love to see the first season’s Moirane single handedly (well, with LAN’s help) decimate the Trolloc invasion of Emond’s Field at night. And that’s just the very beginning.
WoT would suffer as a only a movie trilogy, for some of the same reasons that LotR and The Hobbit were flawed, but a big budget TV series spanning years? That could be something. Casting of the young leads and effects budgets would be very, very important. It’s probably going to be a fiasco, though. But one can dream…
WoT could be tons of fun if you get a hard-nosed showrunner who mercilessly trims the fat that starts creeping in around book 6 and gets completely out of control by 9.
I really should finish it at some point. Had no idea who this hack Sanderson fella was when he initially took it over, and now he’s one of my absolute favorite authors.
I’d definitely be up for seeing some balefire on TV. RJ’s characters and plotting wasn’t on the level of GRRM, but he could write some great imagery. I think the action parts would translate very well.
I think the biggest obstacle to HBO or any of the big guys from snapping up Wheel of Time is that the rights to it are completely fucked up. No one wants that kind of legal crap while they’re trying to produce a show.
It would be amusing to have two seasons for book one, and one season for books 6,7,8 and 9.
I really should finish it at some point. Had no idea who this hack Sanderson fella was when he initially took it over, and now he’s one of my absolute favorite authors.
I think Sanderson did as good a job as you could ask of anyone, and I found it pretty fun to read. Though paying off every loose plot thread is an unattainable goal.
The Sanderson entries were dramatically better than the Jordan-penned books preceding them. The series really had grown plodding and boring to read, but I had so many years invested that I had to keep slogging through.
Better than the Sword of Truth novels, which started off strong then after a couple books transformed into an amateurish romance novel criss-crossed with a 12 year old boy writing about S&M fetishes while giggling and trying to hide his hard-on. I actually found them unreadable.
I’d actually subscribe to cable so I could subscribe to HBO so I could properly show my support for this. No other fantasy series I want to see get a proper, in-depth, well-funded, well-cast production than Malazan.
I think GoT is showing what the maximum limits of television production are currently. Imagine that you need to create a brand new, triple-AAA game in just 12 months. That’s basically what they do.
It’s not like technology is going to fix this problem, either. Better CG means more animators and artists, and extremely tight deadlines means you’re either paying through the nose in overtime or contracting even more VFX houses or both.
Meanwhile, the physical element requires lots of work. A big battle takes Game of Thrones weeks to film. And they still have all the other scenes to shoot, so they’ll go with 3-4 shooting units daily. Involving hundreds of cast and crew, thousands of extras, in 2-3 different countries.
If you don’t do live action, CG animated isn’t really a great option either if you’re expecting top-quality or even above-average quality visuals. I suppose the closest analog would be Clone Wars, but they went highly stylized in terms of art direction for a reason. If you want Pixar-quality visuals on a yearly schedule it’s impossible. There’s a reason Pixar needs 2-3 years to craft a 90-minute movie. A TV series would require 10-13 hours of content every year.
Also, Wheel of Time firmly sits in the nerf-realm of fantasy for me. Their core audience would revolt if it were sexed up to match GoT.
GoT is almost certainly untouchable in terms of benchmark. It tapped a cultural zeitgeist. The president of the United States just dropped a Red Wedding reference in front of the assembled media and political elite over the weekend, and everyone in the room got it.
