So... FXX aired a Wheel of Time "pilot" last night

Don’t see how this doesn’t come across as a lame GoT cash in attempt.

I will watch this series for the braid-tugging!

I already imagine myself posting in real time somewhere as it airs, commenting ‘Nayneve tugged her braid! fuck yeah!’ every time it happens.

Is it GoT cashing? Well, sure.

And GoT was in many respects LotR cashing.

WoT came before ASoIaF and while it was eclipsed in print by it, if the worst thing that happens is that the success of GoT persuades some Studio Execs to back a WoT show with a real budget, a real cast, and writers with focus who can edit all of that and have it be actually good? I’m in.

(I Still think The Black Company would work better though.)

Dear god - you’d be posting before and after every commercial break, at a minimum. I remember crap-all from the 6 books of the series I did get through, but I remember that. And skirt smoothing.(EDIT: Duh, I should have read back a few posts first)

To be fair, despite the well-deserved ribbing for the awkward (to say the least) writing, especially early on, and the (to me) infuriating habit of having every character rant about and vigorously deny facts about themselves that are blindingly apparent to everyone (“Just because I can manipulate the Source and destroy mountains and demigods doesn’t mean I’m anything but a poor shepherd boy!”), the story itself is at its core pretty cool. And there are a lot of really good bits in those overblown opuses. I quite, I admit, about the time RJ died, and got maybe 1/2 through the first Sanderson book. Even though I started reading in 1988 (trade paperback from the Stars & Stripes store at the Army compound in West Berlin), I just have not been able to bring myself to finish this series off. I’ve read the first six about three times each, though.

It would make a great drinking game - every braid tug, sniff, and skirt smooth.

I felt the same. Books 8-11 were too long, introduced a lot of new characters I couldn’t relate to and too many descriptions of scenery instead of actual plot development. But I persevered and somehow Brandon Sanderson refound the action and magic in the last 3 books.

Looking more closely at who continues to be involved in this, I am not encouraged.

“Red Eagle Entertainment” continues to participate. They have not been bought out. This isn’t good. These guys are license holders; that’s about it for their credentials.

The so-caled “show runner” has never run a show in his life. The closest he got to running a show was a sprint to return a DVD in the late 90s to Blockbuster to avoid a late charge. Rafe Judkins is a lightweight, who got his break on 2011 Season of Survivor as a contestant. (Yes, really). Afterwards, he came to Hollywood and has participated as a script writer on some established genre shows. He wrote three or four scripts for Marvel:Agents of SHIELD after the show was established. That’s his major genre cred.

[EDIT: It appears he also was a supervising produced for SHIELD and co-producer for Hemlock Grove for Netflix. Maybe he does have some real experience then.]

Is it something? Sure. Might he be a talented writer? Okay. Sure, maybe. Let’s go further and in the absence of strong evidence - agree that he is a great editor/adapter for such a series.

Even if we accept that on faith alone, that’s a far, FAR cry from being able to actually executive produce a show of this magnitude. Maybe he can edit WoT and make decent scripts out of it. But assemble a team and cast to do it? Big leap.

Sony TV does have the talent and money to do this. Their biggest show on TV right now which would come close to the demands of Wheel of Time is Outlander. Outlander has a solid cast, a significant budget and a very experienced showrunner in Ronald D Moore - who has more genre cred on telvision than, well, just about anybody else.

Far cry from Rafe Judkins though, that’s for sure.

Game of Thrones is ending. 7 episodes this summer, then 6 final episodes sometime in the 12 months following that. Any series in pre-production now would likely be able to set itself up to premiere within months of the Game of Thrones series finale, which would be the perfect time to attempt to lure fans of the show into something similar.

So yes, it’s cashing in, but in a smart way that’s timed to capture an audience that will be actively seeking a replacement for their recently ended show. That said, I can’t imagine these guys producing a WoT series that is anything but awful. Wheel of Time lacks the depth and maturity of Game of Thrones. I think a network would be much better off trying to do an Amber series, a Black Company series or a First Law series, as all are more appealing to adults, though all would be expensive to produce. For that matter, a series based on Arthurian legend or even some kind of Lord of the Rings based series would appeal to more people. Not sure how you’d pull off the latter, it would have to contain all new characters and probably be set prior to the events of both the trilogy and The Hobbit.

Thinking about this more closely, would Outlander have ever been made without Game of Thrones success first on HBO?

I think “no” is the consensus opinion.

The production company behind Outlander is Sony Pictures Television Inc… Sony’s major cable dramas are shown on both AMC and Starz.

I think there is broad agreement that those two channels are where a Wheel of Time series would most ideally end up (as HBO seems unlikely).

Anyways, I see strong similarities with Wheel of Time and Sony’s involvement in Outlander. What isn’t the same is the experience level of the showrunner. It’s early going though - and that can change.

I think WoT has the potential for some really amazing battle scenes. I wouldn’t mind seeing Dumai’s Wells, for instance, or a well-done Myrddraal moving in it’s characteristic wrong way. If one is selective, there is a lot of good material, though I guess you could say that about most big fantasy series.

Yes! Joe Abercrombie’s stuff is great.

The first book of wheel of time could easily be a season or two if done right. Then they could compress the next 8 books into the following season. That’d be about the right ratio of story to braid-tugging. Could be good, or even really good if done right.

Wow, Amazon isn’t kidding around here! Those are all damn ambitious shows.

Wow, I had no idea how prophetic I was going to be a year ago! =)

That said, all this additional rights acquisition in the wake of the Lord of the Rings deal makes me think Amazon is throwing darts at some user’s Fantasy/Sci-Fi recommendation list and trying to buy whatever they hit. It’s doubtful all the properties will actually get greenlit for production, but even if they only do Lord of the Rings, Ring World and Snow Crash it gives them a cross-section of respected fantasy, sci-fi and cyberpunk to build off of.

I am super curious to see which properties they lead with (besides LotR obviously) and who they get to attach to each project. What an exciting time to be a fantasy/sci-fi nerd! =)

Did Amazon buy out Sony Television and Red Eagle on this (they were jointly producing as of 2017)?

Well, they probably do have their own kindle (& book sales) statistics as to who and how many people are reading which novels…

I like it and also am tad hesitant. Is Amazon really going to produce multiple costly genre TV shows at once? They are already doing a LoTR series so a WoT one seems kinda redundant. And to do Dark Tower or Ringworld well isn’t going to be cheap either. Personally would have liked these iOS to,be spread out among several like Netflix and HBO too.

WoT is way, way higher fantasy than LOTR.