Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic The Wheel of Time coming to TV

Rroff said:
there are quite a few characters in the books who don't really serve much purpose
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Like Maksim? :p

His role is probably the best example of the show taking creative liberties. He even wound up taking a bunch of story beats from Perrin in the most recent season.
 
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
If fans turn away then those recommendations are lower. Some of us book fans watched it, but I didn't go out of my way to recommend it to people as it felt too fantasy to me.
But I did recommend GOT to people over years and many watched the whole thing.
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I think there's a fair amount of truth to this.

I love the fantasy genre, it's my favourite when it comes to looking for reading material. I struggle to recommend Wheel of Time to fellow book fans at times, I often describe it as something that should be on any fantasy junkies bucket list but it's very much a one and done. The sheer time investment alone is a lot, but the series can be quite ropey at times. When it's at it's best it's absolutely top tier, but there's a lot which feels either bloated or simply goes nowhere. Jordan adds so much to the work that he often seems to forget entire plotlines, I've never read anything with so many side characters in my 35 years of enjoying the hobby. Trying to translate WoT into a TV series was beyond optimistic to begin with in my mind, they'd need to cut out two thirds of what was actually in the books to get anywhere to the point they might have been better off creating a new IP or looking at something more compact.

I think The Dagger and the Coin would translate well into a show, six books so there's plenty of room for a few seasons and it's quite a tight narrative. It's written by Daniel Abraham who is the co-author of The Expanse for anyone unaware, highly recommend it.
 
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C Kent said:
You do realise got prior to the tv show had 'only' sold 12 million worldwide ( all 4 books at that time), and yet the tv show had 12 million in the US alone? Far more non book folks watched s1 of got compared to people that had read it.

Regardless, if a fantasy/scfi TV show is so dependant on 'book audiences' for its initial success maybe they should try catering to them instead of changing core aspects to 'own the chuds' as per the showrunners of this failed abomination?

Never happened as neither have had any praise outside of a few weirdos that also praise the garbage churned out by disney in the mcu/star wars universes :cry:

More people had amazon prime when wot launched compared to sky in 2011
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I don't think book sales is a valid measure of anything, apart from how many ultras may be created, or how many potential early adopters will start to follow an upcoming serialisation/film.
I don't think those with prime is relevant as it was a delivery service not a streaming service and IMO thats still the main point, well to lock you into Amazon in general.

McPhee said:
I'm yet to see anyone complain that the story wasn't a 1:1 adaptation of the books.

Here's a post from Brandon Sanderson about his experience of adaptations:



The is the difference between a great adaptation & a terrible one. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter movies, Game of Thrones, Shadow & Bone (Season 1), etc. all had changes compared to the source material. But those changes were all measured and reasoned out. They were necessary. In the same vein, The Wheel of Time needed huge changes in order to be adapted for television.

However, there were also a lot of changes which weren't necessary and had more to do with Rafe Judkins and the writing team wanting to tell their own version of the story. These tend to be the changes which people have complained the most about.
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More fiction here than 2 series of WOT ;)
Brandon can of course have his views but like many he seems to forget whats at the start of the episodes/films
"Based on" not "a retelling of" not "a serialisation of" not "a faithfull retelling of" no "BASED ON"

Your necessary is laughable. Maybe you don't know LOTR for example as well as you think. Lets take 3 examples (there are literally hundreds of changes mostly unnecessary) :
Dropping Tom B was necessary? Why?
Changing the whole ford scene to swap in Arwen, change Elronds control of the borders of his lands (it was his control that triggered the water) was necessary? Necessary to add in the love element nice and early?
Lastly, probably the one thats the most egregious change I can think of in the whole of fantasy ever. The shield surfing elf at Helms deep, pray tell me how that was a necessary change to Tolkiens law. He would be rolling in his grave, so so so far away from his writings its not even funny.

So changes are allowed. Right.
So necessary seems to boil down to its good if its changes I agree with but not if I don't.
Which is really hitting the nail on the head with these ultras, they like changes if it suits their worldview, but can't handle any that don't.

Rroff said:
While maybe not 1:1 adaption quite a few complaining that it isn't almost 1:1 adaption of the books.

It is a mixed bag though - there are quite a few characters in the books who don't really serve much purpose ultimately being separate characters and have been merged, which is kind of necessary for a TV series both for audience accessibility and logistics, in the show with the character only being one character from the books by name - which has upset some people especially where it has happened to someone's favourite supporting character, etc. and there are liberties taken with some story elements while other parts are true to the books or done better than the books.
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Gray2233 said:
I think there's a fair amount of truth to this.

I love the fantasy genre, it's my favourite when it comes to looking for reading material. I struggle to recommend Wheel of Time to fellow book fans at times, I often describe it as something that should be on any fantasy junkies bucket list but it's very much a one and done. The sheer time investment alone is a lot, but the series can be quite ropey at times. When it's at it's best it's absolutely top tier, but there's a lot which feels either bloated or simply goes nowhere. Jordan adds so much to the work that he often seems to forget entire plotlines, I've never read anything with so many side characters in my 35 years of enjoying the hobby. Trying to translate WoT into a TV series was beyond optimistic to begin with in my mind, they'd need to cut out two thirds of what was actually in the books to get anywhere to the point they might have been better off creating a new IP or looking at something more compact.

I think The Dagger and the Coin would translate well into a show, six books so there's plenty of room for a few seasons and it's quite a tight narrative. It's written by Daniel Abraham who is the co-author of The Expanse for anyone unaware, highly recommend it.
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Lets be honest there is a great story contained with a massive hot mess that is the books.
It would probably have made a great Trilogy of films cutting out all the dross.
Problem is, three series in and they were still adding in character history/depth.
 
Rroff said:
Events around Helm's Deep is hugely changed from the books - though it does still keep the spirit of it from the books. IIRC there were almost no elves present in the book version.
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If I am correct (99% sure I am) Legolas was the only one, there were attacks on the Elves elsewhere at the same time as the battle of Helms deep.

But your right it was a very serious departure considering there was no necessary here.
Unless by necessary you mean PJ wanted some Elves in the battle.
 
Shamikebab said:
LOTR changed quite a lot of things, several characters (Aragorn and Faramir in particular) were incredibly different in the books.
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Indeed. I used to watch a guy who did a scene by scene breakdown of the movies. The changes, bits skipped from the books etc.

I think the key point is that in needs to engage the general public, not fans.
Many people I know don't like fantasy, many watched LOTR, many eventually watched GOT but they didn't rush to watch it and kind of relented over time.
I don't think WOT or ROP have the draw. The negatives overstated but a lack of "fizz" from people watching it isn't drawing anyone in.

I haven't recommended either to anyone, I know they aren't going to get hooked and thats taking the view the departures from the books/lore are making them more general public friendly as opposed to the departures decreasing that.

Its funny, I would like to see an AI adaption. Stick to the books 100%, literally scan every mention of things and include them. Scene by scene. Just to see what it could do.
Would need to be something shorter, maybe A knight of the seven kingdoms, but with hollywood and writers working hard to keep AI out thats not going to happen.
Have some spoken word in there, short passages that set scenes etc. Its something that books can do incredibly well that is often lost when converted to films and having to be more obvious.

Oh thats interesting, just googling the above book(/s depending on your views) and it says "SOON TO BE A MAJOR TV SERIES" I hadn't heard about that
 
Polished s3 off yesterday and felt it was the best season they'd done so far like it had finally hit it's stride, if the cancellation is true it's a shame but not surprised.
 
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Indeed. I used to watch a guy who did a scene by scene breakdown of the movies. The changes, bits skipped from the books etc.
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At least it's possible to do a scene by scene comparison :cry:

With Wheel of Time, very few scenes even survived the transition to TV.

Glanza said:
Polished s3 off yesterday and felt it was the best season they'd done so far like it had finally hit it's stride, if the cancellation is true it's a shame but not surprised.
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I'd agree with that. It was comfortably the strongest season, and it's pretty clear that the team behind the show had taken in feedback from the first two seasons. I was looking forward to seeing where they were going with it. Perrin's arc aside, there wasn't much I disliked this season.
 
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McPhee said:
At least it's possible to do a scene by scene comparison :cry:

With Wheel of Time, very few scenes even survived the transition to TV.



I'd agree with that. It was comfortably the strongest season, and it's pretty clear that the team behind the show had taken in feedback from the first two seasons. I was looking forward to seeing where they were going with it. Perrin's arc aside, there wasn't much I disliked this season.
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I dunno about the feedback thing, have you watched the interviews and talks about the episodes etc from the seasons?, it doesn't seem any different between seasons.

Is there something you can point to as a clear indicator that they changed their course between seasons?
 
The unsurprising end of not-Wheel of Time (not-wot for short), and another nail the coffin of fantasy TV. More ammunition for naysayers and people who claim fantasy can't work on TV, (GOT being literally the biggest show in TV History dis-proved that, (disastrous final season notwithstanding) - it just doesn't work when you totally ignore the source material and write your own agenda crap instead.

Makes me wonder if Amazon will put ROP out of it's misery after next season, I suspect they'll plough on though.
 
Darujhistan said:
Makes me wonder if Amazon will put ROP out of it's misery after next season, I suspect they'll plough on though.
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Apparently they already committed money for 5 seasons - probably part of why they've doubled down on ads, etc. to try and recoup when it didn't pan out as successful as they hoped.
 
Darujhistan said:
The unsurprising end of not-Wheel of Time (not-wot for short), and another nail the coffin of fantasy TV. More ammunition for naysayers and people who claim fantasy can't work on TV, (GOT being literally the biggest show in TV History dis-proved that, (disastrous final season notwithstanding) - it just doesn't work when you totally ignore the source material and write your own agenda crap instead.

Makes me wonder if Amazon will put ROP out of it's misery after next season, I suspect they'll plough on though.
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There's such a strange mixture of production companies taking on overly ambitious works, and then on top of that butchering the lore so the writers/people involved can add their own spin to things. Even in series where things could work due to the setup they manage to make a mess of it, The Witcher is a prime example of this given the nature of the books and room for translating some parts to TV. They had the perfect person playing Geralt, the sets usually looked brilliant par some dodgy costume department choices, but for some god forsaken reason those in charge wanted to change things up because they knew better (and apparently even had disdain for the source material). It's the same story with Rings of Power, there are stories within the Tolkien universe which could work but instead we got whatever the lunatics behind that dodgy fanfiction decided to throw together. I suspect at least some of it is due to licensing rights and the estate making sure nobody butchers certain aspects of the lore, I believe J.R.R had a strong dislike for Disney as an example.

There's fantastic more compact fantasy out there of the various subgenres which would translate very easily and leave a lot to use within the worlds, Joe Abercrombie is someone I often cite when talking about these things, Daniel Abraham is another. David Gemmell if you want to work with one of his many heroic fantasy books or worlds would do well too in my mind. There's enough material with finished or one off stories that you could get a solid 2-3 seasons and then more with the characters/world if things proved popular. Give me Abercrombie's First Law trilogy over 3 promised seasons and if it's popular adapt some of the stand alone novels or the next trilogy set within the same world. I'll watch from day one and continue if it's good, but I'm not getting invested into something that might get canned a season or two in anymore. The novels I'm talking about wouldn't necessarily require massive budgets either, you could do them to a high quality in many cases without throwing hundreds of millions at every episode as long as the right people are hired rather than a bunch of clueless and arrogant narcissists.
 
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Gray2233 said:
There's such a strange mixture of production companies taking on overly ambitious works, and then on top of that butchering the lore so the writers/people involved can add their own spin to things. Even in series where things could work due to the setup they manage to make a mess of it, The Witcher is a prime example of this given the nature of the books and room for translating some parts to TV. They had the perfect person playing Geralt, the sets usually looked brilliant par some dodgy costume department choices, but for some god forsaken reason those in charge wanted to change things up because they knew better (and apparently even had disdain for the source material). It's the same story with Rings of Power, there are stories within the Tolkien universe which could work but instead we got whatever the lunatics behind that dodgy fanfiction decided to throw together. I suspect at least some of it is due to licensing rights and the estate making sure nobody butchers certain aspects of the lore, I believe J.R.R had a strong dislike for Disney as an example.

There's fantastic more compact fantasy out there of the various subgenres which would translate very easily and leave a lot to use within the worlds, Joe Abercrombie is someone I often cite when talking about these things, Daniel Abraham is another. David Gemmell if you want to work with one of his many heroic fantasy books or worlds would do well too in my mind. There's enough material with finished or one off stories that you could get a solid 2-3 seasons and then more with the characters/world if things proved popular. Give me Abercrombie's First Law trilogy over 3 promised seasons and if it's popular adapt some of the stand alone novels or the next trilogy set within the same world. I'll watch from day one and continue if it's good, but I'm not getting invested into something that might get canned a season or two in anymore. The novels I'm talking about wouldn't necessarily require massive budgets either, you could do them to a high quality in many cases without throwing hundreds of millions at every episode as long as the right people are hired rather than a bunch of clueless and arrogant narcissists.
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Good summary, agree Joes works would lend (with a little taming down) themselves to good serialisation.
Again though its low fantasy and not high fantasy. I think with the general public low fantasy has a lot more chance.

I still think many Fantasy book fans (the Utras as I call them) just don't get that hard conversions of the works would simply utterly fail, and even faster.
As soon as you start changing anything at all someone who would claim to be a book fan and speaking for all the others will throw a tantrum.
They won't be happy until they are all gone. And yet often cite LOTR and GOT as book/lore faithful, when they simply aren't.
GOT had the advantage of GRRM being alive and involved.

Audible is now my go to. I am starting to think I will not see another decent and completed fantasy serialisation or probably film in my lifetime.
Decent book on Audible, decent narrator (a few suck) and it takes you to the world far better than watching on TV I find.
 
There is a big difference between writers who go to the effort of understanding the source materials and writing things which are in accordance with it even when they change events and characters and those who simply run roughshod over the source material just lifting the bits out of it that appeal to them - though you'll never keep all the fans happy.

Bit of a strange one with WoT is that while there are some deviations from the books they actually have an in depth implementation, and mostly consistent to it, of how powers work with weaves and threads, etc. and how different characters have different abilities with it i.e. most characters struggle to maintain more than one weave at a time, even the Forsaken whose advantages mostly come from the raw power of their weaves and knowledge or practise of weaves either forgotten or "banned", while a few characters with a bit of a struggle or when using amplifiers can utilise more than one while Rand as he develops can almost casually use multiple. And one of the reasons Egwene is somewhat capable of standing up to a Forsaken is due to an innate ability for complex threads and multiple weaves (albeit with multiple weaves that isn't so useful vs a Forsaken as it dilutes their power but with one weave the complexity of the threads is a threat to the Forsaken). A lot of which the show puts into practise and can be seen in the visual effects but isn't really conveyed to the viewer.
 
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Rroff said:
There is a big difference between writers who go to the effort of understanding the source materials and writing things which are in accordance with it even when they change events and characters and those who simply run roughshod over the source material just lifting the bits out of it that appeal to them - though you'll never keep all the fans happy.

Bit of a strange one with WoT is that while there are some deviations from the books they actually have an in depth implementation, and mostly consistent to it, of how powers work with weaves and threads, etc. and how different characters have different abilities with it i.e. most characters struggle to maintain more than one weave at a time, even the Forsaken whose advantages mostly come from the raw power of their weaves and knowledge or practise of weaves either forgotten or "banned", while a few characters with a bit of a struggle or when using amplifiers can utilise more than one while Rand as he develops can almost casually use multiple. And one of the reasons Egwene is somewhat capable of standing up to a Forsaken is due to an innate ability for complex threads and multiple weaves (albeit with multiple weaves that isn't so useful vs a Forsaken as it dilutes their power but with one weave the complexity of the threads is a threat to the Forsaken). A lot of which the show puts into practise and can be seen in the visual effects but isn't really conveyed to the viewer.
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Whilst I agree it always has to be stated they all start with wording the likes of "Based on the books by xxxx"

I have never seen a single production that doesn't say based on.
I think people get confused and think its "a faithful retelling of"

I think assuming writers just go off on their own, unguided, is a hell of an assumption personally.
Whilst I am sure some IPs just go "meh give me the monies I don't care what you do", other IPs like Tolkien's owners are far more restrictive.
 
I'm not surprised to be honest ... didn't think it was particularly great overall. Also, maybe the likes of Andor S2 signals a wind of change to the approach in this sort of genre. Andor could have gone on for multiple seasons, but they squeezed it all done to a season of effectively 4 movies. Less is more these days.
 
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