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

It's a stupidly long series. With things like this I always worry, what happens if they get cancelled before the end? It's a fixed story, it's not like they can do it in 1 season.

I've read the books, they're overrated but some of it is good. The middle is so flipping boring though, thankfully Sanderson picked it up a bit and actually got the thing finished.
 
Oh that could be fairly interesting. But as Shami says, its a crazy long series. It's 14 books in total so about twice the size of GOT. And as he said, the middle section of the series to get very dragging but the pace definately picks up in the end. Could be interesting though.
 
One of the most disappointing/overrated/boring series of books ever written, It could and should have been done in 3 possibly 4 books, I will watch the first 2 episodes skip a crap-load of "whatever" and then watch the last 2

The only thing that kept listening to this series was the voice acting in the audio books.
 
If they can find away to get a decent ending from the first 4 books then it might be good - or better yet, follow the first 4 books then go their own way - tv may have a bad rep for deviating from the original story, but in this case they'd be doing everyone a favour
 
Shamikebab said:
It's a stupidly long series. With things like this I always worry, what happens if they get cancelled before the end? It's a fixed story, it's not like they can do it in 1 season.

I've read the books, they're overrated but some of it is good. The middle is so flipping boring though, thankfully Sanderson picked it up a bit and actually got the thing finished.
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Sanderson murdered the ending of the series.

Don't get me wrong it was withering under Jordan and it needed an injection of pace and direction but the ending was so embarrassingly poor I just laughed, Kate of mine we've read the series together from start to.fimish and were die hard fans but Sanderson's basic storytelling style did a complex series no justice at all.
 
No1newts said:
Sanderson murdered the ending of the series.

Don't get me wrong it was withering under Jordan and it needed an injection of pace and direction but the ending was so embarrassingly poor I just laughed, Kate of mine we've read the series together from start to.fimish and were die hard fans but Sanderson's basic storytelling style did a complex series no justice at all.
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The ending was written by Robert Jordan before his death. Sanderson didn't change it.
 
Then dear god I hate Jordan even more than I thought. The least engaging and tense "fight" ever and the cop out with Rand which neither here nor there but the ultimate act of fence sitting was a travesty.

Spoilered in case I get lambasted for ruining a yet to air TV series but it's my opinion on the ending.
 
I think the rush in the end was because Jordan was dying with some cardiac problems but he apparently left enough material to have a ghost writer finish of the last 3 books in the series.
 
I'm just hoping that no one that was involved in The Shannara Chronicles is allowed anywhere near this.

If they just concentrate on the first 4 books that would give them plenty material for a few seasons. If it is popular then they can worry about condensing books 5-11 into something manageable.
 
It's a huge undertaking, but done right the TV version should be better than the books. It's a chance to strip out all of the filler (of which there is loads).

I don't envy the show runner. But at least it's a really rich and well fleshed-out world.
 
No1newts said:
Then dear god I hate Jordan even more than I thought. The least engaging and tense "fight" ever and the cop out with Rand which neither here nor there but the ultimate act of fence sitting was a travesty.

Spoilered in case I get lambasted for ruining a yet to air TV series but it's my opinion on the ending.
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I believe it is something like he wrote the last chapter or the last page and the rest of the final 3 books was dictated as notes to his wife (also his editor). I agree Sanderson murdered the last books, despite picking up the pace, he ruined Mat (the best character in the series). His mistake was to not copy the writing style and just use the setting and names to do his own.

A TV show written by some skilled/experienced writers, without enough VFX budget, could be amazing. There are some easy pieces to cut or skate over. The best part is that the first book could be the first season and is easily the best to hook people in to ensure a continuing series and the larger budgets that will be needed for the follow up season.

An example would be removing all the Children of Light storylines as they don't add anything.

The danger would be falling into the "foresaken" of the series trap.
 
There is loads to work with some really well thought out characters and peoples. The general plot is good it just needs heavily pruning. I reckon if you brutal with the axe the story could be cut to 5 seasons no problem.
 
I think the black tower (was that what it was called?) deserved a lot more time, was built up for ages then largely ignored which was disappointing.

Anyhoo I would watch with fingers crossed.
 
SPG said:
One of the most disappointing/overrated/boring series of books ever written, It could and should have been done in 3 possibly 4 books, I will watch the first 2 episodes skip a crap-load of "whatever" and then watch the last 2.
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Agreed!! The first 2, 3 books were really good, exciting and a refreshing change. Then it all went downhill rapidly. The same characters having the same conversations over and over and over. It could have been all done and dusted in 6 books and it would have been an awesome series.
 
It's an awesome (in the true sense of the word) series regardless :p

Been a while since I read it, so I just looked up the list of POV characters to get an idea of what would likely be cut. There's about 150 different characters on that list :eek: I'm reading Farseer at the moment, and I'm not sure that series has 150 named characters in it, let alone 150 with their own chapters, storylines, etc.

I really hope the showrunners is planning the whole thing now, rather than just considering a series at a time, because if not this has the potential to be a real mess. Benioff and Weiss reckoned GoT was a big job and "the most ambitious TV show ever made". But ASOIAF has nothing on the scale of WoT.
 
I don't think it's a good idea to start the show with the prequel. A lot of what made the first few books good was not knowing much about Moiraine/Lan/Aes Sedai. Giving us a ton of background kills a lot of the slow discovery and reveals that we get through the original books.
 
I'll watch but will need to be condensed a huge amount! Will also be one of those times they actually need to do something about the way the women are portrayed. Was really weird at times (tugs braid and storms off).

Will also need to sort out the overly complicated forsaken malarkey. They hide in plain sight with multiple aliases and names, live/die/live changing names each time and sometimes sex. You just give up caring at some point trying to figure out who is whom.
 
I can't see any TV series doing this justice, arguably there are too many people and individual stories for a huge book series let alone trying to cram all of that into a TV series. Expecting loads of awful CGI too. Think the Belgaraid is more suited to a TV series.
 
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