The Wheel of Time TV series is set to release on Amazon this November. My wife has been reading through the series for the first time, and I’ve been re-reading with her. We’re on book 12 (the first by Sanderson).
I’m interested to see how this show will play out. I had similar hopes for the Sword of Truth TV show (Legend of the Seekers), but that one ended up being really corny. Hopefully this is better!
I loved the book series, although my experience waiting for books to come out (especially after the original author passed, and Brian Sanderson was brought on to finish the series) taught me the dangers of getting into a book series before it was complete.
There are a couple of WoT fandom sites/YouTube channels that have been following along with the series production based on information Amazon has teased out and other bits and pieces of information gleaned elsewhere. We’re now seeing the ramp-up of Amazon’s marketing to a broader market.
One thing that I am not looking forward to are the complaints within fandom about differences between the shows and the books. Season 1, 10 episodes, is expected to span the first book and a half, based on the episode titles. Considering how big the individual books of the series are…they’re doing some simplification/distillation to make the story fit the format and production constraints.
Heck, when the first round of casting announcements, I was somewhat disgusted with feedback from a few fans, because the cast didn’t align with the fan art depictions of the main characters.
I’m through book 5, slowly making my way through them. I very rarely make time to read fiction anymore, but I do enjoy these and am looking forward to the TV series.
Hopefully they don’t cut really interesting sections, but this was inevitable going in if there was any hope of seeing the full story told. You just can’t expect to get 10+ seasons of a show. It’s promising that Amazon already greenlit and started production/filming on season 2.
I think they nailed Moraine and Lan. The kids are promising, but we’ll have to wait and see how they do. I think this is the only book series I’ve read multiple times (3 times through), so I’m excited to see it come to life.
Read some of this, was very good, just got distracted and probably didn’t finish more than 2 or 3. Was a good series. Not sure how much I trust Amazon, hopefully they don’t Game of Thrones it up.
This time reading through it I knew there was going to be a TV show made, so I’ve tried to imagine how they would portray different scenes. Made me realize how much nudity there is. Not a ton of sex scenes, but plenty of nudity!
GoT was amazing, right up until they ran out of book material and had to bring it home way too quickly. It was still entertaining even as it started making less and less sense, but at least WoT is a done series. They’ll still make changes for cost, runtime, etc… I’m pretty easy on screen adaptations for making changes to books because it’s necessary to get them to screen.
I was good with a lot of their changes up through the book material. I think they really played up the nudity/sex - it was present in the books but they made it a selling point and not as much of a “fact of life” or “necessary tool of diplomacy” or “reality of war” kind of thing. But then they really biffed one of the best series of all time.
It’s impressive how my watching group went from really excited to “Well… maybe it’ll be better next week…” Then we just never spoke about it again after.
WOT is my favorite book series, so I’m hesitantly excited for the show mainly because-
This.
To this point - they could hypersexualize the show a la Game of Thrones, which I think would be awful since the books use nudity as more often something that is there rather than sexual which is how I hope they approach it… though there is Berelain…
That’s my experience too. Read 2 or 3. Enjoyed them well enough, but didn’t get excited enough to continue. Maybe I’ll try again sometime.
Probably helped that I started the series in middle school or high school when I had nothing but spare time.
I “read” them on audiobook as an adult, when I had a one hour commute each way. I went through a lot of audiobooks on that job
Read the first book. Didn’t grab me. Gave up the series then.
Maybe I’ll enjoy the TV show.
We know from the casting calls and…I want to say that there may have been an intimacy consultant hired…there will be nudity in season 1, probably the baths in Fal Dara
(Oooh! Nifty effect for the spoiler tag on this forum software!)
Assuming the series goes that far, it’ll be interesting to see the how some of the corporal punishment depicted in the books translates to the series. On Reddit, a couple of us were speculating that they might have one scene of Egwene looking into the mirror in the Mistress of Novices’ chamber during an “appointment” after having being captured.
And the Aiel and their customs. I didn’t remember that they don’t really show up much until book 4.
One of the things I like about the rise of streaming video services is that it’s become viable to translate series like the Wheel of Time into video format and potentially do them justice.
The books are too long/detailed to just attempt a single movie per book, and the uncertainties about the transition would make such efforts a gamble. And while there’s certainly enough material for a conventional TV series, mass market audiences frequently don’t go for series that rely heavily on arcs, and the reliance on advertising dollars to turn a profit imposes budget pressures.
I’m still concerned about trying to compress 1.5 books into 10 episodes…but it’ll be interesting.
Definitely a valid concern, but my guess is they’ll pull small bits from book 2. I can’t imagine they get into the hunt for the horn or Seanchan until Season 2. If they follow the GoT template, then ep 9 will be the Eye fight and ep 10 will be a calm/setup in Fal Dara with Rand et al meeting Suian. Ending with the characters splitting up for their new “quests”. Rand/Perrin/Mat after the Horn with Hurin. Egwene/Nynaeve maybe arriving at Tar Valon and running into Elayne/Min.
GoT pretty much did the 1st book in season 1, and to me GoT is even more dense than WoT. They still had time for plenty of slow world building conversations. WoT could be more on the go action in its first book/season.
I need to correct an earlier statement – season 1 is only 8 episodes long (although Wikipedia only shows 6).
The leaked titles for the first six episodes are:
I haven’t seen anything about episodes 7 or 8, but back when I was paying a little more attention to fan speculation, the most popular theory was that Season 1 would end with Rand’s first use of a portal stone, during the hunt for the horn, which would seem consistent with the leaked title of Season 2, Episode 1, A Taste of Solitude.
Latest trailer drop:
I’m excited. My wife even said she’d watch it with me even though she only made it partway through the first book