For all your Wheel of Time TV series news lurching forward...!

Started by JasonPratt, April 21, 2017, 09:08:33 AM

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JasonPratt

I shall continue to be sceptically hopeful, sort of. But the WOT TV series now has a show-runner, and production company. Consequently, this increases the likelihood that at some point in the future we shall have Wheel of Time episodes on par with episodes from Agents of SHIELD. Or better. Or worse. But the announced showrunner, whose name I cannot recall atm, has written eps there. Don't know which eps yet for comparison. Also he helped produce Hemlock Grove for Netflix, so... that means nothing to me.

Rafe Judkins, that's who it is. Reportedly a fan of the series, so that could help.

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Martok

Unless & until episodes are actually filmed and aired, I shan't bother holding my breath.  For all intents & purposes, the project is still stuck in development hell. 
"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

JasonPratt

I wouldn't say it's stuck in development hell anymore. Not yet anymore: that's real forward progress.

When there hasn't been more forward movement next year...
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Ubercat

How will they possibly do the books justice? I'd have said that GoT was unfilmable, and would have been wrong, but WoT has to be about 3 times more lengthy and expensive. They'd have to chop vast portions of the books, which wouldn't be doing them justice.

Nevertheless, I hope they pull it off.
"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."

- Thomas Sowell

Nefaro

Quote from: Ubercat on April 26, 2017, 10:30:16 PM
How will they possibly do the books justice? I'd have said that GoT was unfilmable, and would have been wrong, but WoT has to be about 3 times more lengthy and expensive. They'd have to chop vast portions of the books, which wouldn't be doing them justice.

Nevertheless, I hope they pull it off.


I also thought Martin's books would never become movies or series years ago, before it happened.  Simply due to the huge amount of characters & locales needed.  But the bastards coughed up so much damn money that it did happen.  I was certainly wrong.

Been saying the same thing about another series of books which have received grumblings of a movie series over the years: Hyperion Cantos.  But now that CGI has become so prevalent and cost-saving, maybe we'll be lucky to get more such big sci-fi & fantasy novel series on the screen.  This Wheel Of Time endeavor is another point of evidence for that view.   :dreamer:

JasonPratt

WoT will be a monetary challenge for two reasons:

1.) More magical/fantasy sfx, and on a pretty regular basis.

2.) The city architecture, which is a big draw for the books (and/or annoyance to plow through descriptions of), varies a lot from place to place, and the plot moves around a lot of different places.

Both can be technically done, even for TV, nowadays; but it'll take time and/or money. How much are the producers willing to budget for it? Considering that overall WoT is far more family-friendly than GoT, the relative potential income should be much higher, too. (Or they can make it a sort-of-hard R in various ways, with naked sex along plus deviance on occasion plus as much violence as they care to put on screen. But they have options for adaptation, and even with the fantasy cursing we aren't talking about a protagonist being denounced in the street as a brotherf___er or whatever.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Showrunner is still attached.

Big news (from end of February, that I didn't hear until now) is that Amazon has picked up the rights to produce the series.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Huw the Poo

Oh well, I'll never see it then.

Not that I've read the books, mind, but one of my closest friends bangs on about them at length at any given opportunity.  Maybe I should read them.

JasonPratt

I'm pretty sure Amazon eventually releases its shows on DVD/Blu. It'll just be delayed.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Well, as per the thread title, the news for the first TV adaptation of the Wheel of Time lurches forward! ...again!

In the past week, the first key actors have been announced:

Moiraine Damodred will be played by Rosamund Pike. Seems like a good choice; she needs to look a little older than the main protagonists, being the wise wizard mentor for a while.

Rand al'Thor -- Josha Stradowski. Dutch actor. The level-2 archer of the party. (Everyone starts out young and inexperienced, but Rand does have decent archery skilz to start with.) Will probably have the most screentime; goes insane and kills a lot of people. (I'm linking to the imdb profiles of the five main protagonist actors, since they aren't as well-known as Pike.)

Perrin Aybara -- Marcus Rutherford The level-zero strongman and axe fighter of the party. Arguably the tank, though no one has armor to amount to anything (even later). Not a werewolf, despite looking a little like that guy from the Twilight series.

Nynaeve Al'Meara -- Zoë Robins Former Ninja Steel Power Ranger, and that was AFTER having a role in the "Shannara Chronicles" adaptation. Which very much failed. (None of that is in the books, fwiw.) Makes sense that she would have more acting experience than some of the other main protagonists, since Nyn is a little older and already a key authority figure in the village and surrounding areas. Level-2 healer at the start.

Egwene Al'Vere -- Madeleine Madden. The most experienced actor among the main protags, though not a Power Ranger. Will need more gravitas than Nyn, arguably, as she goes along. Level-15 innkeeper's daughter. Will obviously die and/or be enslaved. (Spoilers.)

Mattrim Cauthon -- Barney Harris. Level-1 rogue and archer but mostly rogue. Best character in the series, once he reaches season three. Most annoying character in season two. Meh in season one. Chick magnet. Looks like a young John Travolta. Maybe also in the books.


My only complaint so far is that their village is an isolated pocket area, where everyone is related to one another (the blood of the region runs strong, as a key plot point of the story) which doesn't really fit the multi-ethnic casting choices. The obvious exception should be Rand, who is supposed to be kind-of Irish or Gaelic looking in the book -- for plot reasons I won't spoil, but which are relevant to the story. This could be changed to something arguably more plausible than the story, but the plot point should remain that his family looks rather similar to each other ethnically, not doing much breeding outside their group (for reasons very pertinent to the plot).

Aside from potentially messing up some of the plot logic, which perhaps might be fixed in production, I'm fine, full speed ahead.  O0
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

And now Lan Mandragoran has been cast: Daniel Henney.

Who's that? Mostly he has been a key actor in the two "Criminal Minds" series (which have run somewhat concurrently). He very much looks the part, since Lan is a guy from a very Japanese-ish culture despite their far-northern kingdom(s), whose face looks like it was carved from planes.

...oh, you were asking who Mandragoran is? Without going into spoilers, he's roughly speaking the Aragorn of the main cast. He's less important overall, and doesn't talk nearly as much, and functions more of a secondary protagonist aid to the main protags. He and "Moraine Damodred" (who is very roughly the Gandalf for the main protagonists) are a ranger/mage team. See above for her casting. You could say that he and Moraine escort the main protagonists around while they level up, helping them train somewhat along the way, and making sure the plot doesn't kill them sooner rather than later. He's more interesting than I'm making it sound, but those would be spoilers. Fans like him a lot. He's the type of guy who really should be the main hero, or the main heroine's love interest, but he isn't.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Martok

I'm very curious to see who's cast as Thom and Loial.  They're definitely my two favorite characters, at least out of the main cast. 
"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

JasonPratt

Or even how they'll cast Loial. Use LotR forced perspective tricks and props perhaps?

Peter Dinklage just finished up work, and has played a giant recently.  >:D

I suspect Thom's casting will be announced soon, since they're starting with people in the first few chapters (naturally).
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Principle photography has started (back on Sept 16th), and Rafe the showrunner posted a set photo on twitter (from the 25th)!

....it's a sheep. Well, he calls it a sheep, looks very much like a goat to me. Four-horned goat. If that thing isn't used as a model for one of the early Trollocs, they'll have missed an opportunity!

https://twitter.com/rafejudkins/status/1176981248259936256

He's super-excited about the way things look and the care the cast and crew are taking to do things right. "[Seeing] these actors all with dog-eared, well-read copies of the books genuinely brings tears to my eyes. They get what they're taking on here and they will make us all proud."
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Martok

Sounds good, but wake me when the show actually begins airing.  Pre-hype tends to wear me out.  :P 
"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces