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Wheel of Time movies... THANKS UNIVERSAL
Lady Eri
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Registered User regular
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117990464.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
They already have producers going at it too. I hope the middle books are a very loose reimagining or interpetation, or better yet just condense the middle 6 books into one movie. On the upside with all the sniffing tissue production is going to skyrocket. Tissue futures are the way to go now. Honestly, I like the general story, the world is really cool too, they just need to edit a lot. Also if Sword of Truth got a fucking series, I guess we can live through WoT.
Edit: Seven figures wtf?
Universal Pictures has acquired film rights to the late Robert Jordan's bestselling "The Wheel of Time" novel series in a seven-figure deal.
Adaptations of the fantasy tomes will begin with the first book in the cycle, "The Eye of the World."
Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon will produce for Red Eagle Entertainment, which published graphic novel adaptations of Jordan's books.
"The Wheel of Time" follows, among its dozens of characters, Rand al’Thor, the latest incarnation of a force for good called "The Dragon." Rand is born to fight an evil character called Shai’tan.
"Wheel of Time" books have sold 44 million copies worldwide and spawned computer, trading-card and role-playing games; a soundtrack; comicbooks; and numerous fan sites. The four most recent installments have reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
The property has been optioned before, notably in 2000, when NBC held the rights to make a miniseries based on "The Eye of the World."
Jordan died last year at 58, but the final book in the series is still set for publication in fall 2009, with fellow fantasy scribe Brandon Sanderson writing the novel’s conclusion from Jordan’s notes and tapes.
They already have producers going at it too. I hope the middle books are a very loose reimagining or interpetation, or better yet just condense the middle 6 books into one movie. On the upside with all the sniffing tissue production is going to skyrocket. Tissue futures are the way to go now. Honestly, I like the general story, the world is really cool too, they just need to edit a lot. Also if Sword of Truth got a fucking series, I guess we can live through WoT.
Edit: Seven figures wtf?
Lady Eri on
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I've not read the books but i've heard good things.
Seriously though, WoT will need serious editing and culling of unecessary information to be ready for film. That much editing... why not just create a new fantasy world and base your movie on that? WoT seem to be cribbing in large part from Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces", Tolkien and with an added dash of feminism. Hardly a difficult combination to put together directly for the film medium.
This assumes, of course, that Hollywood is not completely bankrupt of creative voices.
I can think of about 44 million reasons. Why spend a fortune on creating new IP, when you can buy something that people already know about?
Most of the movie would be long shots of scenery.
the rest inane dialogue.
Occasionally something cool happens, and it's cool because it's fucking rare.
The whole series was just terrible after the third book.
Plenty happened in the early books. Around book 5 it started to shift to "nothing happening" and by book 8 or so you would go 700 pages before anything happened to change the plot.
No, lotr after they enter the mines is practically balls to the walls action and gripping from that point on compared to wheel of time.
I mean I liked the whole series because I don't just care about action. But it wouldn't make a good movie.
The reason this isn't happening is because every time they approach terry with a plot it basically guts the story to "americanize" it
For example, in one movie plot they wanted to remove Death because american audiences "wouldn't get it".
Terry is awesome and basically told them to piss off until they grow up.
Braid pulling, lol.
I'll probably end up watching this. So will everyone else.
They'll probably get Miley Cyrus to play Nynaeve.
Oh yes, the Sky One productions are great fun (Hogfather is my favorite). I always think Guards! Guards! or Men at Arms would be excellent starting points for the series because they satirize a genre that all Americans are familiar with, and if they proved popular enough, would encourage the development of other storylines.
As well he should.
I think it'll be as faithful a transition to the silver screen as we can expect. The WoT fans are just as rabid, and more creepy than the Lord of the Ring Fans in my experience. That's the kind of combination that gets shit done.
Everybody needs to watch the "Making of" documentaries in the expanded LOTR DVD's. It discusses the entire process of translating the books to screen, and how much of a chore it was. I had always enjoyed the novels for their vision and overall story, but still felt that while Tolkien was a creative genius, there are a lot of literary and narrative problems with his books. The writers of the LOTR movies had to have complete freedom to cut and paste where necessary, and from the sounds of it, WOT will have the same problems in translating it for the screen.
I loved the Hogfather and thought TCoM was okay (not as good as it could have been but never mind, it got made). Suprised they are going with Going Postal as the next one, Guards Guards or Wyrd Sisters would be brilliant one's to do. Although who they would get to play Granny Weatherwax is anyone's guess.
I heard they might be making The Wee Free Men into something
The Extended Edition documentaries are the best Making Ofs I've ever seen. I think I've watched through all of them once a year since they came out.
Although I still feel they made some weird decisions (I don't feel removing Saruman's death from the theatrical version was properly justified), their arguments are pretty sound most of the time, and they face issues that will have to be dealt with in any adaptation. Pacing is definitely one of the most important things here, and if they get a talented team and budget behind the WoT movies, there is a still a possibility that they could produce something good.
Movies of LotR-caliber don't really come along that often, though I'm sure Universal would like a hit film series on their hands, so I hope they don't halfass it.
I almost enjoyed the Making of documentaries as much as the movies themselves, they're REALLY detailed.
Sometimes I Stream Games: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/italax-plays-video-games
Sam Raimi was supposed to be directing Wee Free Men, but I haven't seen anything recent about it.
And TCoM was fairly awful as far as plot gutting went. David Jason should never have played Rincewind - he may be a good actor, but he's too old.
The WoT films could be good, as I remember some good concepts in the books back when I attempted to read them.
Which is a shame.
Everytime I try to imagine how they could do character development, all I can think of are Star Wars episodes 1-3. Horrible horrible acting with horrible horrible directing.
MWO: Adamski
I couldn't be arsed to finish the series, but with a decent editor and script team, these movies could be at least above average for generic fantasy fare.
The problem as I see it for the first few books at least is that almost too much happens, as compared to the later ones where nothing at all happens. I mean that first book especially introduces a shitload of characters and factions, and a lot of stuff happens to the main characters. You've got Rand's dreams and first uses of his power, Mat's experience when he goes through the thingy (sorry forgot the word) and his taking the dagger, and Perrin's dances with wolves.
They've also got to set up the Aes Sedai, the Children of the Light, decide what to do about Padan Fain, I mean they're going to have to do a hell of a chop job to fit it all in. I think it can be done but I think it's going to upset people even if they do it right and there's a big chance they'll do it wrong.
The only books that they might have trouble trimmming down are book 1 and book 4. One has a very quick pace (first like....6 chapters aside), but there's a whole lot in the rest of it which is small stuff which would probably be essential to the rest of the series.
On the flipside, book 8 could be done in like....20 minutes.
I could see the entire twelve book series making a really good, say....5 movie series. With Eye of the World being the first movie and a half on its own.
The biggest issue with the books is that they have large books where almost nothing occurs.
These summaries of the Jordan books are pretty much entirely accurate.
Guaranteed fanbase, and his editor was his wife.
I doubt jordan even knew how he was going to finish it anyway, the bad guy is kinda...unkillable. Pretty sure he dragged it on because he realised there was no real way to end it without completely gutting the ultimate evil that he'd been building up over all the books as some godlike force you cannot fuck with.
He had no one ring after all to sidestep the fight like sauron. That was a stroke of genius on tolkien's part, because nobody had to read how sauron was stabbed in the toe by a hobbit and fell into his fireplace or some shit.
However if they do it after the third book, there isn't quite as much build up of the planet changing power of the bad guy, so it wouldn't fall as flat. It could be quite good. Fucked if I remember his offical name.
It wasn't the dark one was it?
twit feed
J.R.R. Tolkien = Hobbit = In production as 2 films. Still love the original animated version.
J.R.R. Tolkien = Lord of the Rings = Released as one film per book.
C.S. Lewis = Chronicles of Narnia = First 2 books released, looks to be no further in the works.
J.K. Rowling = Harry Potter = First 5 books adapted, 6th due this year, last on deck.
Terry Goodkind = Sword of Truth = Syndicated tv series based loosely on plots from first book so far.
Terry Pratchett = Discworld = Animated versions of Wyrd Sisters & Soul Music, Full productions of Hogfather & The Color of Magic + The Light Fantastic, with further in the works.
George R.R. Martin = Song of Fire & Ice = In production as series for HBO, one book per season.
Robert Jordan = Wheel of Time = Optioned as series of movies in some form.
Philip Pullman = His Dark Materials = First book released, unfortunately no movement on further books.
Christopher Paolini = Inheritance Cycle = First book released, thankfully no movement on further books.
This is a Large number of the Larger series in the fantasy literature circles, off the top of my head, this leaves ...
David Eddings = Belgariad = 7 books in initial series with a 5 book follow up, bit formulaic but decent read, might make for decent tv series.
Roger Zelazny = Chronicles of Amber = 10 book series, in some form of feature might work.
Tad Williams = Memory,Sorrow & Thorn = Been a long time since I've read them, but might work.
Terry Brooks = Sword of Shannara = Initial 3 books may work well, past that it gets a bit muddy.
While this is definitely a large list of Fantasy series mined for ideas by the "Hollywood Machine" given the overall number of features, and compared to the number of comic book movies that are in the pipeline or have been done recently. We seem to always work in cycles, and we are somewhere in the midst of a Fantasy cycle, the trouble is determining if we are in the middle of it, and have some more excellent movies to look forward to or on the down slope and only have to look forward to hackneyed bad adaptations.
What I really want is a fantasy buddy movie based on Gotrek and Felix from the Warhammer universe. That would be awesome.
Terry Brooks Shannara series would be interesting, so would his Demon Knight books.
Also wouldnt mind seeing the David Eddings Sparhawk series.
MWO: Adamski