Wheel of Time TV News

Though LA may be the end goal, Madden’s current foreseeable future is located in Eastern Europe—the Czech Republic to be exact. The day I talk to her is at the end of her first day on Wheel of Time, a new Amazon series starring Rosamund Pike, adapted from the novels by Robert Jordan. “My character is Egwene, and she comes from the small town in this world that we’re creating. She and the other kids from her village go on—[laughs] sorry this is the first interview I’ve done about it—pretty much go on an adventure that spans years and experiences that you could never imagine or think of,” she explains. Though Madden hasn’t quite started work on Wheel of Time, she is exhilarated for the upcoming 11 months of filming. The only thing she isn’t looking forward to? A European winter.

The WoT casting looks good to me. It's more than it doesn't bother me; it's more that I actively like how these people look as the characters. Granted, I have information others don't have. I've read Rafe's scripts, I've read his treatments, and I get what he's doing with the series--and in almost every case, I like the choices he's made. Deciding to do the Two Rivers with a variety of skin tones but a unified cultural identity is cool to me because I think it expresses some of the broad themes of the Wheel of Time. Themes that might be difficult to get across otherwise without the text, the internal monologues, etc. To me, this is like putting the Harry Potter kids in street clothes in the third of those films, or making Frodo push Sam away in the LotR films--both are pretty big deviations from the letter of the story, but both (I think) achieve something in setting the tone the right way for a film. That said, I can see this being something you dislike. For what it's worth--from my experience, this isn't Rafe pandering. It might well be Rafe expressing his own ideologies in the story. It's okay to dislike those choices, but I do think that it would be a mistake to not want a showrunner who tries to make their own version of the story. (Like Jackson did with the LotR films.) This is one of the things I've had to become comfortable with in watching my own book-to-film adaptations progress. You won't get something great without letting a new vision change the story. Even Marvel, in charge of its own properties, heavily adapted characters, looks, and stories to fit the new medium of film.

Everything I've seen from Rafe in my interactions with him (including the sessions where I gave feedback on the scripts) made me confident he had nothing but respect for the source material. That said, this IS looking more of an adaptation than a straight filming of the source material. This will be different from the books. It reminds me more of the Lord of the Rings adaptations than, say, the early Harry Potter adaptations.

You're never going to get a good director who doesn't put their own spin on the source material. It's because they know you simply cannot adapt most written media into film without changing things dramatically. When people try to adapt line by line, but not try to capture the soul of the piece (as seen through their on eyes, and their own experience) you end up with something sterile at best, a disaster at worst. What is the single greatest (by general agreement of audiences and critics) Stephen King Adaptation? It's the one that deviates the furthest. Even the new IT takes huge liberties. The early Harry Potter adaptations are attempts to line-by-line try to adapt the books. They are mediocre films in the eyes of most critics and audiences. There is a reason why the third film, which deviates greatly, is the one that FEELS more Harry Potter to a lot of people. (Granted, not all of them.) It's because the project had someone who adapted the material and added their artistic vision to that of the book. (Which was, admittedly, the strongest of the books also.) You have Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. He wrote it in the medium he wanted, and it will never change. You are never, in film, going to get anything but the director's Wheel of Time. This is something I've had to realize the more I've become involved in Hollywood. A great case study is the Princess Bride. One of the rare examples where the same person wrote the book and the screenplay--someone who was good at both. And the film deviates in huge ways from the book, along the lines that the screenwriter wanted. Because he knew that film is a different medium, with different needs and different audience expectations. If you don't want Rafe's Wheel of Time, that's completely legitimate. But you're not going to get a director who could explore Robert Jordan's themes in his way. Ever. You're going to get a director who explores Robert Jordan's themes in the director's way.

I perhaps overstated my opinion. My intent was to indicate you can never get a film that won't have the filmmaker putting their stamp on it--and in general, a filmmaker with powerful style and storytelling chops of their own will usually have a more noticeable stamp. In general, I'd feel these are the people you want on the story. In addition, a different medium often requires different choices to be made. HOWEVER, you are right. Deviation from the source material isn't what makes films great--rather, having a director who knows when to deviate is very important. And in some cases, you may find a director who believes not deviating is the right thing, and is able to therefore do a great job by knowing to stick close to the story.













Cya next week....light willing!

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Rosamund Pike(Moiraine) finished work on her latest movie and is now moving on to WoT:did an interview with Flaunt Magazine , and had the following to say about the show:A lot of people latched onto the "11 months of filming" and started speculating that they might be filming two seasons at once or that there will be a lot more episodes than the 8-10 that people have predicted.So lets take a look at that...The only other publicly published date for filming is from KFTV, that reported filming would be from Sept-May(9 months). So who do we believe? Did Madden say filming would be 11 months or did she tell the reporter that she'd be in Europe for 11 months, and the reporter just reported that as "filming" time. The 11 months of filming is not in quotations marks so it's not a direct quote, and as can be seen from the first and last paragraph(bolded parts) the reporter is rather loose with how they word things.If Madden just said 11 months in Europe, then the 9 months of filming reported by KFTV can still be correct as she is already there, and if filming ends in May, she may not leave until June, which gives us the 11 months. Nine months is already a long shoot for a TV show(GoT averaged 5-6 months and season one of The Witcher took 7 months), so 11 months is really really long...Narg's money is on 9 months being correct.As for the speculation about filming two seasons or season one being more than 8-10 episodes, Narg thinks that is unlikely. The writers' room was only together from late November to around April. Narg crunched some numbers and believes they only had time to "break down" 8, at most 10 episodes in that time. Granted Narg could be way off on his assumptions, but from research into other shows, Narg thinks his assumptions are fair👀.on r/WoT about the show. Here are a few quotes:andandfinallyYou can read all he had to say by sorting through his comments HERE and a Wheel of Time fan? You hire the Budapest Orchestra to perform your WoT theme song of course...has been reading Eye of The World and sketching some maps as he reads... here are few peeks at his work As always, y