Wheel of Time movie rights aquired by universal

[sachmo71]

For all of the current and former WOT fans:

Universal Acquires Robert Jordan’s ‘Wheel of Time’

or those of us who are, first and foremost, book lovers, this news is bittersweet. Universal Pictures has announced that they have just purchased the film rights to one of the biggest fantasy epics of all time, The Wheel of Time.

Written by the late Robert Jordan, the 13-book series is nothing short of epic. Having sold over 44 million copies worldwide, and spawned a mass of byproducts like role-playing games and trading cards, not to mention comic books and your run of the mill fan sites, WoT is definitely a beloved series.

According to Variety, the adaptations will begin with the first book, The Eye of the World, which introduces us to the central characters who will take us throughout the series. Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon will produce for Red Eagle Entertainment, which published graphic novel adaptations of Jordan’s books.

The series will span twelve books when Brandon Sanderson, known for writing the book Elantris, completes the twelfth and final novel in Jordan’s series. Jordan, who knew his health was not good, made many notes and tapes of where the story would go and how it would finish. In addition, Jordan’s wife, Harriet McDougal, was always his editor, and will exercise a measure of control over Sanderson’s work to ensure her husband’s legacy is finished appropriately.

As for a movie series? My hopes are not good. While the first five books of the series were good, it all sort of started to fall a part after that. Books 6 and 7 were still measurably good, but books 8 and 9 all seem to halt. The story falls apart into a mass of minutia and irrelevance, and what is done in 3 and a bit books could have been done in one. Hence why I like book 7, it was a good book, but the following two were almost exactly the same. Even the back cover blurbs were similar.

Additionally, while the books make for great reading early on, I don’t know how well that could translate to film. I would be more than happy to see a series of mini-series, 6 or 12 episodes to each book, but that is unlikely. Of course, Empress Eve will tell you I am just a grumpy curmudgeon who doesn’t like any adaptation of a book into film, and she would be right.

The first books were the best, so maybe the movies won't suck. Then again, maybe they'll use the Dragonlance animators and kill the series for good.

[Bad-example]

Jordan’s wife, Harriet McDougal, was always his editor, and will exercise a measure of control over Sanderson’s work to ensure her husband’s legacy is finished appropriately.

I didn't know she was his editor but that explains a lot. Had he a real editor, these books would no doubt have been much better.

[NoMyths]

Hehe -- I'm actually friends with his wife, and she's about as smart a writer as they come. Plus a heck of a nice person to boot.

[Eaglesfan27]

I love the series, even admitting that it bogs down after book 7 or so. I hope they manage to do it justice.

[Desnudo]

What's Empress Eve's opinion on it?

[Bad-example]

Originally Posted by NoMyths

Hehe -- I'm actually friends with his wife, and she's about as smart a writer as they come. Plus a heck of a nice person to boot.

Tell her I hate her.

[NoMyths]

I'll try, but it may be hard for her to hear me all the way up on top of her giant bags of money.

She has talked about working with Sanderson on finalizing the last book -- a tough process, but she's been incredibly strong in the wake of Jim's death (which was pretty sad for the writing community around here). However, there's a filmmaker working on a documentary about him that contains his last filmed interview, and I'm looking forward to seeing its completion -- I've seen bits of it and he has a funny riff about Southern writers...says he heard that in order to be one, you have to put a mule in your books, and since he hasn't done so yet he was going to try to slip one into the last book.

[WSUCougar]

Hopefully, they'll stick to the early phases of the series, before you needed an Aes Sedai scorecard next to your book.

[terpkristin]

Wow, I hadn't realized that there were movie rights to WoT.

/tk

[Autumn]

I suppose it coudl be good, given that a movie version would have to greatly reduce the content of the books, and that's exactly what the books need. Chances are it will be cheesy though.

I'm sure Harriet is nice, but I agree that having her as editor was a seeming large part of the problem in the end of the series. He obviously needed two things: a publishing company that wasn't eager to churn out as many volumes as quickly as possible, and an editor willing to kick his ass and send him back to rewrite. I'm sure the company knew that suckers like me were going to continue to buy every volume once we were seven books in, so the more volumes the better. Thus entire books, long books, which only advanced one plot point. Ugh.

They could greatly reduce the series for a film version, but we'll see.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

Wow, I hadn't realized that there were movie rights to WoT.

/tk

There are movie rights to everything. There are movie rights to your life story. And to my life story.

The problem is, no one is likely to pay anything for the movie rights to your life story. And I am certain no one will pay anything for the rights to mine.

There is good news, though--I have it on good authority you can trade those movie rights for sex in Ohio.