It seems like every other series is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Song of Ice and Fire gets to be on HBO. Sword of fricking Truth gets picked up by Sam Raimi. (Evil chickens and all.) But Wheel of Time's only licensed product remains an underrated video game from 2001.
This is a series that's practically BEGGING to be turned into an episodic TV series. It's frankly a terrible thing to try to read but you can just sense the potential pulsing in the background. The things that are crappy on the page are the very things that will make the TV show great.
And it's PERFECTLY suited for some Japanese studio to pick up and turn into a giant long-running series. It reads like a fricking manga. The main character is surrounded by a harem of love interests and is extremely angsty. The voices in his head have little voices in THEIR heads. The villains come in a baker's dozen of stylish character designs and are deliciously evil. There's a complicated, Eastern-influenced magic system. And it's totally got that vibe of "girl smacks guy in the head for being a pervert." It's a by-the-book Japanese cartoon series.
I mean, look at Mat Cauthon. He's a tall blond womanizer with a scar around his neck who wears a wide-brimmed hat and carries a black spear marked with two ravens. He has a medallion shaped like a fox's head and extremely good luck with all games of chance, and is closely bound to the symbol of "snake eyes" on a pair of dice. He carries the Horn of Valere and is the sole person who can blow it to summon ancient heroes. He has the memories of thousands of dead warriors and generals and is going to lose one eye some time or other.
Now that to me sounds like one of two things - either an excerpt from some tabulation of Norse polytheistic symbology or an anime character design. Look at Perrin and Padan Fain for two other extreme examples.
Except think about it. The plot is actually pretty good if you do some condensing and redacting. Miles above something like Naruto - which is the kind of long-running show it would have to be. The source material is so exhaustive that they would never have to do an episode of filler. And the world and its history is unabashedly fascinating. All the parts of the books that are so annoying would fall right out in the wash.
Bring some cool visual style and talent to this story and you've got a hit on your hands.
This is a series that's practically BEGGING to be turned into an episodic TV series. It's frankly a terrible thing to try to read but you can just sense the potential pulsing in the background. The things that are crappy on the page are the very things that will make the TV show great.
And it's PERFECTLY suited for some Japanese studio to pick up and turn into a giant long-running series. It reads like a fricking manga. The main character is surrounded by a harem of love interests and is extremely angsty. The voices in his head have little voices in THEIR heads. The villains come in a baker's dozen of stylish character designs and are deliciously evil. There's a complicated, Eastern-influenced magic system. And it's totally got that vibe of "girl smacks guy in the head for being a pervert." It's a by-the-book Japanese cartoon series.
I mean, look at Mat Cauthon. He's a tall blond womanizer with a scar around his neck who wears a wide-brimmed hat and carries a black spear marked with two ravens. He has a medallion shaped like a fox's head and extremely good luck with all games of chance, and is closely bound to the symbol of "snake eyes" on a pair of dice. He carries the Horn of Valere and is the sole person who can blow it to summon ancient heroes. He has the memories of thousands of dead warriors and generals and is going to lose one eye some time or other.
Now that to me sounds like one of two things - either an excerpt from some tabulation of Norse polytheistic symbology or an anime character design. Look at Perrin and Padan Fain for two other extreme examples.
Except think about it. The plot is actually pretty good if you do some condensing and redacting. Miles above something like Naruto - which is the kind of long-running show it would have to be. The source material is so exhaustive that they would never have to do an episode of filler. And the world and its history is unabashedly fascinating. All the parts of the books that are so annoying would fall right out in the wash.
Bring some cool visual style and talent to this story and you've got a hit on your hands.
