Friday, August 15, 2008

Wheel of Time Movies

In the search for the next Lord of The Rings, Universal Pictures have just picked up the rights to Robert Jordan's bestselling fantasy novel series, The Wheel of Time.

Plans are to adapt the fantasy novel series for the big screen with the first movie, The Eye of the World, based on the first book. Now I love ‘The Wheel of Time’ but I have doubts about this project for the big screen. First of all, there are 12 books! If they intend for a movie on every book in the series, that will take 12 years to make!

That’s way too long, but that’s nothing compare to the real problem. The main character in ‘The Wheel of Time’ is crazy! If they intend to follow the book, then Rand al'Thor has to be the main character. But for several books in the series, he went mad! Can you even show a mad hero in PG movie?

The only way I see for Universal to avoid that problem is to show the series from the other characters’ point of view, most probably Mat or Perrin, but that would hardly be ‘The Wheel of Time’ as ‘The Wheel of Time’ is primarily the coming-of-age story of Rand, Mat and Perrin. Mostly Rand!

Hope spring eternal however. Best of luck Universal!

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