We’ve got another thing to add to the long list of productions affected by the ongoing pandemic that is the Coronavirus: it sounds like production on Amazon’s lavish Wheel of Time series, which is currently filming in and around Prague, has shut down, according to Variety.
This isn’t very surprising. Disney’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier also shut down a shoot in Prague recently, as the Czech Republic addresses the problems by shuttering gyms, theaters and other public venues; canceling meetings of more than 30 people; and effectively sealing its borders starting on March 16, preventing foreign nationals from entering or residents from leaving. “This is obviously a spanner in the works,” said Matthew Stillman of Stillking Films, a production company based in Prague. “This is effectively a temporary interruption, but we don’t know how long it’s going to go on for. We’re all a little bit in the dark.”
"In principle, the local infrastructure is all there and ready to go. That can restart within a few days. We’ve had interruptions before. Crews and production are pragmatic by nature. There’s no problem on that level.On the macro level, and how long it’s going to take to deal with these issues, restore confidence, restore travel confidence, restore corporate confidence and people allowing their [employees] to do things in different places, that is more significant….However long it’s going to be, we don’t know."
The problems faced by The Wheel of Time are by no means unique right now. Pretty everything is shutting down. Hell, Disney just announced that it’s straight suspending production on its projects, and if a leading company like Disney is doing that, it pretty much means that no one in the film or TV industries is working for a while.
As far as The Wheel of Time is concerned, hopefully this won’t affect the release date. The show has already been filming for months, and according to Adam Whitehead over on Dragonmount, they’ve been going in pretty much chronological order, meaning that even if worse should come to worse and they can’t finish the final parts of the season, they could always just save it for season 2.
As of right now, the best estimates have The Wheel of Time debuting next year, hopefully early in 2021. Let’s hope this crisis passes sooner rather than later and that the release dates stay steady.
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