The Wheel of Time is one of two huge fantasy shows in the works at Amazon Prime Video, the other being its tremendously expensive Lord of the Rings series. The Wheel of Time, based on Robert Jordan’s 14-book strong epic, will be the first out, and expectations are sky-high.
That’s in part because fans have been waiting for a proper screen adaptation of The Wheel of Time for literally decades. The series went on for so long that Jordan died before he could finish writing it; that task fell to fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, who turned in the final book in 2013. “I basically became stepdad to millions and millions of fans,” Sanderson told GQ in a recent feature. “Now I’ve been able to hand that burden off to Rafe.”
That would be Rafe Judkins, the showrunner on The Wheel of Time. He’s been a fan of the books for years; they even helped him through a tricky personal time after he came out as gay to his parents. “That was something that kind of connected my mom and me: We could both see ourselves in these books,” he said. “And then she could understand, ‘Oh, maybe being a gay man is somewhat like being a woman in terms of the challenges that you face in your life and what it feels like.’ And we can both find ourselves in this. And so when I pitched it, I said the same thing. I was like: ‘You have to connect to these things emotionally.’”
Judkins definitely has a strong connection to the books; he’s someone who really cares about this world and these characters. “You know, there were pitches right at the beginning for this show of like, ‘We open with a giant battle’ and all of this cool stuff,” he said. “And I was like, ‘I just want to start with our characters in the Two Rivers and see where they came from.’”
But passion won’t be enough to satisfy his bosses at Amazon: Jeff Bezos doesn’t just want a good show, he wants a good show that has the kind of reach Game of Thrones had for HBO, which means making something that appeals to everyone. “In some ways we have a harder job,” Judkins said, “to tell the audience that, like: This is a show for people beyond fantasy nerds.” And matching Game of Thrones is no easy thing, because as producer Andy Greenwald told GQ, that show “changed the context of what success was.”
"From a production standpoint, everything they pulled off on Thrones someone would’ve told you was impossible. The sheer scale of it, the locations, the cost, the ambition of it—that blew the lid off what people were expecting."
And if The Wheel of Time is going to impress people like Game of Thrones did, it has to start where that show left off. “It’s not like we can go say, ‘Oh, you know, Game of Thrones, season 1, they only spent this,’” Weber said. “The audience expectation is coming off of the last season of Game of Thrones, not the first season.”
It’s a good thing Amazon is one of the most successful companies in the world, then. And it’s a good thing Game of Thrones showed everyone just how successful a modern television show could be, making other studios greedy to produce their own versions. “It’s not like had any particular love for Game of Thrones,” said Brad Stone, author of the recent book Amazon Unbound. “He thought: ‘Okay, if Amazon Studios and Prime Video are going to be a calling card in all these countries around the world, has to be broadly appealing.’”
The end result: studios like Amazon are very willing to open their wallet these days to make a show like The Wheel of Time. “One of the crazy things about now,” Judkins said, “is just how ready and willing networks are to just look you in the eye, and you say, ‘I’m going to build the Two Rivers and then we’re going to burn it down at the end of episode one.’ And they’re like: ‘Great. What’s next?’”
What did the Game of Thrones showrunners tell Wheel of Time boss Rafe Judkins?
Naturally, if you’re going to make a fantasy show to rival Game of Thrones, you could benefit from asking the people who made it happen. And indeed, Judkins sought out advice from Game of Thrones showrunner David Benioff and Dan Weiss. “Just do what you’re going to do,” they told him. “You know what this is. You have to believe in it. These kinds of things have to have an extraordinary clarity of vision to work.”
But that’s not to say that The Wheel of Time is going to be a copy of Game of Thrones; Jordan’s story is very different. Set in a world where only women are able to use magic, the series is choc-a-block with women who aren’t just strong, but running the show. “Even the great women in Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister, First of Her Name, they’re the exception to the rule,” Judkins said. “And in this show they’re not.”
That said, the article admits that a lot of women in Jordan’s books are “shakily drawn,” but the show could be an opportunity to update that, maybe even for eight straight seasons. Amazon has already ordered a second season, after all, so they’re in this for the long haul. “If you’ve read the entire series, the thing really wraps up beautifully in book 14,” said producer Mike Weber. “I don’t know how many seasons that would be—I mean, that’d be like the rest of my professional life if we did that. But at a certain point, while maybe condensing some books, I think bringing this entire series to a conclusion is everyone’s goal. And that is certainly, like, a daunting reality for everyone involved. But you know: This is what you wish for.”
— The Wheel Of Time (@TheWheelOfTime) October 18, 2021
What Amazon is spending all that money on
If you need more proof that Amazon is committed to this project, look at the fact that they’ve built a whole complex called Jordan Studios in Prague — we’re talking a private stunt gym, a costume department, writers’ offices, accounting operations, a visual effects studio, multiple enormous sound stages and much more. Costume designer Isis Mussenden has made 350 costumes for the first two episodes alone. “I’ve personally been to Madrid, London, and New Delhi to buy textiles,” she said, “because we have so little here and we need thousands and thousands of meters of fabric to create all of this.”
Then there are creatures, including fearsome beast soldiers called Trollocs. “You’re sort of saying, ‘Okay, you can’t have any influences or imagery tying into orcs and Lord of the Rings,’” said creature designer Nick Dudman. Trollocs are supposed to be tall, “ut I didn’t want to put them on stilts because of the fact that we’re running through woodland, and running downhill on stilts is just really not a good idea.”
Dudman and his team ended up giving the guys playing Trollocs the same prosthetics used by people who have lost limbs. “And the stunt guys were up on them and off, straight away. It’s actually been a very good call.”
And like everything else on The Wheel of Time, Dudman is working in bulk. “If you’re making, say 20 , how do you make it look as though you’ve created 40 or 50?” he asked. “And the answer is: They’ve all got horns. One of the things we decided early on is, they all have a variety of horn shapes. So if all those horns attach magnetically, and every single horn can swap with another horn on a different head, and they can also have two or three ways of putting them on, then you actually end up with 30 different silhouettes of creature for no extra money.”
The Wheel of Time cast speaks out: “This could change my life forever”
The cast, too, is an important piece of the puzzle. Rosamund Pike is headlining things as the Aes Sedai sorceress Moiraine, but the cast of characters is enormous, and the actors could be playing them for years to come.
For some, like Daniel Henney, who plays the warder Lan Mandragoran, it means getting used to life in eastern Europe, where he has a very different diet than back in L.A. “I’ve got a naked hot tub scene coming up,” he said, even as he was being fed dumplings and sausage. “What the f**k?”
Madeleine Madden, who plays Egwene, remembered auditioning for the role. “A bunch of Rands and a bunch of Egwenes were all flown into London. So we were sitting in the room with like five other Rands and five other Egwenes. It was one of those high-pressure moments where I was like, ‘This could change my life forever.’”
Amazon had literally thousands of notes on The Wheel of Time pilot
And if Amazon has its way, it will change her life. The team is already working on the second season. “We’re getting into more of a rhythm of how you make a huge feature film every two months,” Judkins said. That’s exciting, but it also means dealing with a non-stop flow of notes from his bosses.
"I say sometimes that showrunning is basically just laying your body over the show and trying to protect it as you take 10,000 swords into your back…[W]e got 11,000 notes [for the pilot]. Even if I only do like a 10th of those, that’s still like multiple notes per second…It’s very hard to take your little precious kernel of an idea and deliver it at the end of the production-and-notes process."
Every time he gets one of those, Judkins has to decide whether to incorporate it or draw a line, because it’s literally impossible to do all of them. I wonder if the tighter constraints will mean less room for creativity. Amazon wants a new Game of Thrones, but was that show’s slow start and build up an integral part of what made it work?
We’ll find out soon enough: The Wheel of Time premieres on Amazon Prime Video on November 19.
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