Amazon wants The Wheel of Time show to cover all 15 books

It’s the eve of The Wheel of Time season 1 finale on Amazon Prime Video, and there’s good news aplenty for fans of the newest epic fantasy craze. Amazon just released a slew of new images from tomorrow’s episode, and the show continues to crush it in the ratings. The first three episodes logged over a billion minutes watched during the week they debuted, and according to Amazon Studios co-head Vernon Sanders, the show has seen “incredible growth” on the platform since then and continues to have “high, high completion rates” among its viewers, an important metric on streaming platforms.

Speaking with IGN, Sanders also dropped another encouraging bit of news: that Amazon is hoping to adapt all of The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson; that’s 12 books written by Jordan (which includes a prequel about Moiraine’s early days in the White Tower) and three by Sanderson. This is something that we knew showrunner Rafe Judkins was intending all along, but it’s great to hear it from the brass at Amazon.

“Our ideal is to work with Rafe and the team on the full thing,” Sanders said. “Obviously that’s a ways down the road. So we’re focused on where we are right now. And Rafe and the team have just shared the first few episodes of season 2, and I wish I could get those out to everyone right away. They’re just, they’re great.”

The Wheel of Time season 2 will have a bigger budget

Speaking of The Wheel of Time’s second season, Sanders also talked a little bit more about the expense of making the show. IGN brought up a comment showrunner Rafe Judkins made a while back that The Wheel of Time budget is “tiny” compared with Amazon’s juggernaut Lord of the Rings prequel seires.

“Wheel of Time is one of our most expensive shows that we’ve ever made,” Sanders replied. “So we are really proud of the investment and we think that it shows on screen, and we’re spending more in season 2 than season 1.”

For reference, Amazon dropped $250 million just to get the rights for Lord of the Rings, and another $250 million for the first couple of seasons, almost double the amount that Peter Jackson spent on his entire trilogy of movies. So that show is just astronomically expensive. The Wheel of Time is still more expensive by far than something like Game of Thrones was early in its run. Really, it’s all relative.

But from the sounds of things, season 2 of The Wheel of Time will be even bigger and better-funded than the first, which is great, because the story only gets more ambitious from here. And Sanders is pretty serious when he says that Amazon is invested in the series. The studio greenlit season 2 before the first had even aired, and now we finally have more details about how that all went down.

“[The greenlighting of season 2] was just based on the creative conviction and Rafe’s work on season 1, and his pitch and layout for season 2 and beyond was so compelling that we had every confidence that we had a show that people would love and a show that demanded to go on,” Sanders said. “So this is all confirmation of our instincts, but it really is all credit to Rafe and the work that they’re doing.”

All in all, it sounds like Amazon is more invested than ever in The Wheel of Time, and in their fantasy and science fiction slate in general.

“It is the age of genre and fantasy fandom,” Sanders said. “I think what’s coming, at least here, what’s coming at Prime Video and Amazon will blow people away, and so we couldn’t be more proud to be the home of that content.”

When does The Wheel of Time season 1 finale air?

The season 1 finale of The Wheel of Time drops tomorrow at 12:00 a.m. GMT, which means depending on your time zone you might even be able to catch it tonight!

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels