After a long and winding journey that’s spawned a rejected pilot and close calls after close calls, Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time book series is finally coming to television, thanks to a deal between Sony and Amazon Studios.
In a press release, Amazon announced that it was picking up Sony’s adaptation of the 14-novel series, over a year after reports of Sony’s acquisition of the books had surfaced.
Based on Jordan’s fantasy saga, the show will be helmed by Rafe Judkins, who previously brought us Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. In a statement, Amazon and Sony commented on how Judkins’ personal love of the series is what led them to pick him as the showrunner and executive producer.
“For so many people, including me, this book series has served as a world to escape to, to lose yourself in, to devour and inhabit completely,” Judkins said in a statement. “I couldn’t be more honored to be the one finally bringing that world to life on screen, for old fans to lose themselves in all over again and new fans to discover for the very first time.”
The Wheel of Time is a much-beloved, often frustrating series set in a world where magic exists, but only women can use it. A woman named Moiraine embarks on a dangerous journey with a group of young people, believing one of them in the reincarnation of a powerful person who could bring about the salvation or destruction of humanity.
“The Wheel of Time is endlessly fascinating and resonates hugely with fans as one of the best-selling global properties, and we were drawn to its timely narrative featuring powerful women at the core,” Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios, added.
Different people and production companies have been trying to bring the series to the small screen for years, often with disastrous results.
The most famous is a baffling instance in 2015, where FXX secretly aired a pilot for the series, under the name Winter Dragon, supposedly because Red Eagle Entertainment (which is a producer on this new series) needed to air something to keep the rights to the franchise. Jordan’s widow later dismissed it as an unauthorised production.
We’ll bring you more on The Wheel of Time as we hear it.
[h/t Newsarama]