Gaming —

You probably missed the terrible Wheel of Time TV series pilot on Monday

Disjointed program aired in apparent effort to keep TV rights from changing hands.

With no fanfare and no advance advertising, a short "series pilot" for Robert Jordan's epic 15-volume fantasy series The Wheel of Time aired Monday morning at 1:30am (EDT) on FXX. io9 has a pretty good breakdown of the how and why behind the seemingly out-of-nowhere pilot, explaining that the oddly shot, oddly acted pilot ran during a "client supplied" time block—in other words, paid infomercial territory.

Max Ryan as Lews Therin Telamon, The Dragon, wearing what I assume to be the latest Age of Legends fashion.
Enlarge / Max Ryan as Lews Therin Telamon, The Dragon, wearing what I assume to be the latest Age of Legends fashion.

Produced by Red Eagle Entertainment, the short program (titled "The Winter Dragon") wasn't exactly the grand on-screen adaptation that series fans have been asking for since the 1990s. At just about 30 minutes in length, it covers only the prologue of The Eye of the World, the first book in the series. Archvillain Ishamael confronts arch-hero Lews Therin Telamon—known as "The Dragon"—shortly after Lews Therin’s defeat in a world-rending war between good and evil; Lews Therin has been driven mad by an attack by the Dark One, Shai’tan, and that madness has led him to kill all of his relatives. Ishamael appears, cleanses Lews Therin of madness so that Lews Therin can behold the horror of what he’s done, and then boom, the prologue is over and we're into the first chapter.

What makes for a relatively quick few pages in the book is stretched out over thirty interminable, plodding minutes onscreen, including three long commercial breaks. Max Ryan's delivery of his lines as Lews Therin can best be characterized as "ghastly" ("Light forgive me. Light forgive me. Light...forgive me," he says in an emotion-free monotone), and Billy Zane (yes, that Billy Zane) as Ishamael acts less like the godhood-obsessed Betrayer of Hope in the books and more like Cal from Titanic.

Moreover, the production appears to have been accomplished in an extremely short amount of time, with visual effects straight out of the 1990s and costumes that look like they came off the rack at a thrift store. Worst of all, the ending diverges wildly from the book’s prologue, with Lews Therin simply walking offscreen with a knife in his hand rather than burning himself out in a massive burst of the One Power and creating the Dragonmount (though this change is perhaps understandable, given the production’s apparent budget).

This looks like a freeze from a sitcom intro. "And featuring: Billy Zane as Ishamael, Betrayer of Hope."
Enlarge / This looks like a freeze from a sitcom intro. "And featuring: Billy Zane as Ishamael, Betrayer of Hope."

What the hell is this crap?

The popularity of Game of Thrones has led to an uptick in studios optioning fantasy series so that everyone can get a piece of the audience pie; Wheel of Time’s sprawling 15-book narrative would seem to be a natural fit for Showtime or FX or another premium channel that wants its own multi-season Game of Thrones competitor. The problem is that Red Eagle Entertainment (and, apparently, Universal) already has the TV rights for The Wheel of Time—has had them for almost a decade, in fact. The company appears to have been a very poor steward of the property, with none other than series author Robert Jordan (pen name for deceased author James Oliver Rigney) expressing displeasure with the company as far back as 2007.

According to io9’s investigation, Red Eagle’s ownership of the rights were set to expire on February 11, 2015, unless the company actually produced something. io9 contacted Red Eagle CEO Rick Selvage for comments, and while io9 reports that Selvage was careful with the language he used in the interview, it appeared clear that the campy pilot was produced and aired specifically in order to keep the rights from expiring:

"You probably know that a lot of pilots are put on the air at different times in different ways, and for different reasons," Selvage tells io9. As with "a lot of other properties, there's always an airdate that you need to air something by... and that was certainly part of it."

Selvage also told io9 that the 30-minute pilot was intended only as a tease for a "high-budget production television series," and that the program that aired "was not the introduction to the series."

High disapproval

One person who definitely does not approve of Red Eagle’s pilot is Harriet McDougal, Jordan/Rigney’s widow and CEO of the Bandersnatch Group, a corporate entity that is the "successor-in-interest" to Jordan. Shortly after the pilot’s airing, McDougal issued the following statement:

This morning brought startling news. A “pilot” for a Wheel of Time series, the “pilot” being called Winter Dragon, had appeared at 1:30 in the morning, East Coast time, on Fxx TV, a channel somewhere in the 700s (founded to concentrate on comedy, according to the Washington Post).

It was made without my knowledge or cooperation. I never saw the script. No one associated with Bandersnatch Group, the successor-in-interest to James O. Rigney, was aware of this.

Bandersnatch has an existing contract with Universal Pictures that grants television rights to them until this Wednesday, February 11 –  at which point these rights revert to Bandersnatch.

I see no mention of Universal in the “pilot”. Nor, I repeat, was Bandersnatch, or Robert Jordan’s estate, informed of this in any way.

I am dumbfounded by this occurrence, and am taking steps to prevent its reoccurrence.

Harriet P McDougal
President and CEO
Bandersnatch Group, Inc.
February 9, 2015

There is no word as to whether or not McDougal sniffed loudly after the statement was issued.

But don’t take my word for it…

At least for now, the pilot is available on YouTube. In the opinion of someone who first laid hands on the books in 1991 and who grew up eagerly awaiting each new book in the series, the pilot failed on every level to meet my expectations—though, in its defense, I didn't even know it existed until a few hours ago, so I didn't have any specific hopes for it. Still, the pilot is absolutely not anything to be excited about, and if it’s any indication of the kind of effort Red Eagle and Universal would put into a Wheel of Time series, the best thing for hopeful fans who want to see the novels on the screen would be if someone else takes the reins.

Listing image by Tor

Channel Ars Technica