Update: The director of the "pilot", Seda James, passed away just a few days ago. I am dumbfounded by this occurrence, and am taking steps to prevent its reoccurrence." Repeat, was Bandersnatch, or Robert Jordan’s estate, informed of this I see no mention of Universal in the “pilot”. Wednesday, February 11 – at which point these rights revert to Universal Pictures that grants television rights to them until this Rigney,īandersnatch has an existing contract with With Bandersnatch Group, the successor-in-interest to James O. Winter Dragon, had appeared at 1:30 in the morning, East Coast time, onįXX TV, a channel somewhere in the 700s (founded to concentrate onĬomedy, according to the Washington Post). A “pilot” for a Wheel of Time series, the "pilot" being called ![]() With less-successful works like Shannara and The Kingkiller Chronicle getting optioned, it's very likely that WoT would be snatched up by another (probably far more competent) company in short order. With Game of Thrones a huge hit, other networks were looking for a fantasy project and as the biggest-selling post-Tolkien epic fantasy series, WoT was clearly the #1 desired property. At Worldcon this past August, I moderated a Wheel of Time convention panel with Harriet in attendance and she explained that a number of other Hollywood studios were very interested in the property. Fan appreciation for Red Eagle's efforts cooled noticeably at that point. ![]() During the last few months of his life Robert Jordan had become very irritated with Red Eagle's handling of the Wheel of Time project and one of his very last blog posts was spent castigating them. Those rights were not forever, and on Wednesday 11 February 2015 (that's this Wednesday, people) the rights would have reverted to the Bandersnatch Group, aka the Jordan Estate, overseen by Robert Jordan's widow Harriet McDougal. With the company running out of money, Red Eagle re-sold the film and TV rights to Universal Pictures in 2008 in return for Red Eagle retaining a production credit. Red Eagle's initial attempts to produce a film script based on The Eye of the World were not successful, with a few people who managed to read the script declaring it unbelievably awful. Of course, the real money was in a film/TV adaptation. They somehow managed to sign a deal with Electronic Arts in which EA agreed to release the game but not fund it, one of the most inexplicably baffling failures of corporate dealing I've ever encountered. ![]() However, they then failed to produce any money to fund the game. Red Eagle then won back some respect by commissioning Obsidian Entertainment, one of the best video games companies in the business, to work on a single-player RPG. Red Eagle tried to crowdfund a mobile Wheel of Time game but asked for an obscene amount of money and then failed to publicise it anywhere, resulting in an unmitigated disaster. The Wheel of Time comic book was delayed multiple times and left incomplete. To say they failed spectacularly is an understatement. ![]() Robert Jordan sold the film and TV rights to Wheel of Time back in the mid-2000s to Red Eagle Entertainment, a rights-handling company set up specifically to get the franchise expanded into TV, film comic books and video games. "But how?" you may ask, possibly after only a moment's pause to reflect on the gloriously demented decision to cast Billy Zane as Ishamael, the Betrayer of Hope. The "pilot" was apparently made on almost zero money in just a few days a couple of weeks ago.
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