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The Wheel of Time TV Series


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Just now, Deadpulse said:

Why do you say that? It seems like there is a lot of source material to pull from

So many reasons I don't know if I could collect them all. 

1. The very fact that there is way too much source material to pull from.  The Wheel of Time novels are like 14 books and about 700 pages each book.  If they did one season per book, they're cutting out a ton.  If they do one season per two books, they're cutting enough to lose the source material's fans.

2. It's Amazon.  Amazon seems to think that it can and should compete with HBO, which literally stands for Home Box Office with a mission statement of providing cinematic quality on television.  No streaming platform nor television studio can compete with HBO in terms of quality.  I also think Lord of the Rings is going to fail, and the very fact that there are two fantasy series heading to Amazon virtually guarantees that one or both will fail. 

3. Expectations.  Game of Thrones and its first three seasons set the bar that no television production can match. 

4. High fantasy vs low fantasy.  Game of Thrones worked because it was fantasy for everybody.  It was not high fantasy and it slowly introduced its fantasy elements through political intrigue, deep character motivations, subversive ambiguous character motivations...  This is high fantasy with magic and swords and blah blah blah.  Lord of the Rings worked because it was groundbreaking spectacle with a massive budget that had never been done in television or film before.  Harry Potter worked because it was a beloved massive hit with kids and parents.  What LOTR and Harry Potter also have over this is that they were movies.  Think of the budget for a movie and how many millions it costs for CGI and massive amounts of characters and gigantic battles.  That's for 9 hours of film.  Now think how much it will cost to make 10 hours of that per season.  Then you also have to consider that Amazon's revenue is not based on box office returns.  It's based on subscriptions.  It's commercial free, so you're not getting any advertising revenue. 

This and LOTR are attempts to get on the same ground as the likes of HBO, which has been around for decades, and Netflix.  The problem is that Netflix and HBO both have their own competing fantasy shows coming, too.  HBO is continuing Game of Thrones.  Netflix already has a number of series that guarantees subscription for millions of people.  Stranger Things could carry Netflix for the next three years.  The Witcher is coming out, and The Witcher has a better built-in audience than The Wheel of Time.  Video games and books and The Witcher is going to be a huge hit.  HBO of course has the entire GoT fanbase invested in the prequel. 

It's gonna be The Wheel of Time or Lord of the Rings that survives for Amazon.  My money is on the latter, but I wouldn't put much money on either of them making it long-term. 

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24 minutes ago, Superman(DH23) said:

^^^^^^^

You do realize that Amazon is the biggest company in the world, right?

Also it has award winning original series, so this point is moot IMO. 

For the third point... and yet other television has success...

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Just now, Superman(DH23) said:

^^^^^^^

You do realize that Amazon is the biggest company in the world, right?

You do realize that it's extremely new to film/television production, right? 

If HBO tried opening up an online store, I wouldn't be counting on its success. 

If you honestly believe that Amazon will sustain two major fantasy series, you've got a lot of faith in a production company that's only been making film/television for less than 5 years. 

And if you can watch an Amazon original and compare it to an HBO original and not see the difference in production quality, no offense, you're probably someone who loves the Dragonheart sequels.  I don't know where that came from, but it was the best example of quality versus lesser quality I could come up with. 

If HBO's Game of Thrones is the original Dragonheart, anything produced by Amazon will be its sequels. 

And I really don't know how it's difficult to understand that considering HBO has been around since 1972. 

You've also got to consider that Amazon doesn't even care if their shows fail/succeed.  The goal of these shows is to get people to sign up for Prime.  Once they sign up for Prime, they have them for an entire year.  This is different from Netflix/Hulu/HBO, which all charge monthly.  It is also banking on them renewing the membership at the end of the year for the shipping benefits. 

With Man in the High Castle, they calculated that the production cost them 63 dollars per new member who signed up for Prime.  Prime costs 99 dollars a year, so that is 36 dollars they got in profit for every person who signed up. 

So I guess I was wrong when I said it will fail.  It won't fail, but it certainly won't last.  Mostly because they're going to make all the money they're going to make for it at its release.  So if they hold off a full year, long enough for subscriptions to be renewed, before announcing whether or not Wheel of Time will last into its second season, they would have made all the profit for a second season without even making it. 

And this whole discussion really goes back to quality.  Amazon doesn't have it.  Not yet.  As far as production quality in television, you cannot compete with HBO.  Nobody else has the committment to quality as HBO.  Other than the half-assed final season of GoT in which they literally didn't care anymore and had Starbucks cups showing up, when you watch HBO, you believe you are in Deadwood, you believe you are in Westeros, you believe you are in the Dust Bowl with Carnivale. 

When I watch an Amazon show, I believe I'm on a hastily constructed television set.  A lot of it is subtle and indescribable, but it is there.  Their programming isn't up to snuff with the rest of film and television, and it really shows.  To me it's like the difference between those new televisions before you switch the auto motion plus function off.  When everything looks like a soap opera.  That's Amazon, and although some people really can't notice it, a lot of film/television snobs can.

So even though yes, it will succeed in Amazon's goal, it will fail as far as outstanding television compared to the first six seasons of Game of Thrones.  Not only in production value, but also in story.  Wheel of Time is a lot of drivel and depth for the sake of depth.  It's flat out not as good as Game of Thrones.  Same thing with Lord of the Rings.  I know people will lose their crap over that statement, but Lord of the Rings, although the archetype for modern fantasy, makes it nothing new or exciting.  It has literally been mimicked to the point of redundancy.  Additionally, it's not Frodo, it's not Aragorn, it's not Legolas... It's characters we have no connection to; it is a prequel to everything everyone knows, and there weren't novels for it.  There was a single book that read more like a textbook history of the events that are going to be depicted.  

One thing I know for absolute certain is that neither Lord of the Rings nor Wheel of Time will get the following that Game of Thrones attained.  Not on Amazon Prime. 

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2 hours ago, Outpost31 said:

You do realize that it's extremely new to film/television production, right? 

If HBO tried opening up an online store, I wouldn't be counting on its success. 

If you honestly believe that Amazon will sustain two major fantasy series, you've got a lot of faith in a production company that's only been making film/television for less than 5 years. 

And if you can watch an Amazon original and compare it to an HBO original and not see the difference in production quality, no offense, you're probably someone who loves the Dragonheart sequels.  I don't know where that came from, but it was the best example of quality versus lesser quality I could come up with. 

If HBO's Game of Thrones is the original Dragonheart, anything produced by Amazon will be its sequels. 

And I really don't know how it's difficult to understand that considering HBO has been around since 1972. 

You've also got to consider that Amazon doesn't even care if their shows fail/succeed.  The goal of these shows is to get people to sign up for Prime.  Once they sign up for Prime, they have them for an entire year.  This is different from Netflix/Hulu/HBO, which all charge monthly.  It is also banking on them renewing the membership at the end of the year for the shipping benefits. 

With Man in the High Castle, they calculated that the production cost them 63 dollars per new member who signed up for Prime.  Prime costs 99 dollars a year, so that is 36 dollars they got in profit for every person who signed up. 

So I guess I was wrong when I said it will fail.  It won't fail, but it certainly won't last.  Mostly because they're going to make all the money they're going to make for it at its release.  So if they hold off a full year, long enough for subscriptions to be renewed, before announcing whether or not Wheel of Time will last into its second season, they would have made all the profit for a second season without even making it. 

And this whole discussion really goes back to quality.  Amazon doesn't have it.  Not yet.  As far as production quality in television, you cannot compete with HBO.  Nobody else has the committment to quality as HBO.  Other than the half-assed final season of GoT in which they literally didn't care anymore and had Starbucks cups showing up, when you watch HBO, you believe you are in Deadwood, you believe you are in Westeros, you believe you are in the Dust Bowl with Carnivale. 

When I watch an Amazon show, I believe I'm on a hastily constructed television set.  A lot of it is subtle and indescribable, but it is there.  Their programming isn't up to snuff with the rest of film and television, and it really shows.  To me it's like the difference between those new televisions before you switch the auto motion plus function off.  When everything looks like a soap opera.  That's Amazon, and although some people really can't notice it, a lot of film/television snobs can.

So even though yes, it will succeed in Amazon's goal, it will fail as far as outstanding television compared to the first six seasons of Game of Thrones.  Not only in production value, but also in story.  Wheel of Time is a lot of drivel and depth for the sake of depth.  It's flat out not as good as Game of Thrones.  Same thing with Lord of the Rings.  I know people will lose their crap over that statement, but Lord of the Rings, although the archetype for modern fantasy, makes it nothing new or exciting.  It has literally been mimicked to the point of redundancy.  Additionally, it's not Frodo, it's not Aragorn, it's not Legolas... It's characters we have no connection to; it is a prequel to everything everyone knows, and there weren't novels for it.  There was a single book that read more like a textbook history of the events that are going to be depicted.  

One thing I know for absolute certain is that neither Lord of the Rings nor Wheel of Time will get the following that Game of Thrones attained.  Not on Amazon Prime. 

Again, biggest company in the world and you dont even know your arguing against yourself.  You are absolutely correct that Amazon video is just an enticement for prime subscribers.  You seem to forget that in turn, Bezos doesnt care about cost.  The reason Game of Thrones production value was so high is bc the budget was sky high.  It had nothing to do with their 20+ years of experience.  And everything to do with budgeting $10M+ per episode.  It was expensive television.  If Amazon chooses they can do the same thing.  I certainly am not going to write off Amazon, and they have made some very quality series already. 

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