ChiefsPlanet - Movies and TV Did you know a Wheel of Time pilot aired early this morning?

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Did you know a Wheel of Time pilot aired early this morning? (https://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=290506)

Did you know a Wheel of Time pilot aired early this morning?

Neither did I.

Universal currently has the rights, which are (or were if this works) scheduled to return to the Bandersnatch Group (AKA Robert Jordan's estate, led by his widow Harriet McDougal) on Wednesday February 11. Two days from now...

So this appears with, as far as I know, zero fanfare on FXX shortly after midnight. It was evidently produced over a few days in the last couple of weeks.

Assuming this is what I think it was, and Universal's attempt to meet the wednesday deadline, this may be the most ****ed-up move I have ever seen to retain rights to a property.

Harriet certainly wasn't happy about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harriet McDougal

"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."

It gets even more confusing. According to something at io9 it was produced by Red Eagle Entertainment, who sat on the property for years twiddling their thumbs and had I thought sold the rights to Universal.

Either way, somebody ran a "pilot" they produced in four days on FXX in an infomercial spot this morning.

Is that Billy Zane? Nothing says quality movie like a Billy Zane appearance.

Wow. Never seen anything like this before?

Perhaps Dane can expand on this?

Caught wind of it last night on reddit and actually DVR'ed it at home. What a completely bizarre thing though - neither Harriet or Brandon Sanderson had any clue about it at all.

A couple articles about it:

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2015...ot-out-of.html
http://www.dragonmount.com/index.php...how-pilot-r849
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/whe...riet-statement
http://io9.com/the-real-story-about-...ire-1684773094

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 11318684)

...

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2015...ot-out-of.html
...

Wow...

Update: The director of the "pilot", Seda James, passed away just a few days ago. Condolences to his friends and family.

Read some more about it last night and it's apparently a pretty common practice to retain rights, we just rarely hear about it because it's not often they're made public like this one evidently had to be. Called an 'ashcan' copy.

Even if it's Hollywood normal, it's shady as ****ing shit as far as I'm concerned.

I actually took the time to watch it last night just out of curiosity. Given that they had 4 days to do it, it wasn't as bad as I expected. However, it was still really bad.

Maybe someday someone will take the time to do it right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by keg in kc (Post 11319741)

Yeah, apparently they don't normally air them at all. The crazy thing to me is that they didn't even send Team Jordan a heads-up about it. I can't blame Harriet for being furious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaFace (Post 11319834)

Yeah, apparently they don't normally air them at all. The crazy thing to me is that they didn't even send Team Jordan a heads-up about it. I can't blame Harriet for being furious.

I can't imagine what it would be like to think you're going to get the rights back in 48 hours and then wake up to find they'd done that.

I watched it too. It was soooo bad.

It was bad, but I still want more.

When do we get season 2?

I admit it, I watched it. 20 minutes of my life I can't get back though :(

It wasn't as bad as I would expect from the comments from others here. It was very low budget, obviously, but it was very true to the book, which is huge for me. It has been years and years since I read the Eye of the World, but I could imagine what was shown in the pilot would be very close to a prologue of what led to when Lews killing himself and created Dragonmount after Ishamael cured his insanity so that he would know what he had done.

The prologue to The Eye of the World is one of the best sequences in all of fantasy. I'd be hard pressed to come up with any beginning to any series, fantasy or not, that draws a reader in as effectively. To me that video was a sad, pale shadow of that, and that's being kind.