Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time is one of my favorite series of all time – basically, when I started reading these books nearly 15 years ago I started on the path that brought me here. Or, I wouldn’t be blogging about this and that right now if it weren’t for The Wheel of Time. I’ve gone into more detail here.
So, I’m am quite upset about the way things are developing with the potential for these books to be made into a movie – see this announcement. Now, I’m not a big fan of books to movies (as I’ve said before), but in this case it goes much deeper. Below is an excerpt from one of Jordan’s final blog entries.
So, I’m am quite upset about the way things are developing with the potential for these books to be made into a movie – see this announcement. Now, I’m not a big fan of books to movies (as I’ve said before), but in this case it goes much deeper. Below is an excerpt from one of Jordan’s final blog entries.
I hear things now and then floating out in the air. For instance, I hear that word was floating about ComicsCon in San Diego that I am displeased with Red Eagle. Too true. Too very true. In a few more months that last contract they have with anyone on God’s green earth that so much as mentions my name will come to an end and we can see what happens after that. You see, among other things they forgot an old dictum of LBJ back when he was just a Congressman from Texas, when he famously, or infamously, said “Don’t spit in the soup. boys. We all have to eat.” Worse, Red Eagle though they could tell me they spit in the soup, or pee in it, if they wanted to and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. You can’t apologize your way out of that with me, not that they tried. There isn’t enough money in the world to buy your way out of it with me. Not that they tried that either. So they get no further help from me. Once they are completely out of the picture, we’ll see what happens.
It’s easy to tell that Jordan felt that Red Eagle Entertainment had done him wrong and after they completely screwed up the New Spring comic effort, I have to admit that I have no love for them. The problem is that the development deal I linked above involves Red Eagle Entertainment – and as you can see from the above quote, this is not what Jordan wanted. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that this deal is in objection to a dying man’s wishes. It’s not surprising that the many dedicated fans of Jordan’s didn’t react too favorably to the announcement of Red Eagle’s involvement.
Earlier this week, Dragonmount did an interview with Red Eagle Entertainment about the project. Below is an excerpt.
DM: In one of his last blog posts, Jim made a negative comment about Red Eagle Entertainment that fueled a lot of speculation about Red Eagle Entertainment and your intentions with respect to THE WHEEL OF TIME. How will you convince Jim’s fans to trust you and give their full support to Red Eagle Entertainment’s WHEEL OF TIME projects?
REE: Let us first say that nothing Jim ever said did anything to diminish our great respect for him, his creative energy, and his vision for THE WHEEL OF TIME. He has set the bar very high, and we intend to honor his memory by carefully undertaking our film and other projects so as to meet the same standards of quality that he brought to his authorship of THE WHEEL OF TIME epic.
So, when confronted with the issue, Red Eagle basically turned around and said that Jordan (Jim refers to Jordan’s given name rather than the pen name he took) didn’t offend them – they got the question completely ass backward and managed to insult Jordan yet again. And they seem to miss the fact that their very involvement is a dishonor to Jordan’s memory as expressed by Jordan himself.
I’m not going to bother to quote the comments at that interview, but people associated with Red Eagle take things even farther, further insulting Jordan and questioning the state of his mind.
So, what’s the point of this rant? First, I want to inform people and fans alike of the situation. From the tone of the rest of this post, it should be no surprise that I’ll not be seeing any movie that Red Eagle has anything to do with. Furthermore, I’ll not be touching anything that Red Eagle touches – call it a boycott of Red Eagle. I won’t go as far to call for everyone to boycott Red Eagle, but I certainly think it should be considered. And let’s all pray that that this movie deal falls apart and dies the death it deserves.
8 comments:
Agreed. The news that the forthcoming comics adaption of Eye of the World will have no involvement from Red Eagle is very welcome in this context. Red Eagle have not just shot themselves in the foot with their actions, they've blown it off with a rocket launcher.
Some pretty classless behaviour going on there.
I think all of the 12, 14 year olds that frequent this blog and other "fan sites" deserve each other!
I hope that you all stay home with Neth in his room and stay away from any movie.
Classless?? mmmmmm........
Please promise.
umm...wow
A completely cowardly response with no substance that lashes out with childish insults. Did you really intend to reinforce what I said in the original post?
I agree Red Eye are really damaging their own reputation with classless behaviour, and inability to understand questions put to them. Also they seem to fail to understand that people may have a problem with them over their past behaviour.
Also got to love anyone who hides behind 'anonymous' to make criticisms. Show some decency and put your name to negative comments.
I read the first three or four of these as they came out, really enjoyed them, but just couldn't commit to the long, seemingly never-ending nature of the stories. Once it finally all ends with this last novel I may reconsider.
However, from what little I have read in comparison to what is out there I don't see how they could ever make this series into films and do them any justice at all. The conversion of books to films is always a dicey matter. For every success like LOTR there is a ton of failures. And there are many diehards who still don't understand why certain changes had to be made to the LOTR stories for the sake of film. Those books are like comic books (page count wise) in comparison with Jordan's output. I have to hope, for your and all the fans' sake, that this never amounts to anything.
More interesting stuff here:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/12/red-eagle-to-make-multiple-films-and-games-based-on-robert-jordans-wheel-of-time-books/?disqus_reply=3719297#comment-3719297
"We’ve got a huge running start with this property,” Selvage said. “We expect to have a game based on every movie, and we expect no less than three movies, though that depends on how well each does."
Nice. So they're only realistically expecting to make 3 movies? On a series of 12 books where several books are longer than LotR by itself? What? And each one will be milked for maximum profit.
These guys are coming across more and more as money-grabbing execs utterly unconcerned about the quality of the final product as long as it makes them the green.
yeah, these guys are are real example of the worst that's out there. It really says something when you have a series as popular as this and they can't even get the fans behing the project. I hope that none of it happens, but if it does, I'm looking to it being a huge failure that with any justice will put REE out of business.
So wait, are the games going to be based on the books or are they going to be based on the movies which are based on the books???
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