The Wheel Of Time - 5 Ways To Differentiate From Game Of Thrones

By Alex Antliff / August 20, 2020

It has been just over a year since Game of Thrones concluded. In that time, the backlash to the eighth and final season has not subsided, and it seems as if it will be a permanent blot on the legacy of what is otherwise one of the greatest television series of all time.

Having hugely popularised the fantasy genre, the adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s still-unfinished A Song Of Ice and Fire novel series has spawned a slew of imitators over the past decade, almost all of which flopped in competition with it and were swiftly cancelled.

Now that it is finished, there is arguably a gap in the market for a new fantasy juggernaut to emerge, assuming that there is still an appetite for the genre. Amazon are shooting for this goal with an adaptation of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, a 14-book epic that began in 1990 and finished in 2013, with three books written after Jordan’s death in 2007 to complete the story.

Comparisons to Game of Thrones are rampant.

The books enjoy a degree of popularity comparable to Martin’s creations (approximate worldwide sales of around 85 million versus 90 million), have a fanantical fanbase and the series has a huge budget behind it.

Here are five moves it should take to avoid being labelled as just another copycat or making some of the same mistakes.

5. Map Out The Full Series In Advance

A Dance With Dragons, George R.R. Martin’s fifth book, came out just a few months after the first season of Game of Thrones aired. It was expected that he would finish the sixth and seventh books in plenty of time for the show to adapt them given that it had five years to catch up with what he’d already written.

How wrong that expectation was. The Winds of Winter has still yet to drop nine years later and Martin has experienced a huge backlash from his fans. The writers of Game of Thrones were forced to draw their own conclusions when they ran out of source material towards the end of season five and to many, this was where the show began to go downhill as major plots were invented or rushed into, in contrast to Martin’s slow-build approach.

By contrast, The Wheel of Time has been completely wrapped up on the page for years already. The showrunners can therefore have their full journey completely mapped out from day one, knowing what is going to happen to their characters and when without having to improvise and make decisions (such as omitting plots or killing characters off prematurely) that could prove problematic down the line.

This advance knowledge can and should be utilised to make a fully cohesive creation.