Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” Series to be Made into Films and Games

Interesting news for fans of author Robert Jordan and his epic fantasy series “Wheel of Time” was broke this morning by Venture Beat. Seems that the movie studio Red Eagle Entertainment who owns the film rights to the series plans on making videogames based on the series, to coincide with the films as they are released.

This would not be the first time that Jordan’s books were translated into gaming–some of you may recall Legend Entertainment’s critically and gamer acclaimed PC title The Wheel of Time back in 1999 which had the misfortune of being released around the same time as Quake. The first-person shooter/role playing game was based on the Unreal Engine and could be played either in a linear single-player mode or through multiplayer deathmatches or capture the flag type gameplay. The Wheel of Time MUD, created by former MUME (Multi-Users in Middle-earth) is an online game based on the series and “The Wheel of Time” was also published by Wizards of the Coast as a tabletop RPG similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

Robert Jordan’s eleven books in the series sold over 44 million copies worldwide, and a twelfth is planned to be released posthumously by author Brandon Sanderson sometime in 2009. Red Eye Entertainment is currently at wok on a movie based on the first novel “The Eye of the World,” and according to Variety, it is rumored that Universal is behind it with a $150 million dollar budget.

Although laden with elements of Asian mythology combined with themes of Buddhism, Daoism and Hinduism the books have been compared as a cross between “Lord of the Rings” and “Road Warrior” which Red Eye Entertainment feels would transfer well into videogames. The company is even talking about the possibility of a “spin-off franchise” for a future massively multiplayer online game.

Red Eagle Entertainment was formed by former IBM executives Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon in 2003 and according to Rick Selvage, they have huge plans for The Wheel of Time series:

“We’ve got a huge running start with this property. 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.”

Since the games are planned to be launched at the same time as the films, Selvage plans on hiring people soon to start work on the games and the company has budgeted hundreds of millions between the games and films. Since, according to him, the project has been met with enthusiasm, he hopes that the prospect of working on a Robert Jordan game will draw in the creme-de-la-creme of programmers because he “wants to hire the rock stars”. This will be exactly what the company needs if they are to succeed in translating the series onto PCs, consoles and handhelds like they plan.

If they can bring the “Wheel of Time” series to videogames and the silver screen without gutting what made the novels popular in the first place, this could be a great thing for fans of the series and gamers alike. However, with the bad translation of games turned into movies and vice versa, it is only natural to be concerned when a fantastic and much-lauded fantasy series is being exploited in such a medium. Hopefully, Red Eye Entertainment will not fail us on this, and despite being tied to a movie, the prospect of actually playing a new game based on the books is exciting indeed–especially an MMO teaming with Myrddraal and Trollocs to fight to the death.

Let’s just hope it will fare better than the Conan books did at the hands of Funcom.

By the way, I know this is off the subject a bit, but whatever happened to the possibility of R.A. Salvatore’s Dizzt books being turned into a videogame? After seeing the awesome Drow, and my personal hero, make an appearance in the console version of Baldur’s Gate, I have not seen hide or hair of him. Maybe it was just a rumor after all, but if anyone else has heard anything about this, please drop us a line.