If they can, Amazon wants to have their fantasy series The Wheel of Time run long enough to cover all of the novels. The big-budget series, which premiered its first three episodes on Amazon Prime on November 19, 2021, was an instant success. Those premiere episodes ended up being streamed for over a billion minutes put together, and the show continued to top streaming charts as it continued to air through The Wheel of Time's season 1 finale, which dropped on Christmas Eve.
The show is based on a series of fantasy novels of the same name by Robert Jordan, which follow the adventures of Rand al'Thor and various other characters as they work on behalf of the mythical figure The Dragon Reborn, traveling across an expansive world and timeline. The series consists of 14 novels and a prequel that were originally published between 1990 and 2013, with The Wheel of Time season 1 primarily adapting the first novel, The Eye of the World. Although Robert Jordan passed away in 2007, the final three novels were completed by Brandon Sanderson, working from his outline and notes.
While speaking with IGN, Amazon Studios' co-head of TV Vernon Sanders spoke about his hopes for the future of The Wheel of Time. Showrunner Rafe Judkins is hard at work on season 2 of the series, which is likely to be covering the events of the second book, The Great Hunt, and Sanders says, "they're great." He acknowledges that they'll have to cross that bridge when they come to it, ultimately, but he would like "to work with Rafe and the team on the full thing." Read his full quote below:
Our ideal is to work with Rafe and the team on the full thing. Obviously that's a ways down the road. So we're focused on where we are right now. And Rafe and the team have just shared the first few episodes of season two, and I wish I could get those out to everyone right away. They're just, they're great.
If The Wheel of Time really does go on to adapt the entire series, that would be an unprecedented run for a streaming series, especially at that kind of epic budget level. To compare, Game of Thrones, which was a massive phenomenon and is probably Wheel of Time's closest analog in terms of production value, only ran for eight seasons. However, it remains to be seen how long its impending spinoff House of the Dragon will run, adding to its overall total. In the fantasy genre, the CW series Supernatural did run for 15 seasons, which would be the length Wheel of Time would need to attain, though the show was considerably more low budget to produce.
If The Wheel of Time were to really adapt the entire run of the source series, it would likely have to double up and cover multiple books per season. However, if the audience stays strong and the money is still there, fans certainly wouldn't mind if the show ran for a decade and a half. That would be a record-shattering run for this kind of program, though Wheel of Time is no stranger to breaking records.
Source: IGN