UPDATE on the Wheel of Time rights situation

Fellowship of Fans recently ran an article about what seemed like a very news-worthy piece of information: it was reported that the rights to make a streaming series based on The Wheel of Time (WoT) had reverted back from Sony and Amazon MGM to iwot productions. The source of this information seemed very confident, and the claim was supported by someone who moved in the highest circles of WoT/Robert Jordan fandom, namely the Chair and co-founder of JordanCon, Jennifer Liang. It was gratifying seeing the story being picked up by several prominent creators with credit to FoF. Sadly, it appears that there was a of misunderstanding, and the rights situation is not as previously reported.

The original Reddit post claimed:

From Jordan con director, the show is not going to come back, the rights have gone back to red dragon [the old name for iwot] and will probably never be going to come back

to which Jennifer Liang replied under a subsequent comment

I did say that the show isn’t coming back. They are not looking for another streamer to pick it up.

Under the circumstances, we could have contacted Jennifer Liang to make doubly sure, though the statements are pretty emphatic. The “they” who is “not looking for another streamer” is, as it turns out, not iwot, even though this felt like the logical interpretation at the time. It is all too easy for a game of telephone to rapidly distort perfectly accurate statements in excitable fandom spaces. I’m reminded of excited reports in 1960s fanzines of a novel Tolkien was apparently writing called “A man and his wife”, set in Númenor. This turned out to be the never-finished story Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife, published in Unfinished Tales. It’s possible the poor quality of literal transatlantic telephone calls led to someone mis-hearing the title!

We and others have been contacted by representatives of iwot productions to set the record straight that “Sony currently retains full control of the rights”. The show is definitely permanently cancelled (and a subsequent statement by iwot had to clarify that Amazon cancelled the show, not Sony), and the iwot statement said that this is “painful, and we’re as heartbroken as our fans and the cast of the show over this outcome.” before pointing to current efforts on other projects: an Age of Legends feature films, a gaming-related project and others not yet public.

We have reached out to Jennifer Liang (who also got in touch with us when the story gained traction) for any additional clarification of the events, but as at time of publication did not yet receive a reply.