'The Wheel of Time' Releases Its First Trailer As Ages Come And Go

For a particular generation of fantasy readers, "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and go" is the start of fifteen novels from Robert Jordan, published from 1990 to 2013. For Amazon, The Wheel of Time started turning back in 2018 as part of a massive pair of acquisition deals for the two biggest high fantasy series to ever come out of the U.K. (The Lord of the Rings was the other one.) The novels were part of the beginning of the second wave of high fantasy books, which eventually spawned His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, and A Song of Ice and Fire, a.k.a. Game of Thrones.

Though The Wheel of Time preceded all these now much larger and more famous properties, it took decades to get it to screen due to rights getting tied up in bad deals towards the end of Jordan's life. (Jordan famously passed before the series was over, and author Brandon Sanderson completed the final three novels.) It's also one of those series too ambitious to work as anything other than a multi-part TV series, a road GoT forged after Jordan's passing. The cast is comprised of about a dozen and a half main characters, six of which are Chosen Ones of various types; the setting is a continent that spans every kind of location from the English countryside to the sands of the Middle East.

Now, this incredibly complex take on the fight between good versus evil and apocalyptic medieval fantasy is finally coming to the small screen, streaming on Amazon Studios this November. The trailer is gorgeous.