The Wheel of Time is getting an animated show and a PC/mobile game, which is different from the open-world action RPG already in development

If you were bummed about Amazon cancelling its The Wheel of Time TV series, fret not, because license owner iwot Studios has so much The Wheel of Time coming your way. There’s enough The Wheel of Time to affix to The Carriage of Time, maybe even The Articulated Lorry of Time.

A report by Variety states that iwot studios, which owns The Wheel of Time license, is working with Initiate Entertainment and Arcane producer Thomas Vu to develop and produce a new PC/Mobile game based on Robert Jordan’s fantasy novels, as well as a new animated feature film and an animated series.

“I see tremendous opportunity in expanding The Wheel of Time into fully authentic, integrated, interactive and animated storytelling experiences”, Vu said to Variety. “The depth of the mythology provides a foundation for sustained, multi-platform franchise growth”, which is of course what mythologies are for.

According to iwot, these are “distinct” from previously announced The Wheel of Time projects. This includes an open-world, AAA action RPG that was revealed last year. That project is led by Craig Alexander, the former president of Warner Bros Games who previously worked on The Lord of The Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online. There are also two other feature films in the works, namely a 3D animated film called “The White Tower” and a live action movie “Age of Legends” directed by Kari Skogland.

That’s a lot of irons in the fire. How well they’ll all turn out is a different matter. Iwot’s relationship with The Wheel of Time fans has been turbulent, with the company having owned the licence since 2004 without much of note to show for it. The Amazon TV show was by far the most significant thing iwot had produced, but it got off on the wrong foot with fans for taking too much licence with the source material in its first season. Personally, I thought it clawed back a lot of ground in seasons two and three, but clearly it was too little, too late for a lot of the audience, and the series wasn’t renewed for a fourth season.

Regarding the open-world RPG, Alexander and Iwot CEO Rick Selvage spoke to IGN about it last year. And it seems they actually have multiple games planned, with the goal of making The Wheel of Time a series like Assassin’s Creed. As for when we’re likely to see the game, Alexander dismissed claims that iwot was looking at a three-year development cycle for the project, but said iwot is “not going to be developing this game over 10 years for the first release. That’s not going to happen.”

However long it takes, let’s hope development proceeds more smoothly than that of The Wheel of Time FPS released in 1999, which remains one of the wildest game dev stories I’ve ever heard.

About