The Wheel of Time launch was huge for Amazon Prime. As reported by Deadline, Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time books has come out swinging so far.
“We can firmly say that Wheel of Time was the most watched series premiere of the year and one of the Top 5 series launches of all time for Prime Video,” Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke told Deadline about the debut, acknowledging that the company — like most streamers — “try to figure out how transparent we are going to be in the future” with ratings.
Prime Video is among the SVOD platforms that do not disclose viewership data but Salke revealed that “there were tens and tens of millions of streams” for The Wheel Of Time in the first three days of its release, with the US, India, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany as the top countries.
Honestly I’m not that surprised because this is one of Amazon’s first forays into an already established IP. The Wheel of Time has sold over 90 Million books Worldwide over the years, so it already has an inbuilt audience. Of course there were a few vocal negative fans who watched the first 20 minutes, noticed they made some changes and then turned it off and went online to complain. I’m not even joking this was actually a common response on launch day from some fans. With one ‘fan’ posting a negative comment every few mines of Reddit for 7 hours straight.
Yet, now the dust has settled that vocal minority has been replaced with an overwhelming show of support from the majority of book fans. Amongst non-book fans the series has also been met with mostly positive reactions. If you fancy hearing some of those, check out our new The Dragon Reviewed Podcast below.
RELATED: The Wheel of Time Episode 1-3 Review | The Dragon Reviewed NO Book SPOILERS
Is The Wheel of Time the exact TV series I would have made after reading the books? Nope. However, I think so far it is very well done and I hope this continues as the story itself is one that improves greatly the farther long you get into what is a mammoth 14 book series.
The Wheel of Time launch was huge for Amazon Prime. However, with Amazon’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings show on the horizon, that record could easily be broken. Tolkien’s mythology remans the original, and most popular fantasy work out there. With these two powerhouses of fantasy Amazon is pretty covered. However we also have HBO leaning heavily into more Game of Thrones and Netflix doing the same with The Witcher.
It does make you wonder whether this time for once, Disney is behind their main rivals? The only fantasy content coming to Disney+ seems to be the Willow TV series. Willow was hardly a huge deal in fantasy to begin with. There’s also the Percy Jackson books being developed into a series. However that’s a series more comparable to Harry Potter than adult fantasy.
What did you think of Amazon’s The Wheel of Time so far? As always, leave any thoughts below.
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