'The Wheel of Time' Sets A Season 2 Premiere For Fall
The Wheel of Time is turning again at Amazon's Prime Video. The series, based on Robert Jordan's 14-tome epic fantasy series, is the *other* significant property acquired by Amazon's Jeff Bezos for Prime Video to adapt back in the mid-aughts, right around the same time he paid the same amount as he did to buy The Washington Post for the right to make two seasons of The Lord of the Rings. The Wheel of Time made it to the finish line first, debuting during the pandemic to moderate viewership and critical shrugging. Season 2, which has seen at least one major recasting and far more condensing of Jordan's books into a manageable narrative, is finally dropping Season 2 this fall.
The return of The Wheel of Time, and new seasons of Lord of the Rings, House of the Dragon, and The Witcher, not to mention the greenlighting, sight unseen of ten seasons of a Harry Potter series, means it's time once more to talk about shows that aren't British, but look like it. These "transatlantic puddings," as BritBox Chief Creative Officer Diederick Santer so memorably called them, are typically based on American stories and/or funded/director/produced by American companies but film in Europe and star British actors. They are also generally big-budget fantasy series with massive marketing and devoted fan bases and can quickly push out actual British fare from the conversation.
Amazon's The Wheel of Time is one of many series that have dotted the landscape since Game of Thrones (the ground zero hit which started the wave of "British-ish" fantasy, written by American George RR Martin and produced by American company HBO). There's Outlander (written by American Diana Gabaldon, produced by American Ron Moore), Bridgerton (written by American Julia Quinn, produced by American Shonda Rhimes), not to mention Star Wars and Marvel shows which star major UK talent like Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Colman, David Tennant, Charlie Cox, Fiona Shaw, Anton Lesser, Andy Serkis, to name a few, but are wholly American creations.
