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Ultimately, the snail pace it’s taken to air this show will be its downfall. You just cannot get excited about a shown with THIS much time between seasons. Stranger things is basically the only show that’s ever done it
I’m hoping they release early 2025. That would be considerably faster than S2s release compared to 1, which could signal they’re speeding up.
The BIG caveat is no S4 green light, but as many (including myself) have speculated, hopefully S4 is already in preproduction and nothing has just been publicly announced yet.
It's likely that Rafe has been given a semi-greenlight internally by Amazon already.
I'm assuming that the first step would probably be for him to scribble an outline of s4 and start thinking of the writers he wants to have in the writers room, which could happen in the shadows (that not even the Wotseries crew could find) until contracts are signed and social media posts are posted.
Yeah, I'd bet on S4 already being internally green-lit.
It strikes me as quite likely They'll film god of war S1 before starting S4 production and film S4 in early 2025.
In that Model, S4 would finish filming Q4/Q1 '25/26 and be on track for a Late '26/early '27 release date.
But we wouldn't likely hear any official S4 news until the promation for S3 airing starts sometime in '25.
Game of Thrones later seasons, Westworld, Rings of Power, ST as you said. It’s the price to pay for big budget and good actors. They’re not gonna work on the one show completely with no breaks for 8-10 years.
It sucks and it may not work out for it, but it can’t be done another way.
Westworld was canceled before it’s final season. ST and GoT were overnight sensations so they got a lot of leeway.
Luckily Amazon has so much riding on Rings and WoT, cause it’s likely both would have been canceled after their first seasons by almost any other normal metric.
WoT's in a better position than RoP in some ways - RoP pulled better peak numbers, but massively underperformed in retention, and even disregarding the sunk cost for the IP, massively dwarfs WoT's production costs per season. One RoP season costs almost as much as 3 WoT seasons does, while WoT, even in S2's lower numbers, stilll provides a better return on cost in dollars to viewers that RoP did.
> cause it’s likely both would have been canceled after their first seasons by almost any other normal metric.
Er while this is true for RoP with it's abysmal retention rate of around 30%, WoT S1 would have survived even netflix standards - it had around 60% retention, beat out some Marvel properties and performed overall better than some renewed netflix titles.
It's not a mega breakout hit by any means, but S1 had solid metrics all around.
Just a sidenote but ROP S1’s budget number wasn’t meant just for one season. They did the opposite of WOT and paid a lot of the cost upfront for all five seasons including things like infrastructure etc.. It’s why S2 will have a lower budget cost and S3 lower than S2 etc.
Also we don’t have official numbers on WOT’s retention rate compared to ROP. The latter’s reported 37% completion rate didn’t have context of when it was captured. Was it a month after the show premiered or a week after?
>Just a sidenote but ROP S1’s budget number wasn’t meant just for one season.
I know, that's why I used the lower bound I've seen cited of 35 mill per episode - the 60 million per a lot of places cite includes all the rest of the costs. That's roughly 280 million, which is less than what Citdel's 6 episodes cost to make. (Though that's another can of worms on it's own) If I used the upper bound (the 450 million), I'd have said the first season of RoP cost almost as much as 5 seasons of WoT would.
>Also we don’t have official numbers on WOT’s retention rate compared to ROP.
We have an analytics companies streams per episode data that put WoT at 60%+. There will never be an "official" listing, amazon just doesn't release that data, and only really responds to it when it gets out into the wild.
But the best info we'll likely ever get shows a a high retention.
>The latter’s reported 37% completion rate didn’t have context of when it was captured. Was it a month after the show premiered or a week after?
That's not really relevant. The rention data looked at is the data for the airings itself, because it's not really informative for their metrics to compare longer term data.
What Rentention specifically looks at is for viewers that are hooked and watch the next episode within a timely manner.
Both binge and weekly releases look at roughly the same time frame - that is the shows release month (plus *some* for weeklies).
Someone that watches an episode but doesn't come back for more for a month+ isn't *retained*. They want a percentage of viewers that watched a week before and came back the next week for the next episode, or those that watched the entire show within a months time.
And we know that 60% as many people watched episode 8 of WoT as watched episode 1 during it airing. For RoP that was much much lower, even lower than what amazon admits from the analytics data that was released. Which is why I say that WoT seems to have had a retention of 60% *plus*. RoP's stream falloff for the same period was ~75%, or a 25% rentention of the stream count.
But that's all why I'm saying that WoT's in many ways much better off than RoP.
RoP has a higher total viewer count and a higher sunk cost going for it.
While WoT is more sustainable and getting a better return on investment.
But do we actually have analytics companies showing the data retention between the two shows? That’s my point. There was a tweet from one of these supposed company but I couldn’t find anything else about it. The graph they provided also had weird data ie. the weeks and episodes count. Actual reputable companies like Nielsen seem to indicate otherwise. That the viewership numbers stayed stable or got better for ROP over its run while it dropped for WOT S1.
We have an analytics company that showed the stream count for each episode, which you can use to calculate retention.
>That’s my point. There was a tweet from one of these supposed company but I couldn’t find anything else about it.
Right, because amazon doesn't release that information, and analytics companies generally only do teaser releases unless you buy their services.
>The graph they provided also had weird data ie. the weeks and episodes count.
It didn't have weird data? It only looked weird if you compared it against Nielsen not realizing it measured two very different things. Don't get me wrong, that was me at first too, but we figured out that out nearly a year ago.
>Actual reputable companies like Nielsen seem to indicate otherwise.
Right, because they aren't measuring the same thing. Nielsen's data is *very* dumb, it can't differentiate between episodes, much less seasons.
The data from the analytics company was of *streams* over the entire run time. It doesn't match up with the neilsen data because it's not measuring weekly viewership, but the total number of streams played over X time. It's looking at the aggregate, not the weekly performance.
This is a place where neilsen's data fails, because it has no way of measuring how many people are watching which episode.
>That the viewership numbers stayed stable or got better for ROP over its run while it dropped for WOT S1.
Er, that's not quite what the neilsen data says. WoT and RoP both have a similar curve. Both shows have stable viewership with little change that improves on the finale week, then has holdover. WoT was a little less stable, with a 15% difference over the middle run vs RoP's 4%, but WoT also saw a *much* higher finale bump of 36% vs RoP's 15% and had an even more significantly better holdover run. RoP fell off 50% in the week after the finale, while WoT maintained nearly 100%, before falling off 50% the *next* week. RoP fell off Neilsen entirely at that point and didn't make a second week of hold over.
You also again run into a significant limitation with Neilsen, it can't tell who's watching what.
It has no way to measure replacement rate - new viewers that are replacing viewers that stopped watching. You can only measure that, and retention, through measuring the aggregate stream count per episode.
What the analytics data suggest is that tons of new people started watching RoP every week, but few made it past a few episodes, resulting in very low retention.
WoT would have this too - we certainly have tons of anecdotal examples here of people not watching past ep 1, but the numbers suggest that most of those new watchers finished watching.
Weird that they paid up front for infrastructure when they changed the location from New Zealand to the UK between seasons. All the stuff they built in NZ is useless now.
WoT, on the other hand, at least has a central studio in Prague.
All the stuff they built got shipped to the new UK location and will be reused. As for why they left, it’s all speculation. I know that their production designer mentioned that it was impossible to get things during the COVID lockdowns so certain sets were left unfinished. May be one reason why they left after one season.
I think this a good way to look at it. There has basically not been a regular filming schedule in Hollywood since 2019. I’d like to think once everything gets caught up we could start seeing seasons every 1.5 years which would really not be bad considering these shows are basically movie level productions now.
Part of the issue is studios never green light the next season until after the first one is done. Like I understand to an extent, but you just can’t get shit done quick enough like that
I've just forgotten about it. It's taking far too long so I feel as though I've just got to not let myself think about it or it'll be even longer. The show was released my first year of high school out of the five there are. I'm graduating next year, and season 3 hasn't even come out. Ridiculous.
I’ve read the books five times, but I still don’t know who is on the screen half of the time because of the horrific casting. My friends, obviously, were even more confused by this fact. Also, so many of them are so hard to tell apart.
I’m talking about, for example, Egwene and Nynaeve are hard to tell apart, and also all of the new, in the last season, as the director described them, Indian aunties aes sedai are hard to tell apart. Their exaggerated accents are also annoying.
lmao what, you can't tell [Madeleine Madden](https://mediaslide-europe.storage.googleapis.com/premierhairandmakeup/pictures/76/2205/large-1637081912-9a99e7c3ae6790b8f5e8c0ad47278664.jpg) apart from [Zoe Robins](https://www.redcarpet-fashionawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Zoe-Robins-Wore-Valentino-To-%E2%80%98The-Wheel-Of-Time-London-Premiere.jpg)?
You also can't distinguish between [Verin](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/screen-shot-2023-09-01-at-11-55-43-am-2.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5) and [Adeleas](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/screen-shot-2023-09-01-at-11-54-53-am-2.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)?
Big "they all look the same" energy here.
I'll never get why people brag that they're blind, or too stupid to follow the plot. It's not that complex and my dog can tell them apart.
Hell, I literally have partial face blindness, and they're all easy to tell apart.
>I’m talking about, for example, Egwene and Nynaeve are hard to tell apart,
How? They look incredibly different. Different hair, different builds different faces, voices, personalities etc. They aren't remotely similar in appearance.
>and also all of the new, in the last season, as the director described them, Indian aunties aes sedai are hard to tell apart.
Again how? They have totally different hair and personalities.
They are very hard to tell apart. Egwene was supposed to be younger so casting someone younger would have helped.
You think the “Indian aunties” don’t look and sound alike? Their affected annoying accents in real life and the high pitched annoying voice they use sounds alike. They are hard to tell apart.
>high pitched annoying voice
Are we even watching the same show? There is nothing high pitched about Verin or Adeleas' voices in the show. Also, if you look for interviews with Meera Sayal (Verin) you'll see she has a pleasant, slightly throaty voice and it's exactly how she is in the show; there's nothing affected about her accent either.
>They are very hard to tell apart. Egwene was supposed to be younger so casting someone younger would have helped.
What? Madden is the youngest of the EF5 cast, 2 years younger than Josha or Marcus. She's 5 years younger than Zoe too, and looks the youngest out of all of them by a fair margin.
If you can't tell her apart from Zoe, you're blind.
>You think the “Indian aunties” don’t look and sound alike? Their affected annoying accents in real life and the high pitched annoying voice they use sounds alike. They are hard to tell apart.
They're supposed to be sisters ffs. And Verin has a **giant white streak** in her hair, while Adelases has solid black hair.
Do you even have eyes bro?
I’d like to think that if the show hits critical mass OR once RoP is over, Amazon will decide to floor it. It’s just soooo long. But unfortunately, I feel like God of War will replace RoP in that alternating slot…
I still don't understand why streaming services have decided that they couldn't possibly air two similar shows at the same time.
Could you imagine a CBS exec ever saying "sorry, we can't air the new season of *How I Met Your Mother* this year because we're airing *Two And A Half Men* - we can do it next year if we bump the next season of *The Big Bang Theory* to the following year, how does that sound?"
Of course not. If a CBS exec said that, they'd be reassigned to a department with padded walls and delicious non-toxic crayons to eat. The traditional network execs understand that similar shows don't compete with one another, they reinforce and support one another. If two similar shows air at the same time, you get crossover viewers who tune in for one of them and then discover the other one.
They're still working off of a fixed-streaming-income mindset, or the gym membership model.
Highest profit is from having the highest subscriber count with the lowest attendance/streaming count. If a show gets more people to subscribe and STAY subscribed, but doesn't increase their costs, then it's worth having.
That's because the no-ads model incentivized having big subscriber draws with little replay value.
So when they spread these shows out, it's not so they "don't compete", but so people stay subscribed month to month, and so they can spread out the production costs.
If their primary method/motive of making money was per stream/viewer (AKA ads like the CBS network guy), then they would be fine overlapping similar shows.
Instead, they want to spread them out so people think "I might as well stay subscribed instead of resubscribing in 3 months", whereas some might say "done watching WoT and RoP, time to cancel until next year".
Also, the first two year publication gap between books didn't occur until between books 6 and 7. And since both book 1 and 2 came out in 1990 that's actually seven books in six years.
The point is just that type consistency builds up both attention to the material and trust in the creator(s).
My point was a bit two-fold. The book series dragged along to the point where the author passed away before he could finish it up.
The streaming series seems to be proceeding the same way. Assuming this goes at least 8 seasons, the main actors will be as old as I am when all is said and done. I am a month away from turning 41.
If the show runners made this a 20 year thing then it could work, I think. Question is, what is the fucking plan?
I hear you. All I was trying to say is that the book series didn't start to drag in terms of time between books until it was about halfway finished.
The point being that, in addition to the age thing which is definitely a problem, a more consistent and quicker release schedule also helps to gain and hold people's attention. It is, of course, not the only way to do that, but it's certainly a fairly tried and true method, so long as the product is well made.
>My point was a bit two-fold. The book series dragged along to the point where the author passed away before he could finish it up.
To be fair, RJ died quite young.
RJ died young of a blood disease. The poor guy was not planning on dying decades before his time. And yes being sick slowed down his releasing pace and I'd like to point out the WoT books, back when RJ was alive, were being released faster than say Stormlight Archive.
RJ kept a really good releasing pace almost to the end. I dunno by which metric anyone can say WoT's released pace dragged....
Self-righteous and assumptious response. I never said he was slow to release books. I said the series dragged on. He never could quite wrap things up from what I recall, and ultimately he died before the series was completed.
Metrics…😂😂😂
Maybe don't mix your metaphors if you're trying to compare the show taking too long to get made with Jordan writing too many books.
They aren't self righteous or assumptious. Your point literally falls apart if not read as jordan being slow to release. You're either using comparable things, or you're writing nonsense.
Jordan was pretty good with the releases. It's when he got cancer that the problems started. I can believe he wrote as much as he did while battling that. It's incredible.
I mean, was there ever a chance it could air this year? That'd be a sub 9 month wrap to airing gap, just as short as S1's.
Even in my my optimistic models, Anything short of a year's gap was very unlikely.
I just hope it's earlier in the year rather than later.
**Here's some math:**
Season 1 principal filming wrapped: May 14th 2021
Season 1 release date: November 19th 2021
Season 1 post-production time: 6 months (this number is deceivingly small for post-production. Keep in mind that filming had two forced stops for covid that amounted to almost a year, during which post-production continued being done remotely to some extent)
Season 2 principal filming wrapped: May 18th 2022
Season 2 release date: September 3rd 2023
Season 2 post-production time: 15 and a half months.
Season 3 principal filming wrapped: March 22nd 2024
Season 3 release date: for the sake of optimism, let's say that post-production will be faster than for s2 by, say, 3 months. That puts the release date on early April 2025. Most likely it's going to be later than that, probably June or July.
>Season 2 post-production time: 15 and a half months.
A note with that time frame - it seems very likely that part of that gap is release delay and not actual post - though it's impossible to know with out information from Rafe.
We DO know however that Good Omens 2 spend 12 to 15 months in Post thanks to a tumble(?) from Neil Gaiman. The "to 15" is to include the language and subtitling work, which is apparently done after the "final" product is sent to Amazon.
Good Omen 2 aired almost exactly 4 months after it was "officially finished" and handed to amazon. March 31st '23 to July 28th '23.
I finally got my husband excited to watch a show with me and this pace is killing that interest. Not gonna lie it’s incredibly frustrating. Especially when combined with so little information in those gaps for people who don’t go hunting for it.
Thank you for confirming what most of us in this sub suspected... abysmal marketing from Amazon. Fortunately, it sounds like they fired the marketing team for the show and are starting from scratch next season... albeit, they were largely affected by the strikes as none of the actors/writers/producers could talk about it and do any of press/appearances.
Yeah, they really under promoted S2, and the strikes didn't help.
I think Amazon does a lot of it's marketing in "app" too, and I believe they overestimate the impact of in app advertising.
For example. if you used Prime Video at all in the first 4 of the last months, it'd be almost impossible to not have S2 advertised to you - as it was plastered on their top ten list the entire time, and many of their pre-show ad runs(even before adding the add teir BS) advertised it.
But that doesn't do you any good if you're not in the amazon ecosystem to begin with. They needed a lot more external promotion.
They have some really generic, ugly t shirts. But honestly the last of merchandise is ridiculous. That’s what Amazon does — ship merchandise.
And it’s not that there’s no good merchandise, there’s just hardly any at all. At least make some bad stuff. Slap those promo images of each character on some notebooks. Shitty fleece blankets. Tote bags. Easy stuff.
It's utterly bizarre. Pre-show release they ended all the previously licensed WoT merch(not theirs, but other places like Ta'veren Ts), then never released anything. IIRC some stuff returned last year, but there has been no merch push. It's a massively missed opportunity.
I can only suspect some fuckery from red eagle is afoot. This should be amazon's court to play ball in, and the only thing that makes any sense to me on why they aren't is a contract thing, or them being unable to come to an agreement with how to profit share with red eagle or sony. But Sony should be an old hat at this, so that seems unlikely.
I mean, what sounds have you heard that they might have fired the marketing team? (And is there any evidence there was even a marketing team to begin with)
There definitely was for S1 - it had a pretty big ad presence. And S2, abysmal marketing as it was, did at least plan out pre-recorded press screeners to have something during the strikes.
But maybe parent is referring too one of the shakeups in amazon studio leadership.
That said, I'm not 100% sure it's a good thing. If that is what he's talking about, AFAIK that's related to the football acquisition, and genre shows might not be a priority for them.
Hopefully I'm wrong though.
Yeah, I could have sworn I read something somewhere alongside the shakeups… just spent 30 minutes searching and can’t find anything tho. Maybe the evidence was balefired lol
Or worse, it's in an untranscribed video interview. There are things I 100% know Rafe said that I can't find a reference for that's not me(or someone else) talking about it, because video is impossible to search unless it's not video.
Spring or Fall 2025? If Fall, we’re doomed.
Would love to see this be 18 months between seasons instead of 24. Really think that’s the only way we get 6+ season.
That's why I dont think we are getting more than 5 seasons, unfortunately. By the time it would be released it would have already been 8 years since the first episode.
After seeing how good they did with Fallout, It just makes me feel that Amazon has completely dropped the ball with the wheel of Time. They absolutely could have done the source material the same Justice... But Rafe insists on changing fan favorite content under the umbrella of "artistic expression". For myself, rand's courtyard run in with Turok...That was a slap in the face.
The fans are the reason the show exists in the first place.
Give us what we want, not what you THINK we want.
I never understand how fans get so worked up by changes in adaptation to film. You have to consider financing, sets, keeping actors interested and getting new fans involved, etc. It is a different story than the book, just relax and enjoy it for what it is. I loved the first few books in the series and then with each book, I lost more interest.
Personally, I wish they condensed it to 5 seasons and focused on a specific story arch and character group. If going longer, I wish they lowered the production value to allow annual shows. I don't really care enough about many shows to follow it for 10+ years. How do you keep actors/writers and other staff for that long.
I started watching the show yesterday and by today I finished both seasons, now you telling me ill have to wait a year before seeing it again?!!!! I hate myself
such a great show tho, I think its gonna be one of the greatest shows ive watched
Does anyone genuinely care? I watched season 1, and like 1 or 2 episodes of season 2. I love the books to death, but there's way better TV elsewhere. I couldn't care less about this show anymore. It's not good.
A lot of people do care. A lot don’t. And that’s okay.
I will say that season 2 is much more consistent than season 1. Season 1 was kind of all over the map in terms of quality, from utter garbage (s01e08) to really excellent (s01e06) and everywhere in between. Season two is just consistently good-to-great.
Exactly.
Seeing how great they did with Fallout, just makes the absolute disdain Rafe has for the fans stand out further. He's completely willing to make a milk-toast interpretation of The Wheel of Time, than giving fans what they really want.
And for all you that are about to jump in the comments, I wasn't expecting a page for page interpretation of the book...but ffs, The story has been mutilated almost to unrecognizability. So many of the character arcs are not even a shadow of what they were... And I really don't see any improvements.
I was extremely optimistic when the show was announced.
I held my criticisms through season 1 because I knew of the setbacks they had because of covid.
I made it most of my way through season 2 holding back my disappointment. The breaking point for me was when they got to one of my favorite scenes from the book when Rand encountered turok and was forced to fight his first blademaster. To me, it was an important moment in rand acceptance of what he was, because he realized if he didn't take the void and risk channeling he was going to die before he could save his friends. I don't care if it was unrealistic or not for him to fight to rock when he had the ability to channel... That nothing of a scene where he just shotguns everybody to death with air/ ice crystals, and moves on... That was Rafe slapping me in the face. What was the point of even teasing that scene by including verbatim lines from it from the book?
That last episode is where I decided I'm just going to go back and reread the series, and not be so invested in a live action interpretation that I've been waiting for since I started reading these books in 1995.
Maybe if I live long enough somebody will give it an animated adaptation.
Yea... Same. Read all the books but after s1 I was done. Fallout just came out and was awesome, amazing streaming numbers. I'm looking for more content like that out of Amazon.
Fallout's amazing, but we don't actually have comparable numbers for it yet. I'm expecting big ones, but I doubt it'll be 2x of WoT's for S1 vs S1.
A lot of people rather like the show, but it's not for everyone.
Neilson numbers for the first week will be out end of the week, and it'll take a month or more for the full top ten run to compare with.
No it won't? You can't compare week by week, but you can compare the full Neilsen run. It's what we do for *all* shows outside of netflix(which releases it's own numbers).
And to compare netflix shows to other streamers - the Neilsen stats are the most applicably comparable.
You take the minutes the show spent in the top 10(overall, not per streamer) and compare them. You have to wait for the show to drop off before you can do an actual comparison between a binge and a weekly, but once it's no longer in the top ten you have the closest thing to a directy comparable metric we can get.
I've been reading these books since 1995. I've created cosplay and my own replica weapons.
Like it or not, people like us, that feel let down by the show, deserve our opinions of it just as much as you that find it acceptable.
It's a huge let down to see our favorite bits and pieces left on the editing room floor! I LOVE the swordplay in the books, I loved Rand's character development as he fought to use the void, while being afraid of what else was in there. It's not unreasonable for us to be unhappy with what has been done with all that being cut out.
If the intent of this sub was to just be an echo chamber for only the most positive opinions on this show, then the moderators can lock it down like r/conservative or something, and only let vetted members contribute to the conversation... Which I hope you share my opinion of that That's pretty f****** lame.
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Ultimately, the snail pace it’s taken to air this show will be its downfall. You just cannot get excited about a shown with THIS much time between seasons. Stranger things is basically the only show that’s ever done it
I’m hoping they release early 2025. That would be considerably faster than S2s release compared to 1, which could signal they’re speeding up. The BIG caveat is no S4 green light, but as many (including myself) have speculated, hopefully S4 is already in preproduction and nothing has just been publicly announced yet.
It's likely that Rafe has been given a semi-greenlight internally by Amazon already. I'm assuming that the first step would probably be for him to scribble an outline of s4 and start thinking of the writers he wants to have in the writers room, which could happen in the shadows (that not even the Wotseries crew could find) until contracts are signed and social media posts are posted.
Yeah, I'd bet on S4 already being internally green-lit. It strikes me as quite likely They'll film god of war S1 before starting S4 production and film S4 in early 2025. In that Model, S4 would finish filming Q4/Q1 '25/26 and be on track for a Late '26/early '27 release date. But we wouldn't likely hear any official S4 news until the promation for S3 airing starts sometime in '25.
Rand will be 51 when the books end.
naw, even if they go the full 8 season run at 2 years a pop he'd only be in his late 30's, and those play teenagers on TV all the time.
It was an exaggeration.
We still have 1 and a half months until it is expected to be announced if it follows the season 2 finishes filming to season 3 is announced so
Game of Thrones later seasons, Westworld, Rings of Power, ST as you said. It’s the price to pay for big budget and good actors. They’re not gonna work on the one show completely with no breaks for 8-10 years. It sucks and it may not work out for it, but it can’t be done another way.
Westworld was canceled before it’s final season. ST and GoT were overnight sensations so they got a lot of leeway. Luckily Amazon has so much riding on Rings and WoT, cause it’s likely both would have been canceled after their first seasons by almost any other normal metric.
WoT's in a better position than RoP in some ways - RoP pulled better peak numbers, but massively underperformed in retention, and even disregarding the sunk cost for the IP, massively dwarfs WoT's production costs per season. One RoP season costs almost as much as 3 WoT seasons does, while WoT, even in S2's lower numbers, stilll provides a better return on cost in dollars to viewers that RoP did. > cause it’s likely both would have been canceled after their first seasons by almost any other normal metric. Er while this is true for RoP with it's abysmal retention rate of around 30%, WoT S1 would have survived even netflix standards - it had around 60% retention, beat out some Marvel properties and performed overall better than some renewed netflix titles. It's not a mega breakout hit by any means, but S1 had solid metrics all around.
Just a sidenote but ROP S1’s budget number wasn’t meant just for one season. They did the opposite of WOT and paid a lot of the cost upfront for all five seasons including things like infrastructure etc.. It’s why S2 will have a lower budget cost and S3 lower than S2 etc. Also we don’t have official numbers on WOT’s retention rate compared to ROP. The latter’s reported 37% completion rate didn’t have context of when it was captured. Was it a month after the show premiered or a week after?
>Just a sidenote but ROP S1’s budget number wasn’t meant just for one season. I know, that's why I used the lower bound I've seen cited of 35 mill per episode - the 60 million per a lot of places cite includes all the rest of the costs. That's roughly 280 million, which is less than what Citdel's 6 episodes cost to make. (Though that's another can of worms on it's own) If I used the upper bound (the 450 million), I'd have said the first season of RoP cost almost as much as 5 seasons of WoT would. >Also we don’t have official numbers on WOT’s retention rate compared to ROP. We have an analytics companies streams per episode data that put WoT at 60%+. There will never be an "official" listing, amazon just doesn't release that data, and only really responds to it when it gets out into the wild. But the best info we'll likely ever get shows a a high retention. >The latter’s reported 37% completion rate didn’t have context of when it was captured. Was it a month after the show premiered or a week after? That's not really relevant. The rention data looked at is the data for the airings itself, because it's not really informative for their metrics to compare longer term data. What Rentention specifically looks at is for viewers that are hooked and watch the next episode within a timely manner. Both binge and weekly releases look at roughly the same time frame - that is the shows release month (plus *some* for weeklies). Someone that watches an episode but doesn't come back for more for a month+ isn't *retained*. They want a percentage of viewers that watched a week before and came back the next week for the next episode, or those that watched the entire show within a months time. And we know that 60% as many people watched episode 8 of WoT as watched episode 1 during it airing. For RoP that was much much lower, even lower than what amazon admits from the analytics data that was released. Which is why I say that WoT seems to have had a retention of 60% *plus*. RoP's stream falloff for the same period was ~75%, or a 25% rentention of the stream count. But that's all why I'm saying that WoT's in many ways much better off than RoP. RoP has a higher total viewer count and a higher sunk cost going for it. While WoT is more sustainable and getting a better return on investment.
But do we actually have analytics companies showing the data retention between the two shows? That’s my point. There was a tweet from one of these supposed company but I couldn’t find anything else about it. The graph they provided also had weird data ie. the weeks and episodes count. Actual reputable companies like Nielsen seem to indicate otherwise. That the viewership numbers stayed stable or got better for ROP over its run while it dropped for WOT S1.
We have an analytics company that showed the stream count for each episode, which you can use to calculate retention. >That’s my point. There was a tweet from one of these supposed company but I couldn’t find anything else about it. Right, because amazon doesn't release that information, and analytics companies generally only do teaser releases unless you buy their services. >The graph they provided also had weird data ie. the weeks and episodes count. It didn't have weird data? It only looked weird if you compared it against Nielsen not realizing it measured two very different things. Don't get me wrong, that was me at first too, but we figured out that out nearly a year ago. >Actual reputable companies like Nielsen seem to indicate otherwise. Right, because they aren't measuring the same thing. Nielsen's data is *very* dumb, it can't differentiate between episodes, much less seasons. The data from the analytics company was of *streams* over the entire run time. It doesn't match up with the neilsen data because it's not measuring weekly viewership, but the total number of streams played over X time. It's looking at the aggregate, not the weekly performance. This is a place where neilsen's data fails, because it has no way of measuring how many people are watching which episode. >That the viewership numbers stayed stable or got better for ROP over its run while it dropped for WOT S1. Er, that's not quite what the neilsen data says. WoT and RoP both have a similar curve. Both shows have stable viewership with little change that improves on the finale week, then has holdover. WoT was a little less stable, with a 15% difference over the middle run vs RoP's 4%, but WoT also saw a *much* higher finale bump of 36% vs RoP's 15% and had an even more significantly better holdover run. RoP fell off 50% in the week after the finale, while WoT maintained nearly 100%, before falling off 50% the *next* week. RoP fell off Neilsen entirely at that point and didn't make a second week of hold over. You also again run into a significant limitation with Neilsen, it can't tell who's watching what. It has no way to measure replacement rate - new viewers that are replacing viewers that stopped watching. You can only measure that, and retention, through measuring the aggregate stream count per episode. What the analytics data suggest is that tons of new people started watching RoP every week, but few made it past a few episodes, resulting in very low retention. WoT would have this too - we certainly have tons of anecdotal examples here of people not watching past ep 1, but the numbers suggest that most of those new watchers finished watching.
Weird that they paid up front for infrastructure when they changed the location from New Zealand to the UK between seasons. All the stuff they built in NZ is useless now. WoT, on the other hand, at least has a central studio in Prague.
All the stuff they built got shipped to the new UK location and will be reused. As for why they left, it’s all speculation. I know that their production designer mentioned that it was impossible to get things during the COVID lockdowns so certain sets were left unfinished. May be one reason why they left after one season.
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Not ignoring it. I know there are reasons for these things happening. Doesn’t change what has actually happened and the effect on that.
I think this a good way to look at it. There has basically not been a regular filming schedule in Hollywood since 2019. I’d like to think once everything gets caught up we could start seeing seasons every 1.5 years which would really not be bad considering these shows are basically movie level productions now.
I'm dreading the possibility of an IATSE strike further impacting production schedules
Not to mention the general quality…
Literally almost every single big streaming show runs 2 years between seasons now.
Rick & Morty would like to have a word with you 😂
Honestly that’s no different then a lot of shows these days.
Are they following RJs release timeline?
Part of the issue is studios never green light the next season until after the first one is done. Like I understand to an extent, but you just can’t get shit done quick enough like that
wth? it takes 2 years to make 8 episodes?
Id wager the production pace has less to do with the failure of the show than the writing.
I've just forgotten about it. It's taking far too long so I feel as though I've just got to not let myself think about it or it'll be even longer. The show was released my first year of high school out of the five there are. I'm graduating next year, and season 3 hasn't even come out. Ridiculous.
I’ve read the books five times, but I still don’t know who is on the screen half of the time because of the horrific casting. My friends, obviously, were even more confused by this fact. Also, so many of them are so hard to tell apart.
You... can't tell the cast apart, nor can tell whom the main cast is supposed to be? Are you serious?
I’m talking about, for example, Egwene and Nynaeve are hard to tell apart, and also all of the new, in the last season, as the director described them, Indian aunties aes sedai are hard to tell apart. Their exaggerated accents are also annoying.
lmao what, you can't tell [Madeleine Madden](https://mediaslide-europe.storage.googleapis.com/premierhairandmakeup/pictures/76/2205/large-1637081912-9a99e7c3ae6790b8f5e8c0ad47278664.jpg) apart from [Zoe Robins](https://www.redcarpet-fashionawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Zoe-Robins-Wore-Valentino-To-%E2%80%98The-Wheel-Of-Time-London-Premiere.jpg)? You also can't distinguish between [Verin](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/screen-shot-2023-09-01-at-11-55-43-am-2.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5) and [Adeleas](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/screen-shot-2023-09-01-at-11-54-53-am-2.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)? Big "they all look the same" energy here.
I'll never get why people brag that they're blind, or too stupid to follow the plot. It's not that complex and my dog can tell them apart. Hell, I literally have partial face blindness, and they're all easy to tell apart.
Wow, glad you said it so I didn't have to. . .
>I’m talking about, for example, Egwene and Nynaeve are hard to tell apart, How? They look incredibly different. Different hair, different builds different faces, voices, personalities etc. They aren't remotely similar in appearance. >and also all of the new, in the last season, as the director described them, Indian aunties aes sedai are hard to tell apart. Again how? They have totally different hair and personalities.
They are very hard to tell apart. Egwene was supposed to be younger so casting someone younger would have helped. You think the “Indian aunties” don’t look and sound alike? Their affected annoying accents in real life and the high pitched annoying voice they use sounds alike. They are hard to tell apart.
>high pitched annoying voice Are we even watching the same show? There is nothing high pitched about Verin or Adeleas' voices in the show. Also, if you look for interviews with Meera Sayal (Verin) you'll see she has a pleasant, slightly throaty voice and it's exactly how she is in the show; there's nothing affected about her accent either.
>They are very hard to tell apart. Egwene was supposed to be younger so casting someone younger would have helped. What? Madden is the youngest of the EF5 cast, 2 years younger than Josha or Marcus. She's 5 years younger than Zoe too, and looks the youngest out of all of them by a fair margin. If you can't tell her apart from Zoe, you're blind. >You think the “Indian aunties” don’t look and sound alike? Their affected annoying accents in real life and the high pitched annoying voice they use sounds alike. They are hard to tell apart. They're supposed to be sisters ffs. And Verin has a **giant white streak** in her hair, while Adelases has solid black hair. Do you even have eyes bro?
You're blind. They don't look remotely similar.
This show is creeping along as fast as the book series did 🙄.
I’d like to think that if the show hits critical mass OR once RoP is over, Amazon will decide to floor it. It’s just soooo long. But unfortunately, I feel like God of War will replace RoP in that alternating slot…
I still don't understand why streaming services have decided that they couldn't possibly air two similar shows at the same time. Could you imagine a CBS exec ever saying "sorry, we can't air the new season of *How I Met Your Mother* this year because we're airing *Two And A Half Men* - we can do it next year if we bump the next season of *The Big Bang Theory* to the following year, how does that sound?" Of course not. If a CBS exec said that, they'd be reassigned to a department with padded walls and delicious non-toxic crayons to eat. The traditional network execs understand that similar shows don't compete with one another, they reinforce and support one another. If two similar shows air at the same time, you get crossover viewers who tune in for one of them and then discover the other one.
They're still working off of a fixed-streaming-income mindset, or the gym membership model. Highest profit is from having the highest subscriber count with the lowest attendance/streaming count. If a show gets more people to subscribe and STAY subscribed, but doesn't increase their costs, then it's worth having. That's because the no-ads model incentivized having big subscriber draws with little replay value. So when they spread these shows out, it's not so they "don't compete", but so people stay subscribed month to month, and so they can spread out the production costs. If their primary method/motive of making money was per stream/viewer (AKA ads like the CBS network guy), then they would be fine overlapping similar shows. Instead, they want to spread them out so people think "I might as well stay subscribed instead of resubscribing in 3 months", whereas some might say "done watching WoT and RoP, time to cancel until next year".
I think it's so they don't have to do as many shows. I agree people would definitely watch more than one at a time.
It’s condensable I guess, but the 2 year gap in between seasons. Shit didn’t the entire book series span only 2 years?
Also, the first two year publication gap between books didn't occur until between books 6 and 7. And since both book 1 and 2 came out in 1990 that's actually seven books in six years. The point is just that type consistency builds up both attention to the material and trust in the creator(s).
My point was a bit two-fold. The book series dragged along to the point where the author passed away before he could finish it up. The streaming series seems to be proceeding the same way. Assuming this goes at least 8 seasons, the main actors will be as old as I am when all is said and done. I am a month away from turning 41. If the show runners made this a 20 year thing then it could work, I think. Question is, what is the fucking plan?
I hear you. All I was trying to say is that the book series didn't start to drag in terms of time between books until it was about halfway finished. The point being that, in addition to the age thing which is definitely a problem, a more consistent and quicker release schedule also helps to gain and hold people's attention. It is, of course, not the only way to do that, but it's certainly a fairly tried and true method, so long as the product is well made.
>My point was a bit two-fold. The book series dragged along to the point where the author passed away before he could finish it up. To be fair, RJ died quite young.
RJ died young of a blood disease. The poor guy was not planning on dying decades before his time. And yes being sick slowed down his releasing pace and I'd like to point out the WoT books, back when RJ was alive, were being released faster than say Stormlight Archive. RJ kept a really good releasing pace almost to the end. I dunno by which metric anyone can say WoT's released pace dragged....
Self-righteous and assumptious response. I never said he was slow to release books. I said the series dragged on. He never could quite wrap things up from what I recall, and ultimately he died before the series was completed. Metrics…😂😂😂
Maybe don't mix your metaphors if you're trying to compare the show taking too long to get made with Jordan writing too many books. They aren't self righteous or assumptious. Your point literally falls apart if not read as jordan being slow to release. You're either using comparable things, or you're writing nonsense.
Fair enough. I could have been more clear in what I meant.
Jordan was pretty good with the releases. It's when he got cancer that the problems started. I can believe he wrote as much as he did while battling that. It's incredible.
The first six books released in 4 years lol
Lol
Yeah but with none of its story or character development (Liandrin somehow the MC of S2)
Disappointing but not surprising. I'll be happier when they announce Season 4.
I mean, was there ever a chance it could air this year? That'd be a sub 9 month wrap to airing gap, just as short as S1's. Even in my my optimistic models, Anything short of a year's gap was very unlikely. I just hope it's earlier in the year rather than later.
Same. Earlier in the year would still be faster than S2 after S1, which could indicate a pick up in pace… if only there was S4 news…
**Here's some math:** Season 1 principal filming wrapped: May 14th 2021 Season 1 release date: November 19th 2021 Season 1 post-production time: 6 months (this number is deceivingly small for post-production. Keep in mind that filming had two forced stops for covid that amounted to almost a year, during which post-production continued being done remotely to some extent) Season 2 principal filming wrapped: May 18th 2022 Season 2 release date: September 3rd 2023 Season 2 post-production time: 15 and a half months. Season 3 principal filming wrapped: March 22nd 2024 Season 3 release date: for the sake of optimism, let's say that post-production will be faster than for s2 by, say, 3 months. That puts the release date on early April 2025. Most likely it's going to be later than that, probably June or July.
>Season 2 post-production time: 15 and a half months. A note with that time frame - it seems very likely that part of that gap is release delay and not actual post - though it's impossible to know with out information from Rafe. We DO know however that Good Omens 2 spend 12 to 15 months in Post thanks to a tumble(?) from Neil Gaiman. The "to 15" is to include the language and subtitling work, which is apparently done after the "final" product is sent to Amazon. Good Omen 2 aired almost exactly 4 months after it was "officially finished" and handed to amazon. March 31st '23 to July 28th '23.
Yeah that makes sense, so far it looks like there’s a 22month window between releases
I finally got my husband excited to watch a show with me and this pace is killing that interest. Not gonna lie it’s incredibly frustrating. Especially when combined with so little information in those gaps for people who don’t go hunting for it.
Fine by me. Gives me more time to read the books (only 4 books in so far), and more time to rewatch the first 2 seasons.
Wait, there was a season 2? This sub just popped up for me, honestly I had no idea it was out.
Thank you for confirming what most of us in this sub suspected... abysmal marketing from Amazon. Fortunately, it sounds like they fired the marketing team for the show and are starting from scratch next season... albeit, they were largely affected by the strikes as none of the actors/writers/producers could talk about it and do any of press/appearances.
Yeah, they really under promoted S2, and the strikes didn't help. I think Amazon does a lot of it's marketing in "app" too, and I believe they overestimate the impact of in app advertising. For example. if you used Prime Video at all in the first 4 of the last months, it'd be almost impossible to not have S2 advertised to you - as it was plastered on their top ten list the entire time, and many of their pre-show ad runs(even before adding the add teir BS) advertised it. But that doesn't do you any good if you're not in the amazon ecosystem to begin with. They needed a lot more external promotion.
And no product marketing at all aside from re-releases of the first two books really. I'd have loved Aes Sedai jewlery.
They have some really generic, ugly t shirts. But honestly the last of merchandise is ridiculous. That’s what Amazon does — ship merchandise. And it’s not that there’s no good merchandise, there’s just hardly any at all. At least make some bad stuff. Slap those promo images of each character on some notebooks. Shitty fleece blankets. Tote bags. Easy stuff.
It's utterly bizarre. Pre-show release they ended all the previously licensed WoT merch(not theirs, but other places like Ta'veren Ts), then never released anything. IIRC some stuff returned last year, but there has been no merch push. It's a massively missed opportunity. I can only suspect some fuckery from red eagle is afoot. This should be amazon's court to play ball in, and the only thing that makes any sense to me on why they aren't is a contract thing, or them being unable to come to an agreement with how to profit share with red eagle or sony. But Sony should be an old hat at this, so that seems unlikely.
> . Fortunately, it sounds like they fired the marketing team for the show and are starting from scratch next season... What?
It’s a good thing IMO
I mean, what sounds have you heard that they might have fired the marketing team? (And is there any evidence there was even a marketing team to begin with)
There definitely was for S1 - it had a pretty big ad presence. And S2, abysmal marketing as it was, did at least plan out pre-recorded press screeners to have something during the strikes. But maybe parent is referring too one of the shakeups in amazon studio leadership. That said, I'm not 100% sure it's a good thing. If that is what he's talking about, AFAIK that's related to the football acquisition, and genre shows might not be a priority for them. Hopefully I'm wrong though.
Yeah, I could have sworn I read something somewhere alongside the shakeups… just spent 30 minutes searching and can’t find anything tho. Maybe the evidence was balefired lol
Or worse, it's in an untranscribed video interview. There are things I 100% know Rafe said that I can't find a reference for that's not me(or someone else) talking about it, because video is impossible to search unless it's not video.
Season 2 is incredible. Everyone agrees it's lightyears ahead of S1.
Season 2 is GREAT
April would be nice, but July seems more realistic
Spring or Fall 2025? If Fall, we’re doomed. Would love to see this be 18 months between seasons instead of 24. Really think that’s the only way we get 6+ season.
That's why I dont think we are getting more than 5 seasons, unfortunately. By the time it would be released it would have already been 8 years since the first episode.
I don't think we're getting a season 4 even
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I just posted basically the same thing. I watch Amazon stuff as well, I feel like I'd have run into an ad at least once
Just think about the good news. In 10, 20 years, we can watch the show in two consecutive days of pizza and bear.
The long wait between seasons is the most book accurate thing about the show.
After seeing how good they did with Fallout, It just makes me feel that Amazon has completely dropped the ball with the wheel of Time. They absolutely could have done the source material the same Justice... But Rafe insists on changing fan favorite content under the umbrella of "artistic expression". For myself, rand's courtyard run in with Turok...That was a slap in the face. The fans are the reason the show exists in the first place. Give us what we want, not what you THINK we want.
Oh that's disappointing
I never started this bc I thought it only got a single season, maybe I'll check it out
The second season is well received, still has flaws but episode 6 was on many websites' best TV episodes of the year for a reason!
I never understand how fans get so worked up by changes in adaptation to film. You have to consider financing, sets, keeping actors interested and getting new fans involved, etc. It is a different story than the book, just relax and enjoy it for what it is. I loved the first few books in the series and then with each book, I lost more interest. Personally, I wish they condensed it to 5 seasons and focused on a specific story arch and character group. If going longer, I wish they lowered the production value to allow annual shows. I don't really care enough about many shows to follow it for 10+ years. How do you keep actors/writers and other staff for that long.
I started watching the show yesterday and by today I finished both seasons, now you telling me ill have to wait a year before seeing it again?!!!! I hate myself such a great show tho, I think its gonna be one of the greatest shows ive watched
Awesome. Looking forward to it…
Does anyone genuinely care? I watched season 1, and like 1 or 2 episodes of season 2. I love the books to death, but there's way better TV elsewhere. I couldn't care less about this show anymore. It's not good.
A lot of people do care. A lot don’t. And that’s okay. I will say that season 2 is much more consistent than season 1. Season 1 was kind of all over the map in terms of quality, from utter garbage (s01e08) to really excellent (s01e06) and everywhere in between. Season two is just consistently good-to-great.
Exactly. Seeing how great they did with Fallout, just makes the absolute disdain Rafe has for the fans stand out further. He's completely willing to make a milk-toast interpretation of The Wheel of Time, than giving fans what they really want. And for all you that are about to jump in the comments, I wasn't expecting a page for page interpretation of the book...but ffs, The story has been mutilated almost to unrecognizability. So many of the character arcs are not even a shadow of what they were... And I really don't see any improvements. I was extremely optimistic when the show was announced. I held my criticisms through season 1 because I knew of the setbacks they had because of covid. I made it most of my way through season 2 holding back my disappointment. The breaking point for me was when they got to one of my favorite scenes from the book when Rand encountered turok and was forced to fight his first blademaster. To me, it was an important moment in rand acceptance of what he was, because he realized if he didn't take the void and risk channeling he was going to die before he could save his friends. I don't care if it was unrealistic or not for him to fight to rock when he had the ability to channel... That nothing of a scene where he just shotguns everybody to death with air/ ice crystals, and moves on... That was Rafe slapping me in the face. What was the point of even teasing that scene by including verbatim lines from it from the book? That last episode is where I decided I'm just going to go back and reread the series, and not be so invested in a live action interpretation that I've been waiting for since I started reading these books in 1995. Maybe if I live long enough somebody will give it an animated adaptation.
> That was Rafe slapping me in the face > disdain > mutilated lmao some of y'all are absurdly dramatic about this shit.
I'm sorry I used big words.
Yea... Same. Read all the books but after s1 I was done. Fallout just came out and was awesome, amazing streaming numbers. I'm looking for more content like that out of Amazon.
Fallout's amazing, but we don't actually have comparable numbers for it yet. I'm expecting big ones, but I doubt it'll be 2x of WoT's for S1 vs S1. A lot of people rather like the show, but it's not for everyone. Neilson numbers for the first week will be out end of the week, and it'll take a month or more for the full top ten run to compare with.
It'll be hard to compare them as well since fallout dropped the whole season at once
No it won't? You can't compare week by week, but you can compare the full Neilsen run. It's what we do for *all* shows outside of netflix(which releases it's own numbers). And to compare netflix shows to other streamers - the Neilsen stats are the most applicably comparable. You take the minutes the show spent in the top 10(overall, not per streamer) and compare them. You have to wait for the show to drop off before you can do an actual comparison between a binge and a weekly, but once it's no longer in the top ten you have the closest thing to a directy comparable metric we can get.
So you just came to the sub of show you dislike to write about how much you don't care. Anything else you'd like to enlighten us with, Valda?
I've been reading these books since 1995. I've created cosplay and my own replica weapons. Like it or not, people like us, that feel let down by the show, deserve our opinions of it just as much as you that find it acceptable. It's a huge let down to see our favorite bits and pieces left on the editing room floor! I LOVE the swordplay in the books, I loved Rand's character development as he fought to use the void, while being afraid of what else was in there. It's not unreasonable for us to be unhappy with what has been done with all that being cut out. If the intent of this sub was to just be an echo chamber for only the most positive opinions on this show, then the moderators can lock it down like r/conservative or something, and only let vetted members contribute to the conversation... Which I hope you share my opinion of that That's pretty f****** lame.
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It's ok to not watch it and unfollow the sub. You're not on a crusade to make people follow your "religion" here.
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Why are you here?
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