Get your Dramamine handy, people. Prime Video has released the trailer for “The Wheel of Time,” its TV adaptation of the series of fantasy novels by Robert Jordan, in a very thematically on-the-nose and dizziness-inducing way: via YouTube’s 360 player and spatial audio surround sound.
Readers can watch “The Wheel of Time” trailer via the video above.
So if you’re not clear on how this works, in addition to the trailer you can view just by looking normally at the screen, you can also experience the 360-degree component by scrolling left to see Rosamund Pike’s Moiraine character channel the “One Power,” while over on the right, the Dark One offers madness.
Set in a world where magic exists and only certain women have permission to access it, Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time” follows Moiraine (Pike), a member of the all-female organization called the Aes Sedai. Once she arrives in the small town of Two Rivers, she embarks on a journey with five young men and women, one of whom is believed to be the Dragon Reborn, who will either save or destroy humanity.
Based on Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy novels, Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time” was adapted for television by executive producer/showrunner Rafe Judkins. Additional executive producers include Larry Mondragon and Rick Selvage of iwot productions, Mike Weber, Ted Field of Radar Pictures, Darren Lemke, Marigo Kehoe and Uta Briesewitz. Briesewitz is also director on the first two episodes. Pike will serve as producer and Harriet McDougal and Brandon Sanderson as consulting producers.
During a virtual panel presented by Amazon at Comic-Con@Home in July, Judkins said he plotted out eight seasons total of his TV adaptation of Jordan’s 14-novel fantasy series.
“I feel like my danger will never be running out of books,” he said, laughing. “I think it’s more, the challenge that we face is how do you tell this story the most cohesively and the most coherently in what is a reasonable number of seasons in television? So it’s something I really set out to do right from the beginning. I think you really need to know the end of your story when you start telling it. I think that’s true for television, even though it’s serialized and goes many years.”
“The Wheel of Time” is co-produced by Amazon Studios and Sony Pictures Television.
The first three episodes of Season 1 of Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time” will premiere Friday, Nov. 19. New episodes will be available each subsequent Friday, leading up to the season finale on Dec. 24.