@Jabberwok:
Adapting WoT to a tv series is a pretty bad idea in my opinion. In addition to the obvious pacing problems and the lack of iconic characters with widespread appeal, I think the simple good vs. evil set-up translates poorly to television. Over the recent years there's been a big shift towards tangible human villains in television, so while the first few books are great in terms of action and adventure, they all lack a concrete villain until the very end. Ironically, the opposite happens later. As villains become murkier and more fleshed out and the politics and maneuvering take center stage, the pacing grinds to a halt.
A TV series, especially a long running drama like WoT would be, needs either a morally ambiguous protagonist, which takes some time to develop in Rand, or an iconic, charismatic villain, which the series arguably never develops. There are a number of secretly antagonistic characters that would ramp up the intrigue but they're introduced over several later books. One reason that GoT works well as a television adaptation of epic fantasy is because it has both a larger threat, the Others, and a clear initial human antagonist, the Lannisters. Once we'd already bought into that premise Martin could start working on deconstructing characters and introducing new plots.
The Wheel of Time is simply too high fantasy and too slowly paced to be adapted well. It'll be canceled before it ever develops a large following among non-readers.
I guess it happening now….
.http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/wheel-of-time-tv-series-sony-1202390897/