The One Power is nothing. ¨People obsess with that, but it's really all basic stuff nowadays. CGI would take care of nearly everything and is far less less expensive that some of the techniques you brought up (and I kind of know this, digital VFX is what I do for a living... TV shows try to avoid SFX on set as much as possible, because the techniques aren't always that expensive in themselves, but most take a great deal of time and slow down filming a lot, and that makes them very expensive to use.).

What's very expensive for TV are stuff like CG set expansions, very involved motion tracking, creatures, particle effects. They're very clever how they do it on GoT (which is a big budget show). Nothing's gratuitous and people most often won't notice they found a way to make an impressive shot 10x less expensive by not moving the camera, as would rather have been done in a feature film. Or they'll give us a few very expensive shots, and most of the rest will be cut-saving ones, by clever framing. They can pull it off, notably, because they skip VFX scenes with tons of extras that would require tons of angles in one scene.

But even then, the kind of budget they have on GOT is not really thinkable for a 22 ep/season show.

And forget scenes like Dumai's Wells and such, that's totally unthinkable without SW/LOTR-level of budget. Those crowd simulator like Massive they use in some movies since LOTR, it's way out of TV's budget except for extremely simple shots (crowds standing there simple, forget anything like battles and such).

There's also more than budget (though it's linked, as time is money and it's not a cliché in VFX): TV doesn't have enough time either.

And yes, the casting on WOT would be the biggest nightmare, much bigger than VFX. I've been saying that all along. Another big problem is that RJ on purpose spent well over a third of book one mimicking the tone and plot of LOTR, then he gave fairy tale overtones to the middle part, and then switched to more classic epic fantasy for the ending. That worked well for some in the book, but on film the fact it's so close to LOTR in the first hour of the movie will draw tons of acerbic comparisons from reviewers and some of the audience. WOT also has a important change in tone/focus by the mid-series. It hasn't sit well with many readers, but that's nothing compared to what would happen with a TV/movie audience.

The way you regroup the books makes no sense at all. They have problems cramming EOTW in a single movie apparently. A postproduction heavy movie which lasts 3h30/4h costs twice as much as a 2h one, for the same revenues. Hollywood isn't very keen on those nowadays (not that they ever were, they basically invented the 90min for FLF norm...).

People go around saying "they can cut this, and then that" but they just don't realize how much gets also added for a movie to make sense to anyone who hasn't got tons of exposition from the books. OP concepts are complicated for example, and for much of the plot to make sense, you can't skip it. In a movie, you don't have the luxury you have in a book to pepper bits of exposition everywhere and build it up. In TV and even more movies, you need to devote scenes to each concept. OP/the Wheel cosmology and the DO/ta'veren/the WOS-Breaking, the TW, Manetheren and Aridhol, the Borderlands, the conflict in Caemlyn etc. There's a massive lot of exposition to include in EOTW for it to make sense. Just conveying enough of the backstory of Manetheren and the TW (avoiding to mix up the audience with the WOS/Breaking, would need a good 5 minutes, and then another good 5 for Aridhol - that's already a 12th of the movie right there). A lot of the plot is also driven by complicated matters (just think of the Aiel and Cairhien, for example) - twenty countries, tons of cities, a lot of backstory and so on. There are reasons why RJ slowed things down by book 4... he needed more and more space for exposition. The first three books are relatively OK, for long movies or a TV season each. It's by TSR things would derail...

It's a very bad series for a movie franchise. When the source material can't transfer well to the screen without losing its soul because of all sort of constraints, why bother? There are tons of stories based around the same core as WOT that would make far better TV or movie projects (Sanderson's Mistborn, for instance - and beside, it's an original take on Fantasy). If a network really wanted a WOT-style show, they'd be far better to actually work with a Fantasy author to get a great story and world crafted specifically for the medium, which a TV writing team could then take over. A world built taking care of all budget considerations, a manageable main and secondary cast and care to have the minor parts not recurring, a great care taken to write storyarcs that fit well the patterns of a TV season and so on. You don't make a Lost by adapting it from a book, you write it yourself to take all the advantages a weekly 22 episode show gain you.

I mentionned LHOTP merely for the series's tone and how character driven the show was. If WOT took place in the TR we wouldn't be arguing...