As GF said, the difference with Harry Potter is the setting. Rowling's genius was to combine a hackneyed chosen one story about wizards and witches with a classic English boarding school coming-of-age tale.

I can't remember where I read this, but someone made a smart point about Rowling. The boarding school story in English literature is heavily involved the maintenance of the aristocratic order. In Rowling, the bad guys are the ones obsessed with the old aristocratic order, and the good guys are the inclusive ones. However, you still have an effective higher class of humans who can do magic, and no one questions their privilege. So what you get is both the superior feeling of being part of the natural aristocracy combined with the good liberal feeling of standing up for equality.

With the Wheel of Time, you have a hackneyed chosen one story set in a fantasy world (a richly imagined one, to be fair) that doesn't have any particular resonances with other genres or other contemporary concerns. So you just have a hackneyed story with loads and loads of appendices. I don't really see any reason to believe it would make good film.

Random thoughts while reading this thread:

1. I loved The Hobbit book hated all of the LotR books and could not get through them but loved the LotR movies and was lukewarm on The Hobbit movie.

2. Loved the GOT books, lukewarm on the tv series because the HBO budget just isn't enough for the way my imagination built the world I was reading.

3. Loved the Harry Potter books, hated all of the movies except Deathly Hallows Part 1, which was amazing.

Prisoner of Azkaban is easily my favorite of the Harry Potter films. Alfonso Cuaron created the cinematic version of Rowling's Hogwarts (all the other films, visually, are just attempts to rip off Cuaron) and found a resonant, kicky metaphor for puberty in all the magic stuff.

I missed only one of the Harry Potter films; but I can't figure out which one and I don't really want to watch all eight of them to figure it out.

You're still going to have to get over a high bar for the next major fantasy series, and there simply isn't another fantasy series that has the same level of depth as ASOIAF.

Steven Erickson's Malazan Book of the Fallen has considerably more depth than Martin, but is probably unfilmable.

Sci-Fi series I'd like to see turned into tv series/films:

Dragonlance
Stainless Steel Rat
Biff the Intergalactic Hero
Harry Turtledove's alternate WWII


And that is about it and I also say this knowing full well that Biff would probably be a terrible series without somebody like Whedon coming along and doing for it what he did for Buffy.

I've read a lot of sci-fi but a lot of it is rather unfilmable or would be rather mediocre if translated to the screen.

I missed only one of the Harry Potter films; but I can't figure out which one and I don't really want to watch all eight of them to figure it out.

Probably 5 or 6; they have different plots, but feel like exactly the same movie.

2-3 season Mistborn series.

This I think would be doable. Special effects of people flying/jumping and coins zipping around the air can work visually. Pretty concise writing from Sanderson, easily likable characters, unfortunate ending that's a bit over the top, but it could be a great series.

Sci-Fi series I'd like to see turned into tv series/films:

I'd love to see Bakker's Second Apocalypse filmed, but I doubt there's much of a market for a film about a sociopathic ubermensch trying to save the world from alien rape-monsters. Ok, maybe in Japan.

Sci-Fi series I'd like to see turned into tv series/films:

The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I'm heartbroken that the Coen brothers adaptation doesn't seem like it's going to come together.

I'd also like to see films adapted from Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music and Dick's Faith of our Fathers.

Steven Erickson's Malazan Book of the Fallen has considerably more depth than Martin, but is probably unfilmable.

I'm through book 5. Book 1 is kind of sloppy but the other 4 have all been very good. I don't think it reaches the highs of Storm of Swords, but it's already kept its quality longer than ASoIaF. The sheer scale of things make it almost certainly unfilmable as written, but I read something a while back that Erikson wrote a pitch based on the Chain of Dogs sequence from book 2. That could probably work as a single film.

Brandon Sanderson was more than capable as a fill in author, but there were just too many threads to pull together.

I think it's a remarkable achievement to have more or less satisfactorily dealt with most of the plot lines in a mere three books. It's pretty clear that Jordan could never have finished the series himself.

I'm through book 5. Book 1 is kind of sloppy but the other 4 have all been very good.

The actual plot of the series doesn't really get started until book 5 or 6. It's a challenge, but worth it.

It's not my number, man. It's from Entertainment Weekly - check the link.

You don't like it, take it up with them.

My numbers are from HBO. So nyah. Was merely correcting.