The first titles being eyed for adaptation are the Mistborn series, for features, and The Stormlight Archive series, for television.
The latter already has producers involved: Blue Marble, run by former WME agent Theresa Kang, is attached to executive produce The Stormlight Archive television adaptation.
The deal is rare one, coming after a competitive situation which saw Sanderson meet with most of the studio heads in town. It gives the author rarefied control over the screen translations, according to sources. Sanderson will be the architect of the universe; will write, produce and consult; and will have approvals. That’s a level of involvement that not even J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin enjoys.
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This announcement was met with widespread enthusiasm online, both because of the popularity of the ‘Cosmere’ and the level of control Sanderson is supposed to have over the final adaptation, in theory ensuring a faithful result. Me, I was more skeptical when reading about this, though perhaps this has more to do with my apprehensions around Sanderson, and Apple TV to a lesser degree.
On the Apple TV side, I’m slightly annoyed that this streaming service is still not available in Romania, and there is seemingly no timeline for a launch here. I would imagine any company would welcome new customers, especially a media company looking to expand its viewers. Then again, Apple doesn’t seem particularly adept at managing this TV side-project: many have pointed out their non-existent marketing strategy, how their originals are consistently high-quality, but barely have any momentum because people are not aware of them. Apple’s culture focused on premium and exclusivity doesn’t translate very well into the media world, where you want wide reach as well, otherwise your perfectly crafted story fails because of a lack of audience.
I also don’t have the high regard for Sanderson and his work that he seems to enjoy otherwise. I have only read two of his Cosmere novels so far: his first novel Elantris, which I thought was very good, despite being an early work, and Warbreaker, which I found rather lackluster, with a lame magic system, uninspiring characters and plot, and a weird focus on nobles and powerful magic users that was off-putting to me. The Steelheart trilogy was thoroughly enjoyable, though nothing novel in a world where superhero culture has been dissected to death and reconstructed in dark, twisted forms multiple times, from Watchmen to The Boys to Invincible.
I get the impression that Sanderson is the type of author that did his best work as an emerging artist at the start of his career, but with gathering fame the quality of his writing is slipping further and further, because his already massive fanbase will buy and consume anything he churns out – the same opinion I formed on Kazuo Ishiguro. In a sense, he is the polar opposite of George R.R. Martin: one is paralyzed by indecision on how to proceed with his story while preserving the characters and themes he cares so much about, the other is just rolling out book after massive book like he’s on an assembly line. I get the sense that his focus on being exceptionally prolific at the expense of quality and proper editing is already catching up to him, as the reaction to latest installment of The Stormlight Archive was far more negative than previous books in the series.
What irked me most at Brandon Sanderson was the way he acted around the Wheel of Time TV series, which I loved more than I ever expected to. After the second season aired, he criticized the show, adding fuel to the fire of disgruntled online fans, who have been constantly railing against the show. Apparently, his criticism was based off the script for the finale, so he hasn’t even bothered to watch the finished episode before complaining about it. He may well have clashed with producers and Amazon executives about his creative input, but in my view that doesn’t give him the right to speak out against the show. If you’re a consultant and receive your paycheck, that doesn’t automatically mean your advice will be followed, nor does it entitle you to criticize your customer if they decide to go in another direction. He just comes off as arrogant and self-absorbed, as if his vision is the only one that matters. Even though he was selected by the original author to finish the series, ultimately The Wheel of Time isn’t his work to claim ownership over.
And this gets me back to the reasons why I’m rather skeptical of these adaptations. Leaving aside the massive visual effects needed to accurately portray Sanderson’s magic on screen, I see two possible negative scenarios. One is that working on the adaptation will take so much of his time and attention that we end up in the Martin scenario, where Sanderson doesn’t finish The Stormlight Archive or other stories set in the Cosmere – or he bounces back between books and scripts, delaying both and sapping interest in the TV series. No matter how prolific he might be, he’s still human with limited energy and time at his disposal.
The other is that his possessiveness over the narrative, which he manifested plentily with The Wheel of Time even when it was not his place to act this way, coupled with the creative control he negotiated for himself, could lead him to discard outside advice on how to adapt the written word onscreen. Unlike Martin, Sanderson has no TV experience, so there’s no way to judge whether he can be as successful as a screenwriter and producer as he was as a writer – up until now at least. Regardless of its ultimate success, given the production timelines of new TV content lately, we’re looking at a couple of years at best until anything tangible could come out of this agreement.
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