Brandon Sanderson and J. Michael Straczynski working on “urban fantasy” show for USA

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in today’s TV landscape, every network and streaming service wants a huge fantasy/sci-fi hit that can rival Game of Thrones in popularity. The chances that they all get what they wish are…small. But it’s going to be high times for genre fans for awhile, and for genre writers.

Enter J. Michael Straczynski, the driving creative force behind the cult favorite series Babylon 5, as well as the co-create of Netflix’s Sense8. He was at the most recent San Diego Comic-Con talking up his autobiography and other projects. The Facebook group JMSNews was on hand for one of his panels, where Straczynski talked about an upcoming TV show he was working on:

"He’s also writing a pilot for USA Network (as he’s mentioned online). The news on that is that he’s working with Brandon Sanderson on it and it’s an urban fantasy that JMS says turns many of the standard tropes upside down."

“Urban fantasy” basically means a story that involves magic or whatever, but it’s in a city. We don’t have enough details on that part to say anything definitive.

But it is interesting to hear that Straczynski is working on this show with Brandon Sanderson, a major fantasy author behind works like the Mistborn series, The Stormlight Archive, and the last three Wheel of Time books, which he wrote after original author Robert Jordan died in 2007. Straczynski has been involved with plenty of TV shows over the years, but Sanderson has mostly stuck to books. It’d be interesting to see what he could do if he got into writing or producing for the screen.

After all, this is the time to do it. Patrick Rothfuss is helping Showtime adapt his Kingkiller Chronicle. Neil Gaiman is adapting Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels. And that whole Game of Thrones thing worked out pretty well for George R.R. Martin.

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