It's only been a few days since the news broke that Apple TV had reached a groundbreaking deal with fantasy titan Brandon Sanderson to create a TV and movie franchise based around his Cosmere book universe, but the hits of adrenaline keep coming. Beyond the general excitement over the details of this deal — which includes an unprecedented amount of involvement for Sanderson himself — the author has made it a point to communicate with fans about what to expect, as he always does.
We already discussed the biggest takeaway from his recent Reddit update, where he revealed that he will be writing the screenplay for Apple's Mistborn movie himself over the next five months. This means Sanderson is going to be firmly in the Mistborn zone for the forseeable future; he recently wrapped up the first draft of Era 3, Ghostbloods, and was originally going to roll right into writing the second book. Now, it seems like the screenplay will slot into his work schedule between books 1 and 2. Good thing Sanderson works with all the consistency and speed of a reliable locomotive.
But there's more. Sanderson also took to the comments in that Reddit thread, where he revealed a few other interesting details about where his head is at regarding the newly announced deal — and Apple's television show based on The Stormlight Archive, his epic fantasy magnum opus.
Brandon Sanderson has been 'studying Tolkien' to prepare for The Stormlight Archive show
To date there are five books in The Stormlight Archive, with another five to go in the series. Each book is massive, clocking in well over 1,000 pages and filled to the brim with lore, characters, worldbuilding, and all the other elements that make a good epic fantasy book. One fan wanted to know how Sanderson felt about the prospect of an eight to 10 episode season, which have become commonplace in streaming. Could something that length possibly fit a book the size of The Way of Kings or Wind and Truth?
"There is a reason I've been studying Tolkien lately," Sanderson replied. "Peter Jackson and his team did a brilliant job on that and if you look at the special editions, they are roughly about the length of a season of a show together covering about the same wordcount as a stormlight book... It feels like they knew exactly what to keep and cut."
This is about the best answer Sanderson could have given. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies are about as close to universally beloved among fantasy nerds as you can get, and the extended editions in particular are filled with extra material that makes them that much richer. However, there are still changes and things that were left on the cutting room floor from Tolkien's books. (I'm looking at you, Tom Bombadil.)
It pretty much goes without saying that books the size of The Stormlight Archive novels will not fit in a strict one-to-one adaptation; it's simply not tenable to include every single detail from those massive tomes. But if Jackson's extended Lord of the Rings is the sort of inspiration Sanderson wants to channel for figuring out what to keep and what to cut, it makes me optimistic for the end result.
Sanderson is determined to avoid Game of Thrones' biggest pitfall
There's another important touchstone Sanderson referenced for his Stormlight show: Game of Thrones, the biggest fantasy show in television history. Apple's Stormlight Archive series will find itself in a very similar position to Game of Thrones in that both are based off of incomplete source material. Thrones quickly outpaced George R.R. Martin's written works, leading to an infamously divisive ending and final few seasons. With a book series as outrageously complex as The Stormlight Archive, it's easy to imagine that any adaptation would struggle immensely if it similarly ran out of source material.
One answer could lie in the fact that there is a six-year time jump in the middle of The Stormlight Archive, which is currently serving as a mini-hiatus for the series while Sanderson writes his next era of Mistborn. Perhaps the show could take advantage of that gap, giving the actors a chance to age a little — and Sanderson more time to write the sequels.
"I've thought the same thing, though I've also acknowledged realities. We will see," Sanderson said when asked about Apple utilizing the time jump. "One of my hopes is that we won't have the huge delays between seasons as is common in streaming. So I'll focus on that, and learning from GoT and making sure the books finish on time. What we do with the time jump is a question for later."
Again, I feel like he's got his priorities straight. The time jump will be a bridge for the Apple show to cross many years from now, after it covers the material in the fifth book, Wind and Truth. Hopefully by then Sanderson will have gotten out a few more Stormlight books, and will be that much closer to finishing his ambitious book series.
Also, am I the only who got excited to hear that one of his hopes is to avoid the long wait between seasons that large streaming shows have nowadays? If Apple can manage to somehow adapt The Stormlight Archive and have one season out a year, or every year-and-a-half like Prime Video's Fallout, then I have a feeling it will be a massive aid to its popularity.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Journey before destination. For now, we have plenty to be excited about as Brandon Sanderson embarks on this next phase of the Cosmere. I have no doubt we'll be hearing more from him about it soon enough.