Cosmere picked up by Apple TV

[plecostomus]

Ands that a big reason I am excited for the TV adaptions: no matter the freedom apple gives him, there is no way a good TV producer would allow for some voiceover narrator doing endless repetitions of character internal monologues.

Uh oh.

That said, it was probably necessary for this show. From what I have read of Stormlight Archives, absolutely not necessary there.

 

[Parmandur]

Uh oh.

That said, it was probably necessary for this show. From what I have read of Stormlight Archives, absolutely not necessary there.

Oh, for Murder ot it was a absolute necessity...the novels are fully first person with tremendous interiority. While I like the interiority of the Stormlight Archives fine...not necessary to capture that in an adaptation in the same way. If Sanderson is using Jackson's Lord of the Rings as his guide for Stormlight Archives, sacrificing intwroorotybecause it is a TV show shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Retros_x]

The internal monologues don't really bother me, since that is pretty much how I think myself.

Based on what you post here, I would assume you have much more interesting thoughts than Shallan.

ike "The Way of Kings is The Mighty Ducks" as central

wait what? what is this about? I tried to google it but couldnt find anything

For sure, and I know because Sanderson has been talking about his adaptation philosophy that he wants any film project to be a film or TV show first, and use that art form rather than try to be lavish to literary details. He wants a lot of control, but he has a healthy detachment from specific details that this may just work.

This sounds really promising - I am excited for it! in 2030 if we're lucky

 

[Retros_x]

That said, it was probably necessary for this show. From what I have read of Stormlight Archives, absolutely not necessary there.

haha no, in Murderbot his internal thoughts and meanderings are quite important and most importantly: entertaining! The inner monologues in Sanderson are rarely entertaining and mostly frustrating ( to me at least )

 

[Parmandur]

Based on what you post here, I would assume you have much more interesting thoughts than Shallan.

I'll take the compliment, but I LOVE Shallan, her parts are the best, particularly when the books really dig into her Dissociative Personality in a realistic way.

wait what? what is this about? I tried to google it but couldnt find anything

Sanderson loves using modela of other stories, particularly incongruent combinations. Mistborn is pretty clear, he was taking Ocean's 11 but making the gather Voldemort which is clear from just the book blurb, but another example is Rythem of War being basically epic fantasy

Spoiler: Spoiler

Die Hard

. With Way of Kings, the model he uses was The Mighty Ducks: Kaladin is Emilio Estevez, Bridge Four is the plucky ragtag group of rejects, and the bridge runs are the sports competitiona. The outline tracks very well if you map it our, and he has been pretty open about it.

This sounds really promising - I am excited for it! in 2030 if we're lucky

It may just work!

 

[Stalker0]

I'm actually more excited for a Mistborn movie than for the Stormlight TV show. Even while reading Mistborn Book 1, I kept thinking about how intensely cinematics the action scenes were. Everything Allomancy does, with increased strength, senses, emotion-affecting, and metal telekinesis, is easy to film with relatively little VFX needed.

I can respect that. While stormlight is the big ambitious super scaling epic, at the end of the day mistborn is likey sandersons best crafted work: it’s tight, intense, and every part thoroughly enjoyable.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Reporting says Brandon has immense creative control.

I'm a little worried about this.

Not because I don't think Sanderson is sane, relatively sensible, or organised or whatever, but for two specific reasons:

1) Sanderson has almost no experience in the industry and this is a huge role.

Really close to none - basically none - because the only thing he's ever done with film is be a "consulting producer" on the WoT TV show, which is a nothing-burger of a role. And this is an insane level of power. So even with the absolute best will in the world, unless Sanderson turns out to have "natural talent" for this, "good instincts" for this, which most people don't, he may well do more harm than good in practical terms. Part of the reason you don't usually give anyone this level of power is that even trying to do the right thing, they can cause an astonishing number of problems. This is James Gunn levels of power, but James Gunn has been making movies as his entire life-goal and main focus for over 30 years, with good results! As compared to having shown absolutely zero interest - he's never even written a script before as far as I can tell!

I do think Sanderson is temperate enough that he probably won't abuse approvals - but I do think he'll want to do his work what he sees as justice, which will likely mean astonishing budgets and timeframes to film these projects, particularly Stormlight. Also, the Stormlight novels show a serious failure of self-editing. It's unclear to be whether this is a choice he's making (which he could also not make) or he sees it as inherent to the nature of the project, but to call Stormlight bloated and full of "filler" would be to quite seriously understate matters. There are 300+ episode animes with less filler (and I do mean filler in the most pejorative sense here, pointless dull adventures and lore-dumps, not "nice to have" thoughtful character-building stuff like most Star Trek "filler" was). And I really wonder if, with such total control, he's going to be willing/able to make the sacrifices necessary to realistically bring a project like that to the screen, because they'll be significant - very significant. Entire characters and plotlines and locations would really need to go to avoid there being multiple hour-long episodes in a row where basically nothing happens. I also really worry if he has final edit approval specifically, because I am really skeptical he's going to instantly understand editing, and bad or sloppy or "No just keep it!" editing can absolutely drop a movie or show from like A to C very easily.

2) He's taking on a ton of work when he's already doing a ton of work.

I see "Oh well he'll cut down from 4 to 6 books!" and so on, but nah, that's not realistic, given the role he's apparently negotiated for, which is like, almost a super-showrunner. I think, that, being real, he's going to have to drop his book output by a whole hell of lot more than 1/3rd if this role is anything but an "on paper" one. He's obviously far more prolific and organised than virtually all other authors, but that's allegedly all him, no ghostwriters etc., so does even have any ability to delegate? Because he'll need to delegate incredibly hard to make a TV show.

Well, this is excellent news. Apple has actually been cutting back on greenlighting new shows, so they must have really liked this pitch. And given that their existing shows range from "pretty good" to "omg, this was amazing," there's a very good chance that this will be a really satisfying show.

Is it though? Is blowing hundreds of millions (and likely high hundreds of millions at that) on adapting Stormlight - which is kind of a nothing story with nothing meaningful or terribly human to say, at least in the 3000+ pages of books 1-3, a good use of money for Apple? Talk about sound and fury signifying nothing - it doesn't even have the courage of its own conviction, it's literally, literally too cowardly to say "actually enslaving people and putting them in horrific situations is purely evil and people who do it are evil", instead chickening out and going for "Well we should probably not really resist slavers and slavemasters, they're people too, you can't just kill them!" (counterpoint: YES YOU CAN. It is never not okay to kill slavers and slavemasters. That's like saying "Well death camp guards are people too!").

I think the answer is very definitely no, personally. Adapting a lot of Sanderson's smaller works would probably make a lot more sense, and would mean that Apple TV wasn't having to commit like, a very significant part of their entire overall budget to one project.

Mistborn (the original trilogy) is, despite being weird in several easily-fixable ways (mostly revolving about the main character and her boyfriend), and deeply and hilariously afraid of Kelsier (who is actually standing up for real convictions, which clearly scares the heck out of Sanderson), a much stronger story, and making it as a movie or series of movies makes sense.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Is it though? Is blowing hundreds of millions (and likely high hundreds of millions at that) on adapting Stormlight - which is kind of a nothing story with nothing meaningful or terribly human to say, at least in the 3000+ pages of books 1-3, a good use of money for Apple?

It's better than them putting that money toward developing their wearable AI pin.

I haven't read any of Sanderson's stuff -- I'm not currently in the market for big fat fantasy paperbacks -- but I have subscribed to Apple TV+ repeatedly and they're extremely discriminating in what they put out there and are saying they want to get more discriminating -- certainly more discriminating than Amazon, for instance.

If there are obvious issues with the novels, I assume the pitch addresses them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's better than them putting that money toward developing their wearable AI pin.

I really doubt that that's the choice being made, though, do you think it is? I think it's much more likely they're giving a certain amount to Apple TV, which can be negotiated a little, but not vastly.

I suspect it's more like $700m+ on several seasons of one huge, meaningless, loud TV show (well over a billion, maybe over two billion, if they make it all 14 years to 2040 when Sanderson believes the series will be complete*), which actually kind of showcases moral cowardice (in books 1-3 anyway) and listening to Jiminy Cricket even when Jiminy Cricket is basically someone who can excuse racism and slavery and regards monarchy which supports both as legitimate and in need of preservation (and not for mere practical reasons), vs. $700m on 10 to 30 potentially extremely good TV shows/seasons (some of which will inevitably suck, I admit, after all, Invasion exists and is Apple TV).

If there are obvious issues with the novels, I assume the pitch addresses them.

I just don't know why one would make that assumption. The Stormlight novels exist in the form they do seemingly entirely because Sanderson will not let the gigatons of filler and nonsense they contain be edited down, and he has all of the leverage with his publisher, because they sell, even if I suspect the audience gets smaller every time (and probably will do until he gets close to the end).

The fact that he's getting this "James Gunn"-style deal despite not even being a neophyte also suggests he has all the leverage with Apple TV. So my assumption would be that those issues may well not be addressed. Like, they might, but I'd be surprised. I'm not sure Sanderson fully processes that they are problems - he's quite self-aware and self-critical in many ways, but I've never seen him talk about 300+ page digressions full of waffle where nothing happens as one of his weaknesses (and to be fair, prior to Stormlight, it wasn't one of his weaknesses). Rather it's stuff like his profound inability to write romance, especially like, sexy romance that he recognises as his own flaws - stuff which could easily be fixed by other writers on the show. But if the showrunner decides 20-30 minutes of every hourlong for a season is going to be devoted to nothing-which-matters-happens waffling (not even lore-dumping! It's somehow less than that!), that isn't something other writers can salvage.

* = This is where the same prankster god responsible for the rest of this timeline pulls one of his "funny jokes" and somehow GRRM is alive and finishes WoW and maybe even ADoS in the 2030s, but Sanderson drops dead and people start wondering if they can ask 85+ y/o GRRM to finish Stormlight!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I really doubt that that's the choice being made, though, do you think it is?

No, but I cling to whatever hope there is that companies will stop funding wearable AI listening devices and insisting we should be excited to pay $300 to join their corporate surveillance state.

Other than Sanderson, who's the best candidate to finish A Song of Ice & Fire (ignoring that GRRM is saying he doesn't want anyone else to do so)?