I think your projecting your own criticsm as it is general accepted fact and thus apple is doing a bad business decision.
No, I'm not, because it's not saying it's "definitely a bad business decision".
That is literally you projecting on to my comment lol.
As a business decision, in the sense of getting eyes of Apple TV, it may be a good decision. Or not. We just don't know. What I'm suggesting is that it will potentially change Apple TV's USP, which is a fairly diverse selection of extremely high-quality TV. That USP is already damaged by them deciding to fund fewer new shows, but if they're getting a funding squeeze and what is quite likely to be the most expensive TV show ever made (Stormlight), that's going to make it more extreme. If they don't make Stormlight and instead just use some of his other IPs, I think they'll be a lot better off (and more able to make other shows). I suspect there's some lesser-known parts of his output which would make much better movies and TV shows than Stormlight.
So I am pretty sure this is not some sort of nonsense business decision like you try to make it to be.
I'm saying it's a huge risk, which is very different from a "crazy decision". They're basically counting on this being a "reverse Duffer brothers" situation
if Sanderson actually acts as showrunner. The Duffer brothers (Stranger Things) were always mediocre to outright bad writers with a few good idea, but they were also always good directors, and they knew they were - they admitted that they only came up with Stranger Things so they could get to direct - they've never been interested in writing and I don't think they see themselves as very good at it.
What Apple seem to be hoping is that because Sanderson is a meticulous writer and planner (which they Duffer brothers are not), him acting as showrunner in a visual medium rather than a written one, won't be a problem. And it might not, if he can learn to delegate, if he can learn to edit, if he's willing to plan in the right.
Lot of ifs, though. I mean, Sanderson might not even want to be a showrunner, even though they've given him all the power to be.
But Sanderson claimed, and I believe him, that he got the red carpet treatment and had meetings with all big companies.
The exact same thing happened with, for example, GoT's showrunners. So I don't think that indicates something is a good idea. Netflix throwing $300m at them and only getting the overlooked and frankly unimportant 3 Body Problem show out of them isn't a good for Netflix. Confederate would have been an absolute suicide mission for everyone involved and it came perilously close to starting production (at which point that train would probably not have stopped until it got broadcast to ruinously bad ratings and massive criticism of everyone involved).
Of course that doesn't mean a guaranteed success too, but its not a crazy idea.
It is a
little bit crazy to give someone untested that much power, actually, yes.
But that's just how streaming execs are - they throw insane amounts of money at the new hotness and hope it works out. Usually it doesn't - but to be fair, the "doesn't work out" usually means a show doesn't get made, so not much of the money is actually spent, it's just temporarily committed. So if this doesn't work out I think the most likely outcome is just there is no Stormlight show, because it doesn't line up as being practical.
Actually an extremely delicate operation, considering how much of the books are actually surprisingly load bearing. I can sympathize with people bouncing off of it, and I think it goes to criticism of a certain artficiality in Sanderson's writing...but one of the cool things about the series is how seemingly random details or extraneous scenes become extremely important later.
I'm sure it's true that it's "delicate", but that's a Sanderson problem for Sanderson to solve, one he made for himself, not a problem for people saying it needs to be done. Because it needs to be done if they're going to adapt Stormlight as a live-action TV show with say, 6-12 episodes a season. It needs to be done massively in fact for that format. It's not going to be a few cuts, it's going to be entire characters and plotlines.
Now, I think Sanderson is a more skilled writer in terms of being able to do that and still have a story than most, and less precious in some ways than other writers, but the whole of Stormlight exists as it does because of
not doing that, of letting writing just sprawl indolently. I mean we'll only be able to say conclusively in 2040, but I strongly suspect for every "This boring and pointless-seeming scene sets up important future plot points!" there several boring and pointless scenes which are merely boring and pointless (at best being cosmere lore tease stuff, but often not even that). Also you can get away with wasting 1/5th of a 1200 page book on basically low-key advertising for your other books/cosmere lore waffle in a book which is only going to be read by fairly serious fans because it's a 1200 page doorstopper, but you cannot get away with that in a TV series, which is going to mostly be watched by people who aren't "fans", let alone serious ones.
I will say adding other writers into the mix, if Sanderson is capable of working well with them (an as-yet untested theory, note, not all writers are) could potentially punch up some of the boring and pointless-seeming scenes to at least not be boring.
So, let us imagine that around two million Sanderson fans buy Mistborn movie tickets, and bring three friends each. That is 8 million tickets! Which at $11.50 comes to $92 million at the box office. Which for a Mistborn budget movie, would be a failure akin to Honor Among Thieves, a movie liked by critics and fans that also sold about 8 million tickets and is considered a failure. Though Honor Among Thieves did lead to a spike of D&D tabletop activity and sales, so it was an effective toy commercial: and Apple could have a well-regarded dud of a movie that leads to Sanderson's fan base growing, so the benefit to Sanderson is pretty clear...but time will show if it is Honor Among Thieves or Avafad for Apple.
And Mistborn is the much smaller risk. We'd probably be looking at $150m budget (give or take), I would guess, so it's kind of a limited loss even if it doesn't do great.
Plus, it would basically be an action/superhero movie with a somewhat unique setting, so if you cast some attractive and capable young actress* as Vin, get in some handsome, audience-drawing aging Hollywood superstar as Kelsier (it's a limited role), you're off to a flying start. I think a lot will rest on advertising and how strong the visual design is for Luthadel, like how trailers strike people unfamiliar with the books. If it looks like a fun and exciting movie set in a cool place, it'll probably do well. If it looks like a totally generic superhero movie set in a generic fantasy city, it'll probably be a total car crash.
* = This is another place they could really screw up, by casting someone as Vin on name recognition, rather than because they're good, which I guarantee will backfire. Like, for god's sake do not cast Millie Bobbie Brown, she's only got worse at acting as she's got older, and isn't convincing in action scenes, which is a real one-two punch. Whereas maybe do cast Cailee Spaeny who undeniably can act (c.f. the recent documentary-of-the-future Civil War) and is convincing in action scenes (c.f. Alien Romulus).
