In late January, Apple officially acquired the rights to makes movies and TV shows based on the works of author Brandon Sanderson, a hugely successful fantasy writer whose books have been begging to be adapted for many years. As Sanderson himself explains in the video message below, he’s talked with people in Hollywood before about bringing his novels to the screen, but for one reason or another it never worked out. “This feels really different this time. I think this one is really going to happen,” he says.
It’s no coincidence that it finally feels different with Apple, which over the past several years has built itself into exactly the kind of place that will adapt Sanderson’s work well.
What exactly is Apple adapting?
They’re starting with Brandon Sanderson’s two best-known series
Sanderson is known as an extremely prolific author, writing dozens of books and short stories over the course of his career, often in very quick succession. He’s kind of the opposite of A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, who’s been working on his next novel, The Winds of Winter, for 15 years and counting.
It’s unknown how many of Sanderson’s works Apple may adapt by the time this partnership comes to an end, but they’re starting with two of the biggest: Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive. Mistborn is set on a world ruled over by a seemingly immortal tyrant known as the Lord Ruler. Our heroes, who have not been cast yet, vow to take him down. Sanderson has written multiple Mistborn series, each one set in a different age of the world, but it’s likely Apple will start by adapting the original trilogy. Meanwhile The Stormlight Archive is a sprawling story set on a world racked by powerful storms. The fifth book in the series, Wind and Truth, came out in 2024, and Sanderson has more planned.
Apple will adapt Mistborn as a series of movies and The Stormlight Archive as a TV show, which are the right calls. Mistborn is more compact and easier to fit into a traditional movie trilogy, while The Stormlight Archive is more expansive and will require more room to spread out.
Apple has become a genre powerhouse
Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive will fit right in
Since it started making movies and TV shows in 2019, Apple has displayed a deep love for sci-fi and fantasy. You’ll find an embarrassment of great sci-fi series on Apple TV+, including For All Mankind, Severance, Pluibus, Silo, Dark Matter, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Invasion, See, and Murderbot. Other studios may have made more sci-fi/fantasy shows over the course of their existences, but Apple Studios has only been around for a few years and they’re already built up an amazing library. It’s clear that the people in charge have a soft spot for the genre.
Not only that, but Apple has shown itself willing to keep making these kinds of shows year after year even if they’re not ratings juggernauts. For All Mankind, about an alternate history of Earth where the United States and the Soviet Union never stopped running the space race, has never blown up in the way that Severance or Pluribus did, but it’s one of the best sci-fi shows on TV, and it will soon air its fifth season. Foundation, Apple’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s beloved sci-fi series, has similarly never been a ratings smash, but Apple is currently working on a fourth season.
Sanderson said that he met with several studios during a recent trip to Hollywood, but that Apple felt like a “partner” he could trust. I have to imagine that their willingness to commit to huge genre series was part of that calculus. Netflix is famous for canceling shows after only a couple of seasons if they aren’t hugely successful, with The OA, 1899, and Warrior Nun being a few notable examples. Meanwhile, HBO is rethinking their strategy and making shows that are smaller in scale, like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and The Pitt.
But A Stormlight Archive show can’t be small in scale; it needs to be huge. A show based on The Stormlight Archive won’t be finished in a year, or two years, or five years. It will be a huge commitment, and Apple has shown itself to be a studio willing to make it.
Apple will respect Brandon Sanderson’s input
The author will maintain control over the story
Sanderson also said that he likes how Apple has been “very careful” with rolling out “specific films.” Apple has made a good variety of movies, from big smashes like F1 to sleeper hits like Killers of the Flower Moon to prestigious under-the-radar films like CODA, which won Best Picture at the Oscars in 2022. They do indeed seem like the right studio to make Mistborn movies. As with their TV shows, they’re willing to spend resources making good movies that may or may not break out in a big way, although given how much pent-up demand there is for adaptations of Brandon Sanderson’s work, I think they could well have a hit here.
Moreover, Sanderson has said that Apple was willing to give him a lot of control. He’s working on the Mistborn screenplay as we speak, and will serve as a co-showrunner on The Stormlight Archive show. It’s easy to draw a comparison between this and the situation at HBO, which has been adapting the works of George R.R. Martin for years, starting with Game of Thrones and moving onto spinoff shows like House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The second season of House of the Dragon strayed so far from Martin’s books (and suffered greatly in quality as a result) that the author himself openly complained about it, recently saying his relationship with showrunner Ryan Condal was “abysmal.”
It’s an embarrassing public spat that could have been avoided had HBO committed to adapting Martin’s work faithfully. Apple doesn’t seem like it will make that mistake.
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The waiting begins
As Sanderson himself says, we probably won’t see the fruits of this partnership for a while: “We still aren’t very far along. These aren’t coming out next year.” But it was the right move to wait for the right partner. Better Mistborn and Stormlight adaptations take a long time to get off the ground than for Sanderson to sell the rights to the first studio that shows interest only for them to turn out a sub-standard product. Fans will be waiting a while longer, but there’s a very high chance the wait will be worth it.
