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Apple TV is staking a claim to the entertainment world’s next big fantasy adaptation: Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe. (Sometimes, dreams do come true!) The streamer has acquired the rights to Sanderson’s Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive books, two key pillars of his sprawling fictional fantasy universe, as well as some of the most popular genre titles released in recent years.
The megapopular (and wildly prolific) author has sold over 50 million books and, in the process, has built a fandom so dedicated that he managed to raise over $41 million on Kickstarter to launch four books he wrote in secret. (All while still working on his other active series! George R.R. Martin, take notes!) Sanderson has long been resistant to the idea of studios or streamers adapting his works, but clearly, Apple TV has won him over.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Apple TV is planning to turn the Mistborn series into feature films and the Stormlight Archive books into a television series. But what’s perhaps most exciting for fans is how much control Sanderson will reportedly have over the onscreen adaptations of his fictional universe. According to the THR report, the Apple TV deal “gives the author rarefied control over the screen translations, according to sources. Sanderson will be the architect of the universe, will write, produce, and consult, and have approvals.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is certainly one of the more author-friendly adaptation deals in recent memory, and gives Sanderson more ability to direct the shape of his onscreen franchise than most. (Even Martin, whose Game of Thrones books have spawned three successful HBO TV series at this point and pretty much made him a household name, has openly feuded with some of the folks in charge of his shows.)
Sanderson’s interconnected Cosmere universe currently spans more than 20 books, all united by a single creation myth (the murder of a cosmic whose power is subsequently broken into sixteen shards and spread throughout many worlds). But despite its shared foundation, the individual works within this universe are quite varied in terms of story and tone. The first Mistborn trilogy, which kicks off with The Final Empire, is essentially a heist story about a gang of thieves who want to rob an immortal emperor. Stormlight Archive boasts a much more complicated high-fantasy setting, complete with magical superstorms, Knights Radiant, and legendary monsters called Voidbringers. (You probably couldn’t turn Stormlight into a movie, is what I’m saying, and it’s a relief that Apple seems to understand that already.)
There’s no timeline set yet for when we might see any of these projects on our screens, and it will likely take years for them to be done properly. But if you’ve somehow missed out on Sanderson’s works up until this point? Now’s almost certainly the time to dive in.
The post Brandon Sanderson to Have “Unprecedented” Control Over Apple TV Cosmere Adaptations appeared first on Den of Geek.
