The Cosmere universe is coming to Apple TV in both movie and series form. The Brandon Sanderson faithful are thrilled, but we’re a long way away from actually seeing the fantasy adaptations come to life. That doesn’t mean the author—who is working very, very closely with the streamer—hasn’t started teasing what fans might be able to expect, eventually.
Chatting on his Intentionally Blank podcast in the plainly titled “Mistborn Movie Episode” (hat tip to Polygon), Sanderson joked about fan casting—including the idea that noted fantasy lover Henry Cavill should just play all the characters.
But on a more serious note, Sanderson is well aware that there’s an extreme amount of interest in the Mistborn movie. The project is still in the very early stages (as is, presumably, the adjacent Stormlight Archive series). As such, “There’s not a lot of details yet,” he said.
Also, he has an obligation to his collaborators at Apple TV, he said. “My goal is to always have them be comfortable with the amount I’m sharing, rather than ‘Brandon being the wild card’ out there … we decide together when to release news, when to share things,” he explained. “They are giving me unprecedented levels of control and freedom, but that is a trusted position that I don’t want to violate.”
In other words, Intentionally Blank won’t be the go-to place for any major updates, though Sanderson said he would likely be responding to major updates on the podcast along the way after they’re shared through official channels.
However, the author did talk a bit about his approach to adapting Mistborn for the screen, specifically the inspirations he’s tapping into as the process gets underway. After cautioning any impatient listeners that “the movie-making process is slow,” Sanderson said he’s aiming to use the “James Gunn” model: “fantastic script, no reshoots.”
He continued. “Reshoots are really expensive, and they can mess up the continuity on your film and things like that. Because he’s a writer-director, he can be like, ‘Here’s our script.’ Everyone gets on board with it. They make that movie. If you go read the Superman script—I’ve been reading a lot of scripts lately just to beef up in preparation—it’s really close to the filmed version.”
He also cited the crunched timeline for the scripting of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies: “We’re going to try to avoid that … I don’t think I can do better than Peter Jackson, but I can learn from Peter Jackson, and hopefully that’ll help us.” In this case, “us” means Sanderson and his yet-to-be-named collaborators; at this stage, he thinks the script will be authored by “me, maybe the director, depending on who we get, and probably one other screenwriter.”
Sanderson also talked about why he settled on Apple TV and described his role moving forward—using another example from the comic-book movie realm. “My job by that contract is to be [a] spearhead, to be that person, to be the Kevin Feige or whatever to shepherd the Cosmere. So that’s a little intimidating.”
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