We are living (or maybe just lived) through the age of the great fantasy book TV adaptation. It all started with Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books. That franchise is still going pretty strong, with another new show on the way. But there was also The Witcher, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and The Wheel of Time (a show I’m still upset got canceled). It’s been high time for fantasy fans over the past decade.
But somehow, one of the most popular modern fantasy authors has yet to have anything adapted for the screen, big or small: Brandon Sanderson. It is long past time that changed, and I know five good places to start.
The Stormlight Archive
Brandon Sanderson’s ongoing magnum opus
The Stormlight Archive is Brandon Sanderson’s big epic tent-pole series, a sprawling story set on the storm-racked world of Roshar. Told from the perspective of multiple characters, The Stormlight Archive is heralded for its scale and the depth of its mythology. You’ll learn about the Knights Radiant, magical warriors divided into different orders; about the spren, spirits that can bond with humans; and about the Shards, godlike entities that can be benevolent or malevolent. Sanderson wraps it all up into an ongoing epic with five books to its name so far, and more on the way.
For a lot of Brandon Sanderson’s fans, an adaptation of The Stormlight Archive is the end goal, but it might be a bit too ambitious to start with. If Hollywood wants to adapt this guy’s books for the screen, and it should, it might do well to start a little smaller…
Mistborn
Brandon Sanderson’s OTHER ongoing magnum opus
Mistborn is Sanderson’s other big tent-pole series, albeit a bit smaller in scale than The Stormlight Archive. Sanderson has written a couple of different book series under the Mistborn banner, but the original trilogy remains the best option for adaptation: it’s about a fantasy world ruled over by a seemingly immortal tyrant known as the Lord Ruler. Our story begins when a ragtag group of rebels band together to take him down once and for all, and it gets weirder and wilder from there.
Mistborn is a big story, but not so big that the production would run the risk of buckling under its own weight. As one of Sanderson’s most popular series, I think it would be a great place for Hollywood to start once they finally wake up and realize what a goldmine adapting Sanderson’s books would be.
Elantris
Sanderson’s first book is still one of his best
Elantris is Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel, and while not as popular as Mistborn or The Stormlight Archive, it may provide Hollywood with an even easier place to start. It’s about a prince named Raoden who is banished to the cursed city of Elantris, which is full of immortal people who are forever in pain since the wounds they take never heal or stop hurting. That’s the kind of high-concept idea that Sanderson is known for; he’s great at inventing hooks like that, and has been very creative in coming up with lots of them throughout his career.
Anyway, Raoden becomes a leader who organizes the Elantrians and tries to get them to focus on work, which helps them from going insane over their constant pain. Meanwhile, Raoden’s would-be wife, Princess Sarene, is back in his home country of Arelon, trying to navigate court politics in time to stop an uprising. Elantris is a tightly written book with enough going on to make for a solid miniseries.
The Emperor’s Soul
Second time’s the charm
The Emperor’s Soul is technically set in the same world as Elantris, albeit in another part of it, so there aren’t any meaningful connections, and the story can stand on its own. It’s about a thief named Shai, who is also adept at the art of magical forgery. This makes her valuable to the leaders of the Rose Empire, who arrest her but agree to let her go if she can forge a new soul for their emperor, who has been left brain-dead after an assassination attempt.
So we have another clever, magical conceit. This time, the drama is more internal, as Shai looks into the emperor’s past and decides what kind of soul she should forge to make sure the emperor is set on the right path.
I picked this novella because it’s one of the few Brandon Sanderson stories that was actually being adapted for the screen at one time, although that attempt fell through. If there’s a foundation already built, maybe it’ll be easier to get a new adaptation off the ground.
Skyward
A touch of sci-fi
Skyward is more sci-fi than fantasy, but I’m including it because it’s a young adult series, which means it has a ready-made market; maybe that will get someone at a big studio to pay attention. There are four books total in this series, so it already has a ready-made beginning, middle, and end.
Skyward is about a 17-year-old named Spensa who dreams of becoming a pilot and fighting back against the Krell, a mysterious alien species that has kept her and her fellow humans pinned down on the planet of Detritus all their lives. There’s an Ender’s Game-esque quality to the story as Spensa and the other young recruits test themselves in battle, with Spensa learning towards the end of the first book that she has a special power that could make all the difference in this long-running conflict.
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Any day now…
With fantasy an ever-popular genre and Brandon Sanderson’s star continuing to rise, I have to believe that it’s only a matter of time before someone realizes how much opportunity there is here and gets to work adapting one or more of his books for TV. If things go well, maybe we’ll be back here in a couple of years talking about five more Sanderson books that need adapting.
And if, for some reason, Hollywood continues to insist on overlooking Sanderson’s work, there are a lot of other great fantasy books that could use adaptations instead.
