Brandon Sanderson recently announced his deal with Apple TV.
The company will adapt Sanderson’s Cosmere universe, which makes sense. The author has spent several years trying to get an adaptation off the ground. One notable obstacle was the money.
Sanderson argued that it would take an enormous budget, the kind most TV shows could only dream of, to accurately recreate the Cosmere Universe. Apple TV is worth an eye-watering $3 million.
Boasting 45 million subscribers, the company does not even rank among the 10 most popular streaming services worldwide. Compared to Netflix (325 million subscribers), Amazon Prime (200 million subscribers), and Disney+ (131 million subscribers), Apple is barely competing.
And yet, they continue to pour enormous sums into For All Mankind, Foundation, Silo, and the like. Their streaming service records losses of more than $1 billion annually, but Apple seems largely unconcerned, because it has more money than any company could spend in one lifetime.
So, of course, they can afford to faithfully recreate the Cosmere Universe in a live-action environment. Does that mean we should celebrate Sanderson’s announcement without restraint? I’m not sure.
The Apple TV deal gives Sanderson complete creative control over the upcoming Cosmere adaptations, which sounds like a good thing. How many book adaptations have failed because Hollywood trusted a director or screenwriter who knew next to nothing about the source material?
How many terrible adaptations could have been saved if clueless directors and screenwriters had simply consulted the original author? Isn’t Sanderson’s deal the best possible outcome?
Aren’t we guaranteed an adaptation that accurately reproduces the stories so many readers love? Maybe. Television and books are not the same. Writing in one medium does not make you an expert at the other.
The conventional screenwriter has twelve hours to tell their story. Modern Cosmere novels, on the other hand, are over a thousand pages long, which is more than enough space to explore a story from every conceivable angle.
This is where screenwriters shine. They understand the language of television. They know how to condense a 1000-page Game of Thrones novel into eight episodes. They can even fit an entire book into a two- hour film.
This is where authors struggle. First, they don’t realize that concepts that work in a book don’t always translate successfully to the big or small screen. Secondly, some are too precious about their source material.
They are so concerned with bringing every tiny aspect of their novel to the big screen to satisfy loyal readers that they forget to tell a compelling visual story. They don’t realize that most of the people watching their movie or TV show will never read the source material.
Does this mean Sanderson is destined to fail? Maybe. We have seen examples of authors whose involvement in an adaptation ruined the final product. Sam Taylor-Johnson (director) abandoned the 50 Shades of Grey series after the first film because working with E.L. James (the original author) was more than she could handle.
Now, we can’t really say that 50 Shades of Grey was bad because James played a significant role in the adaptation. However, we can safely say that WB’s Fantastic Beasts series would have been so much better if J.K. Rowling had not insisted on writing the scripts.
The movies had solid concepts, but the execution was lacklustre. Then again, did you know that William Peter Blatty, who wrote the screenplay for The Exorcist, is also responsible for the novel the 1973 film is adapted from?
What about Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote a nonfiction book (Wiseguy) in 1985 and the gangster film (Goodfellas) it eventually became? There is also Jurassic Park, which began its life as a 1990 Science Fiction novel.
Micheal Crichton wrote both the novel and the Steven Spielberg-directed film. Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being A Wallflower) and Mario Puzo (The Godfather) have similar stories. So, Sanderson’s Apple deal has as much chance of succeeding as it does failing. At this point, we can only cross our fingers and hope for the best.
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