Why The Cosmere Coming To TV And Movies Is Such a Big Deal
Get ready for the Sandersonverse — the Cosmere.
High fantasy has never gone out of style. But, arguably, there are very few fantasy book series that actually break into the mainstream and truly embody the kind of high fantasy that people who love The Lord of the Rings truly crave. Outside of the romantasy boom of the past several years, there’s a relatively short list of massively popular fantasy authors who have huge followings for the past two decades. Basically, after George R. R. Martin, you’ve got Robert Jordan, and then perhaps the most prolific epic fantasist of our time: Brandon Sanderson.
Perhaps best known for taking over The Wheel of Time, Sanderson made his electric debut 21 years ago with Elantris. Now, more than two decades later, Sanderson’s complex fantasy books, including the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, are finally getting adapted for film and TV.
As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, Sanderson’s Mistborn books will be adapted into a series of films, while The Stormlight Archive will become a TV series. The movie series and TV shows will be produced by Apple, in an “unprecedented deal,” which will adapt the various books that make up the shared universe of the Cosmere.
Brandon Sanderson in 2011.
What is the Cosmere, you ask? Well, it’s a shared universe that contains various worlds, which exist throughout many of Sanderson’s books. (To be clear, when Sanderson took over for Robert Jordan for The Wheel of Time series, he did not connect The Wheel of Time to the Cosmere.)
As Sanderson himself puts it: “All of my Cosmere books share a single creation myth, a single cosmology, that gives [an] underlying theorem of magic for all these connected worlds.”
Like many great fantasy book series, the Cosmere books deal with ancient magic that is spread throughout various worlds. This magic from before the dawn of time came from a being named “Adonalsium,” whose powers were split into (at least) 16 various shards, and taken by people to various different places.
LotR fans can already see where this is going: Many of the books deal with how those diverse and disparate types of magic manifest in different places. As Sanderson says in his own description on his website: “The theorem [that unifies the Cosmere] is not simple–I can’t really encapsulate it in one sentence–but you can map out how the magic all fits together in the Cosmere using this kind of super theorem.”
In short, the Cosmere, which includes Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive (among other titles), is already one of the most popular fantasy epics of our time. The question is, will it now jump into the mainstream, as Game of Thrones did back in 2011, thanks to HBO?
With the demise of The Wheel of Time on Prime and the mixed reception of Rings of Power, the various GoT spinoffs on HBO Max have something of a monopoly on high fantasy right now. Apple TV has an incredible track record with amazing science fiction shows, including ones with huge scopes like Foundation and For All Mankind. So, if you were gambling on whether or not the Cosmere projects were going to succeed, it would probably be a very good bet towards a big yes.
