The wild success of Game of Thrones gave Hollywood an endless appetite for epic fantasy. But most attempts to replicate HBO’s success at adapting George R.R. Martin’s books have failed. Shadow & Bone, Netflix’s adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse, was canceled after two seasons. Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time was scrapped after three, well before it reached the material Sanderson wrote to finish Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic after the author’s death. Netflix’s The Witcher will get its fifth and final season, but its viewership suffered a massive decline between season 3 and season 4, when Liam Hemsworth took over the role of Geralt of Rivia from Henry Cavill. Speaking to Polygon, Sanderson cited the issues with all three series when explaining his concerns over seeing his work adapted.

These shows demonstrate that having the rights to a bestselling fantasy series and a big production budget isn’t a sufficient recipe for success. Sanderson will have final approval over the adaptations and significant control as both a writer and producer, which should ensure a high level of fidelity to his vision, but any adaptations will need an audience far larger than even his devoted fanbase to justify their price tag.

Image: Tor Books

The Final Empire, Sanderson’s first Mistborn book, is one of his best novels, and at first glance, it seems like a great place to start adapting his work. Set in a dystopian fantasy world filled with fog and ash, it follows Vin, an abused urchin who discovers she has immense magical power. The charming thief Kelsier recruits Vin to join a crew trying to bring down the near-omnipotent tyrant called the Lord Ruler, a scheme that includes both racing across rooftops to assassinate people and infiltrating noble balls. The mix of action and intrigue promises a great film.

The problems really come in the sequels. (Warning: broad spoiler ahead.) Kelsier is killed in The Final Empire, and The Well of Ascension is a pretty relentless downer, following his friends and followers as they struggle with the burdens of leadership and try to build a better society while fighting entrenched interests. The Hero of Ages, the third book in the trilogy, is where Sanderson begins to demonstrate the scope of his ambition with the Cosmere. It’s extremely heavy on mythology, focused on the conflict between Ruin and Preservation, two of 16 gods representing fundamental forces in Sanderson’s connected universe. Sanderson fans might stay committed, but I anticipate these shifts in tone and scope will lose a lot of viewers hooked by The Final Empire.

It’s hard to think of a harder project to adapt than the Stormlight Archive, which would require a truly absurd budget to bring its enormous monsters, flying armies, and oceans of beads to life. Sanderson is one of the industry’s most prolific writers, but he’s decided to take a break from the series after publishing Wind and Truth in 2024. He doesn’t plan to pick it up again until 2030, and when he does, 10 years will have passed for the characters. The plan is then to write five more books. While I have faith that Sanderson will finish what he started, the size of this project means that a Stormlight Archive adaptation could still face a Game of Thrones problem by outpacing the source material.

Then there’s the fact that the Stormlight Archive is full of characters and plots tied to Sanderson’s other series. The further into the series you get, the more important the interconnected nature of the Cosmere becomes. Much like you can watch an Avengers movie without having seen all of the standalone Marvel Cinematic Universe films, it’s not strictly necessary to have read Sanderson’s other Cosmere novels to keep up, but it definitely helps.

Tie-ins to the Mistborn trilogy play a significant role in the fourth Stormlight Archive book, Rhythm of War, so you’d certainly want to have a Mistborn adaptation made before getting to this point in a Stormlight Archive TV series. But in his third Stormlight Archive book, Oathbringer, Sanderson starts introducing characters from his second novel, Warbreaker. Nightblood, the sentient sword from Warbreaker, is probably the most important crossover character in the Stormlight Archive.

That means you’d also want a Warbreaker adaptation before getting to the third season of a Stormlight Archive show. I’d argue that Warbreaker would actually be the best place for the Cosmere adaptations to start, and the best way to introduce new audiences to Sanderson. It’s a tight but twisty standalone novel filled with mystery, romance, action, and intrigue. It has the sort of highly structured fantasy system Sanderson is known for, and introduces key concepts he uses throughout his works without getting as cosmic as the Stormlight Archive or the later Mistborn books.

Adaptation deals often fall through, so I’ll be happy to see any of Sanderson’s work make it to the screen, especially given how actively the author will be involved in shepherding these planned projects. But I worry about how viewers who’ve never read Sanderson’s work will respond to his ambitions and the dramatic shifts in tone and scale found throughout the books specifically chosen as starting points. A standalone story might be a better way to win over new fans rather than asking audiences to sign on for a massive connected universe from the start.