High fantasy has never fallen out of fashion. But it’s fair to say that very few fantasy book series manage to cross into the mainstream and truly capture what fans of are really looking for. Beyond the romantasy surge of the last few years, there’s a fairly short list of ultra-popular fantasy authors with massive followings over the past 20 years. Essentially, after Robert Jordan, the next big name is perhaps the most productive epic fantasist of our era: Brandon Sanderson.
Sanderson is maybe most famous for taking over The Wheel of Time, and he burst onto the scene 21 years ago with. Now, over two decades later, his intricate fantasy works – like the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive – are finally being turned into movies and TV shows.
According to , the Mistborn books will be made into a film series, and The Stormlight Archive will become a TV show. Apple is producing both the movies and the TV series as part of an “unprecedented deal” that will adapt the different books forming the shared Cosmere universe.
Wondering what the Cosmere is? It’s that includes multiple worlds featured in many of Sanderson’s books. (Just to clarify: when Sanderson took over The Wheel of Time from Robert Jordan, he didn’t link that series to the Cosmere.)
Sanderson explains: “All my Cosmere books share one creation story, one cosmology, that provides a foundational magic system for all these interconnected worlds.”
Similar to many classic fantasy series, the Cosmere books revolve around ancient magic scattered across multiple worlds. This primeval magic comes from a being called “Adonalsium,” whose powers were divided into at least 16 different shards, each taken by individuals to various locations.
LotR fans can probably guess the direction: Many of the books explore how those varied and distinct types of magic show up in different settings. As Sanderson writes on his website: “The unifying theorem of the Cosmere isn’t simple—I can’t sum it up in one line—but you can trace how all the magic connects in the Cosmere using this overarching framework.”
To put it simply, the Cosmere – which includes Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive (plus other books) – is already one of the most beloved fantasy epics of our age. The big question is: Will it now hit the mainstream like Game of Thrones did in 2011 with HBO’s adaptation?
With the end of on Prime and the divided reactions to , HBO Max’s various GoT spinoffs currently dominate high fantasy. Apple TV has a stellar history with top-notch sci-fi shows, including large-scale productions like Foundation and . So if you were betting on whether the Cosmere projects will work out, the odds are definitely in favor of a big success.