Cosmere Adaptation Announcement

[RedBlue]

9 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

If something like Eyes Wide Shut managed to be commercially successful, I don't see why a Warbreaker film can't also be viable. For any adaptation, the vast majority of viewers will not be fans, unless if it's a flop, so I don't think that alienating the LDS part of Fandom will that big of a deal.

It’s more that the other parts of the story (Vienna and Lightsong) are very PG-13 action fantasy affairs. If people go to see an R-rated movie and a large portion of the runtime feels like a PG-13 film, they will likely be disappointed. Maybe there’s a good way to market such a film so that people see the movie they came to see, but I don’t know what that would look like.

[Schizoposting]

8 minutes ago, RedBlue said:

It’s more that the other parts of the story (Vienna and Lightsong) are very PG-13 action fantasy affairs. If people go to see an R-rated movie and a large portion of the runtime feels like a PG-13 film, they will likely be disappointed. Maybe there’s a good way to market such a film so that people see the movie they came to see, but I don’t know what that would look like.

I feel like any film adaptation would probably have cut down on the multiple POV's to make it work; otherwise, it will feel too unfocused. So, the film will probably lean into one side over the other. Honestly, I think that it would work better as a mini-series, than as a standalone film.

As for the marketing, presumably the film would be made after Mistborn, and Stornlight, so they could lean in the shared universe side of things.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

2 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I don't think that alienating the LDS part of Fandom will that big of a deal.

Oh.  I suppose that answers my question, then.

Am I allowed to be unhappy about this?

Edited February 1 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

2 hours ago, RedBlue said:

I disagree that movies in general can’t tell this kind of story — there are excellent R-rated movies that deal with disturbing sexual themes. Perfect Blue is one of my favourites. An R-rated Warbreaker would certainly be viable from an artistic standpoint.

But I don’t know that an R-rated Warbreaker is commercially viable. Clearly, it would alienate a huge part of Sanderson’s built-in fanbase, and I don’t know how you would market it to the general R-rated moviegoing public.

Honestly, it might end up being like The Matrix. R, but not necessarily needing to be.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Oh.  I suppose that answers my question, then.

Am I allowed to be unhappy about this?

I mean if you want to be.

Would he do it? I don't think so. If he does I'll be upset along with you.

[Schizoposting]

Apparently, Apple TV has only acquired the rights to Mistborn and Stormlight, not the entire Cosmere (I imagine that this would change if they're successfully adapted), so this discussion regarding Warbreaker is a moot point. I think talking about anything other than the upcoming Mistborn film is putting the cart before the horse, because the existence of any other adaptations will depend on its success or failure.

[Nesh he/him]

14 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

Apparently, Apple TV has only acquired the rights to Mistborn and Stormlight, not the entire Cosmere (I imagine that this would change if they're successfully adapted), so this discussion regarding Warbreaker is a moot point. I think talking about anything other than the upcoming Mistborn film is putting the cart before the horse, because the existence of any other adaptations will depend on its success or failure.

Well, that's somewhat disappointing, I wish the articles got it right the first time.

[Schizoposting]

2 minutes ago, Nesh said:

Well, that's somewhat disappointing, I wish the articles got it right the first time.

I don't think it really matters, to be honest; if Mistborn is a success, then Apple will almost certainly be willing to make other adaptations.

[Nesh he/him]

1 minute ago, Schizoposting said:

I don't think it really matters, to be honest; if Mistborn is a success, then Apple will almost certainly be willing to make other adaptations.

Well, yes, I just meant the deal isn't as big as we initially thought, and I wish the reporters had made sure they had the correct facts is all.

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

Just now, Nesh said:

Well, yes, I just meant the deal isn't as big as we initially thought, and I wish the reporters had made sure they had the correct facts is all.

It is still far bigger than any Harry Potter or LotR deal, we are just disapointed because the big corporation didn't want to commit to a HUGE franchise with a huge catalogue of books with no direct confirmation on whether or not they will make any money off of it.

And while I agree the reporters should have checked their facts better, they are human, and they at least had the decency to tell us about it.

While I am a little disapointed, I don't think it changes much.

We have 2 scenarios, scenario 1:

Mistborn is a hit.

In this scenario, Apple is eager to buy the rest of the cosmere, and continues making all of the movies, regardless of if they already had the deal.

Mistborn is a flop.

We already had confirmation Apple was getting a SA TV show, so they would probably do that, and if it takes off, they do the above, albeit more wearily. But if both Mistborn & SA flop, (And Apple might just shut down SA if Mistborn flops) then with or without a full cosmere deal, we aren't getting the other cosmere films/TV Shows.

I actually think that less of a commitment is better for both parties (If apple decides to drop it, Brandon still had the rights to the rest of the cosmere (albiet less popular books) and apple doesn't pay a bunch of money for a "bad" franchise)

[Nesh he/him]

3 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

It is still far bigger than any Harry Potter or LotR deal, we are just disapointed because the big corporation didn't want to commit to a HUGE franchise with a huge catalogue of books with no direct confirmation on whether or not they will make any money off of it.

And while I agree the reporters should have checked their facts better, they are human, and they at least had the decency to tell us about it.

While I am a little disapointed, I don't think it changes much.

We have 2 scenarios, scenario 1:

Mistborn is a hit.

In this scenario, Apple is eager to buy the rest of the cosmere, and continues making all of the movies, regardless of if they already had the deal.

Mistborn is a flop.

We already had confirmation Apple was getting a SA TV show, so they would probably do that, and if it takes off, they do the above, albeit more wearily. But if both Mistborn & SA flop, (And Apple might just shut down SA if Mistborn flops) then with or without a full cosmere deal, we aren't getting the other cosmere films/TV Shows.

I actually think that less of a commitment is better for both parties (If apple decides to drop it, Brandon still had the rights to the rest of the cosmere (albiet less popular books) and apple doesn't pay a bunch of money for a "bad" franchise)

I understand the business behind it.  It jut makes the connection that we'd want to see a little bit harder.  I'm thinking like Nightblood not hitting quite as hard without Warbreaker.  It's small stuff like that.  It's a smart move on Apple's part, I agree and it's still a big deal.  It's just less exciting than we thought.  I knowb if that Final Empire movie actually comes to frution I'm going to watch it ASAP and hope it's good and that we get the other stuff.  I honestly have more hope for Mistborn than Stormlight, given the concerns I voiced about adapting Stormlight.

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

3 minutes ago, Nesh said:

I understand the business behind it.  It jut makes the connection that we'd want to see a little bit harder.  I'm thinking like Nightblood not hitting quite as hard without Warbreaker.  It's small stuff like that.  It's a smart move on Apple's part, I agree and it's still a big deal.  It's just less exciting than we thought.  I knowb if that Final Empire movie actually comes to frution I'm going to watch it ASAP and hope it's good and that we get the other stuff.  I honestly have more hope for Mistborn than Stormlight, given the concerns I voiced about adapting Stormlight.

I am very excited, and believe that you are right in that Nightblood wont hit as hard, but there are many SA readers who haven't read Warbreaker. They may see Warbreaker later as like an origin story for nightblood, or something.

[Nesh he/him]

1 minute ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

I am very excited, and believe that you are right in that Nightblood wont hit as hard, but there are many SA readers who haven't read Warbreaker. They may see Warbreaker later as like an origin story for nightblood, or something.

Oh, I'm still excited.  I'll back this stuff with my mond when and if the time comes, and with Apple, I feel like it actually will.  I'm just worried we won;t see the Cosmere be really connected on screen the way we do in the books.  It's part of what I like about it.

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

5 minutes ago, Nesh said:

Oh, I'm still excited.  I'll back this stuff with my mond when and if the time comes, and with Apple, I feel like it actually will.  I'm just worried we won;t see the Cosmere be really connected on screen the way we do in the books.  It's part of what I like about it.

I think that while apple might not initially make it super connected, I believe in Brandon making it perfect. I think he will fight to perserve the connectedness.

[Nesh he/him]

3 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

I think that while apple might not initially make it super connected, I believe in Brandon making it perfect. I think he will fight to perserve the connectedness.

No, point in worrying too much, the earliest we'd see anything is probably 2028 or 2029.

Edited February 1 by Nesh

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

4 minutes ago, Nesh said:

No, point in worrying too much, the earliest we'd see anything is probably 2028 or 2029.

Exactly. Just trust in him.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

16 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

i disagree. how many heads were chopped on a fountain has nothing to do with the quality of a book. in fact, some media arte trying too hard to take a grimdark tone thinking it's better, but it ruins all. you don't have to show blood and gore to make a good story.

The heads being chopped off is not about being grimdark. TFE is not going to turn grimdark whatever you do.The story is about a revolution.
However, it is a revolt against a dark, evil, living god. The story works so well precisely because, whatever Kelsier is willing to do, there is always the fountains running red with blood that ask the implicit question of what would not be justified to end this.

16 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

TFE works because it has great plot, great characters, great magic, and that's it. I'd say later books work less because the plot becomes more sprawling and the magic becomes softer - while still being used to fix all problems like it was a harder magic.

No. That is not just it. Because it also asks an implicit moral question. What do you do if you are facing an evil god, who has nevertheless a good claim that he saved the world? Brandon has to show that The Lord Ruler is evil. He does that in three ways

1. The casual line at the start of the book about nobles having the girls they rape killed within the legal limits
2. The mistreatment of the rural Skaa
3. The heads being chopped off

And you need these demonstrations to justify Kelsier's actions.

Could you do it differently? Not with it staying the same book. Look at how Brandon does it with the bridge runs. It is a very different kind of evil. It wouldn't serve the purpose it needs to serve in TFE.
TFE works precisely because it is a story about a clash between two fanatics. It needs atrocities matching their fanaticism.

[First of the Tide He/him]

33 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

TFE is not going to turn grimdark whatever you do

I don't know abt that, buddy. Sanderson def. wouldn't, but it's got potential. anything can be made grimdark (I suggest the Child Thief by Brom)

 

36 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

And you need these demonstrations to justify Kelsier's actions.

You're absolutely right. For a book. But you're underestimating the effect the visual medium has on the viewer. A good example of this is Snape from the Harry Potter movies. In the books, he had to do a whole lot more sketchy-seeming stuff before the reader is convinced he's a bad guy. In the movies, though, all Snape has to do is appear on screen moderately ominously, and automatically the audience hates him. (assuming they don't have spoilers, obv). In the books, if harry had immediately attempted to curse Snape, it would have seemed crazy and unprovoked. But in the movie, it would have seemed a perfectly reasonable reaction to the vibes the audience gets from this creep.(yes I know he doesn't know any spells hush)

It's still necessary for there to be plenty of violence and general terribleness in order to provoke such an intense reaction from the Skaa and the gang, but I don't think that  threshold is so high that's it's beyond what modern Sanderson is willing to do, and the environment of Scadrial naturally lends itself to a world with implied harshness, even if it;s not shown directly.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

17 minutes ago, First of the Tide said:

I don't know abt that, buddy. Sanderson def. wouldn't, but it's got potential. anything can be made grimdark (I suggest the Child Thief by Brom)

OK, you can tell the story from the perspective of a Skaa girl from a fishing village sold into a brothel in Luthadel, spared from execution by the revolution only to have the movie end with a slow shot of the tsunami coming in to kill everybody in her village. Yes, the books have potential.

17 minutes ago, First of the Tide said:

 

You're absolutely right. For a book. But you're underestimating the effect the visual medium has on the viewer. A good example of this is Snape from the Harry Potter movies. In the books, he had to do a whole lot more sketchy-seeming stuff before the reader is convinced he's a bad guy.

Will that show that they have nothing to lose? To be perfectly honest without the executions I don't think the Skaa of Luthadel would have risen. It took that latent threat of just being snatched away from the street at random to make the uprising plausible.

If I wanted to cut from the book I'd go for

• OreSeur's subplot. TenSoon hired from the start
• cut the thieving crew. Have Vin recruited in another way
• recruitment of Clubs. Start out with a full crew

but not the execution

[Schizoposting]

@Oltux72, I actually agree with you about the executions. But, I think that you're underselling film as a visual medium—the brilliance of Brandon's worldbuilding in TFE, is that he manages to visually convey the dystopia through the ashfalls and the red sun; in the film, you can establish that this is an absolutely awful dystopian world by showing the ashfalls and the poor and dirty Skaa, contrasted with the ornate keeps of the nobles in the first 30 seconds. This would allow you cut down on a lot of the filler and to really streamline the plot. I think that this film should paced like Ocean's Eleven—not like Ocean's 11—even though I prefer the original to the remake.

Edited February 1 by Schizoposting

[king of nowhere]

8 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

No. That is not just it. Because it also asks an implicit moral question. What do you do if you are facing an evil god, who has nevertheless a good claim that he saved the world? Brandon has to show that The Lord Ruler is evil. He does that in three ways

1. The casual line at the start of the book about nobles having the girls they rape killed within the legal limits
2. The mistreatment of the rural Skaa
3. The heads being chopped off

And you need these demonstrations to justify Kelsier's actions.

 

ok, you do need the final empire to be evil for kelsier to work.

my point is that you do not need to be needlessly graphic about it. you do not need to show heads flying on screen for a full ten minutes - though that scene with kelsier saying "this is what we're fighting" would be great for a movie and i think it will be kept.

just in the same way that the sexual abuse is part of what makes the lord ruler and most of the nobility so terrible, but we do not need to actually see it on screen to experience it.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

7 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

just in the same way that the sexual abuse is part of what makes the lord ruler and most of the nobility so terrible, but we do not need to actually see it on screen to experience it.

Not on screen, no, but I think we need Dockson's speech/backstory/monologue to Vin about him, Kareien, and the Devinshae plantation.  It's one of the only times we get a glimpse into the experience of a plantation skaa from the mouth of one who was such.

If we're going to cheat and have flashback scenes (something which the original Mistborn trilogy doesn't generally do, for reasons outside the scope of this thread), I'd go for something a little like the first few minutes of UP, with hope and love and years condensed into moments to make us feel for them, culminating in what happened (the actual happening can be offscreen).  In fact, maybe start the film that way, as a substitute for the book starting with Lord Tresting's utterly horrifying thoughts and general unvoiced evil to teach us what kind of world and what kind of people we're about to be dealing with (we still need Kelsier, Jassa, Tepper, and Mennis at the Tresting plantation, but the tone of Tresting's point-of-view doesn't come across as much in film unless he speaks all of his thoughts.  Even then it would come off as "wow, this specific guy is egregiously terrible" more than "this is a nightmare world with little or no hope, and these nobles are some of the vilest antagonists in fiction".).

As far as non-sexual violence:

If we're going to tone down the violence against the Skaa, then I think we ought to tone down the violence Kelsier/The Crew commit(s), in order to keep the same sense of "any violence is met with a hundred bazillion times more violence" unfairness.  And if we do that, then we ought to tone down a lot of Stormlight, because the nobles in Mistborn are very intentionally made to be the worst evil in the Cosmere outside of evil gods.  If there's any point to go all-out, if we're reserving the upper limits of how extreme the imagery can be that the Cosmere as a whole will have for any point, it should be there, early on, so that the audience knows how horrifying the Cosmere can get and thus can get the point without ever needing to see it again (I believe this is part of why things like Dalinar's burning of Rathalas is off-page... mister Sanderson didn't want to go back to depicting such human-perpetrated-against-human horrors).

Going too far risks being exploitative, but not going far enough risks whitewashing slavery, which is its own kind of exploitative.  It's a hard balance and I'm not certain what the right way to do it is.

I'm fine with the screen-medium iterations being generally more restrained in terms of content, but I think such restraint ought to be applied consistently and evenly so that the overall "shape" feels the same.  

Edited February 2 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[+Oltux72 he/him]

4 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

in the film, you can establish that this is an absolutely awful dystopian world by showing the ashfalls and the poor and dirty Skaa, contrasted with the ornate keeps of the nobles in the first 30 seconds. This would allow you cut down on a lot of the filler and to really streamline the plot.

It would seem to me that that would show

1. Scadrial is not a good place
2. Nobles are evil

That is well and good, but it fails to show that TLR is a monster.

46 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If we're going to tone down the violence against the Skaa, then I think we ought to tone down the violence Kelsier/The Crew commit(s), in order to keep the same sense of "any violence is met with a hundred bazillion times more violence" unfairness.

It has to be enough to justify for Kelsier to turn himself into a god. For that reason I cannot see how you can go lower on the scale without misrepresenting Kelsier.

[Schizoposting]

15 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

It would seem to me that that would show

1. Scadrial is not a good place
2. Nobles are evil

That is well and good, but it fails to show that TLR is a monster.

It has to be enough to justify for Kelsier to turn himself into a god. For that reason I cannot see how you can go lower on the scale without misrepresenting Kelsier.

I mean, Rashek literally does not show up until the climax—that's the point. You can justify Kelsier's actions by showing how horrible the system is, without necessarily focusing on one person. You can have flashbacks or something, that show Kelsier's experiences in the pits, or Dockson's life on a plantation, if you really want to drive home how bad Scadrial is.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

I mean, Rashek literally does not show up until the climax—that's the point. You can justify Kelsier's actions by showing how horrible the system is, without necessarily focusing on one person.

While that is true, it would seem incomplete to me. Rashek's agents show up in the first pages. The opening of TFE establishes that Tresting fears the inspectors. That is we do not have a situation where the aristocrats form an oppressive government. They are in a priviledged position under such a government, which they abuse. I'd say that is a distinction you cannot do without even in an adaption.

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

You can have flashbacks or something, that show Kelsier's experiences in the pits, or Dockson's life on a plantation, if you really want to drive home how bad Scadrial is.

Again, that shows that the situation is bad, but not that TLR is actually evil.

For all we - seeing this as a hypothetical novice viewer - know this world could be a kind of postapocalyptic wasteland, not an evil dictatorship. The setting, with ash falling from the sky, rather suggests some kind of ecological catastrophe, which, while not actually wrong, is not what makes the Final Empire so horrible.
Hence I would actually open with a Steel Inspector ripping apart the thieving den and Kelsier rescuing Vin. After that you can switch to some kind of aristocratic festivity which shows a noble acting subservient to an ordinary member of some canton (film being visual you have the face tattoos linking them), which Kelsier uses as a distraction to rob the Atium.

And again, this suggests to me that you cannot leave out the executions. I would actually concentrate on the fountains turning red. A great opportunity to show a character moment by facing on the onlookers rather than the actual killings.