YouTube Livestream 49

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Name YouTube Livestream 49
Date
Date Aug. 4, 2022
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Entries 6
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#1 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

These [film studio proposals] are not sure things; nothing is a sure thing in Hollywood. But I would be surprised if we aren't on set doing things [for an adaptation] in this time next year. I would be shocked if we aren't.

Expect, in the next few months, some announcements that you might find exciting. I'm gonna let the people with whom I'm working handle that, because they like to do PR their way.

#2 Copy

Brandon Sanderson

It's gonna be tricky to pick what I read from Stormlight Five [for the The Lost Metal release party] because I don't want to read something that is a spoiler for those who haven't read Stormlight, 'cause they're there for a Mistborn thing. It's likely you will get Szeth's first flashback, or one of the early Szeth flashbacks that I think is working really well, because that doesn't spoil very much for people who haven't read it, because it takes place in the past.

#3 Copy

LewsTherinTelescope

Back in 2014, you mentioned you'd already written the epilogue to Stormlight Five.

Brandon Sanderson

I have.

LewsTherinTelescope

Do you still plan to use what you wrote back then? Or have you had to scrap that version because of changes to the plan?

Brandon Sanderson

I have come up with some better ideas for how I want that to play out. So I don't know if that actual epilogue will end up in there or not.

Now, the epilogue is different from the [postlude]. We have the prelude; in Stormlight Five, you will have a [postlude], as well. That will be different from the epilogue, just like the prologue was different than the prelude.

#4 Copy

Readyfix7381

Would you ever consider using the medium of film or TV to tell a Cosmere story that's not based on a book already published, but you write the screenplay for instead?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I would consider that. As a fan of cinema and of the modern era of television (which is just very long movies, which I just love how that's become the thing that people do now), then I can absolutely see myself doing this. I want to get more experience with it before I would try that, but the original pitch for Dark One (that is a graphic novel, and which we are now writing as a novel) was written as... not scripts, but an outline for a television series. That's how I originally, just... I was starting to work on it, I'm like, "This works so much better this way, this way, this way." So I outlined it that way. So I've kind of done it before. It wasn't Cosmere, and it didn't ever get made, and it wasn't a script, but it was a step that direction. So, absolutely can see that.

And, you know, there's other things. For instance, I would like to make an Emperor's Soul movie, if the Cosmere ever takes off to the point that people are wanting something other than Mistborn and Stormlight. (Which, I totally understand why people want Mistborn and Stormlight first.) When they have done that and are like, "All right; what else do we have here?" I would like to do an Emperor's Soul. But I'm probably not gonna do Emperor's Soul as the same piece (and I've told people this before) where it is one person in a room the entire time. I would turn it into something that preserves the spirit of that, but is in a lot of different sets, a lot of different locations, with a larger cast, and turn it into something that feels cinemated. That's the one that I would adapt the heaviest, if I were doing that. There's thing like that that I would also like to do that are based on something, but basically I'd say, "What did I love about the piece I wrote? How can I make this for a new medium?" And I would start over with a new script.

#5 Copy

StrikerEZ

Just out of curiosity, what's your current plan on potentially writing other books while you write [Mistborn] Era Three? You've mentioned in the past potentially squeezing in other books between those three books.

Brandon Sanderson

Still thinking I might do that. Tor wanted me to set out my schedule, 'cause we're getting ready to sign the contacts for Era Three with Tor. (Our contracts are weird, let's just say. Sometimes we just hand them books, sometimes we do it ahead of time. But this time we're doing it ahead of time.) And they wanted delivery dates, and I said, "I am writing the whole trilogy before I release the first book." It's what I've wanted to do ever since I wrote Era One, I wanted to do this again. So Era Three is going to be a trilogy, written, that won't get released. And I know I'm going to need a break between books to do other things. And so I'm still thinking that I'll do some of these books that I've been promising people in between, and then release them in some order. It's possible I could write these books, and they could be released while I'm finishing Era Three.

But it's looking like Era Three... it's gonna be a little while. We are pretty sure Stormlight Five is 2024 now. I do apologize on that; though I have been writing on that. These weeks, I only get three and a half days to write, a lot of times. There's so many other things that I need to be doing. Stormlight Five is moving along, but there's too many things going on with it, and I had too many movie things happen this year, it slowed me down, and so we are sure it's 2024 at this point. And then that means, where do we put Era Three? I want to write all three books, I want to have a little time in between each one to write something else. I want the Era Three books to be around two hundred thousand words like Era One was, not a hundred thousand words like Era Two; just feels like the right length. They could get longer than that; they could end up at two fifty or even three hundred thousand. So that's gonna take me a couple of years of writing before I even get them done and ready to go out.

So, you're gonna get an ending to Era Two. And then you're gonna get an ending to Skyward. And then you're gonna get an ending to Stormlight. Where, there are still things going on in those settings and worlds, but you're gonna get three pretty sizeable endings in a row. And then, we're probably going to be doing other interesting things for a while before you end up getting into Era Two of Stormlight and Era Three of Mistborn. Interesting things such as: a prose version of White Sand that is actually revised and looking good, a non-Cosmere collection of fiction. Dark One, the novelization, is another thing that you can look forward to; my original outline, I'm working on it with Dan Wells, with turning it into a novel, and I'm very pleased with how that's going. These things are gonna have to fill the void while Brandon works on Era Three. And potentially Nightblood and potentially Elantris sequels.

Sapphire Bombay

Do you have concerns about constraints on your time over the next twenty years? What books do you plan to write between Stormlight Six and Ten?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a good question. I have concerns; I absolutely have concerns. This is definitely the biggest challenge of my career, is fitting everything in. What do I plan to write then? That's a good time for Dragonsteel. Whether I can do Dragonsteel concurrent, because Dragonsteel is so involved (this is the Hoid origin series), whether I can do that concurrent or not is a big question. I might need something a little lighter, meaning fewer viewpoints, shorter novels in between. Which would lend itself toward another era of Mistborn, as I've told people.

But there's also the possibility that I write other interesting things. For those following the Secret Projects, there is definitely... two of them are related in an interesting way. And another one of them implies lots more, and I won't promise that I'm going to, but these are all things that maybe I will end up doing more of. Consider them all finished, and you can't ask me "when are you gonna do this?" because there are no promises. But who knows what will pop out of the brain.

#6 Copy

Letters Words

For a theoretical Stormlight live action adaptation, it seems like it would be difficult to accomplish filming outdoor scenes while eliminating any signs of plant life that would be completely out of place on Roshar. Would you be open to changing elements of Roshar's ecology to make adaptation easier?

Brandon Sanderson

I would not have to do that, considering the budgets that we have been regularly offered. We can digitally remove plants. The real answer to that is, we digitally remove plants; and that's expensive, but that's what we do. There's some places in southern Utah that we can film that are gonna look real good for the Shattered Plains. And then the other places that we would have to film, we can do volume stages for, or things like that. I don't think it's as hard to do as you say

The bigger issue we have discussed, when some people have been pitching on Stormlight live action, is the spren. How many spren do you put into a scene? Those are pretty expensive (as these things go) effects, and how much are we gonna use, and how do you adapt that? And how do you not make the spren look like Looney Tunes, with someone getting hit on the head and stars spinning around their head, right? We all imagine them not being that, but you gotta make sure that it works. A lot of what's happening with spren is pretty surreal. How do you adapt that and and what's our budget for that? Those are questions that have come up.

Event details
Name
Name YouTube Livestream 49
Date
Date Aug. 4, 2022
Entries
Entries 6
Upload sources