Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere Could Be Fantasy's MCU (But There's Only One Way To Make It Work)

So, how to start bringing all this to live action? The most likely choice for the first adaptation might seem to be a matter of taste. After all, who'd have thought that Iron Man, of all Marvel characters, would launch the biggest live-action mega-franchise in history? With this, though, there's only one logical place to start ... and, strangely enough, it's not the beginning.

The ongoing "The Stormlight Archive" series is the perfect place to get the Cosmere Cinematic Universe ball rolling. This would allow the live-action Cosmere works to start on the weather-ravaged, extremely extra planet of Roshar, which comes with a perfect combination of Sanderson's unique elements and traditional sword-and-sorcery stuff to serve as an introduction to the author's universe. This would also allow using one of his more cinematic protagonists — brooding "The Way of Kings" hero Kaladin — as the first main character, and make sure that there are several more equally intriguing figures waiting to step in the spotlight. As it happens, "The Stormlight Archive" is also important to the series at large because it heavily features the most likely overarching Cosmere Big Bad — Odium, the Shard of divine hate.

Another series that'll absolutely need to feature — either concurrently with "The Stormlight Archive" or immediately after it — is the "Mistborn" series, which complements "The Stormlight Archives" with a dystopian fantasy heist story that introduces Sanderson's metal-based magic system, allomancy. If the ball's still rolling at that point, the people in charge of the live-action Cosmere aren't exactly risking a "Game of Thrones" situation of running out of material. After all, there's still "Elantris," "Warbreaker," and the many upcoming Cosmere works the prolific Sanderson is working on.