Brandon Sanderson Affirms Script Writers Pitch IP Projects To Use The IP As A Skinsuit For Their Own Story

Brandon Sanderson, the author of the Mistborn series, affirmed that Hollywood scriptwriters intentionally pitch IP projects so they can use them as skinsuits to tell their own stories.

In a post to the LoTR Memes subreddit in October, Sanderson shared an anecdote about how one of his lesser known stories Emperor’s Soul was options for a Hollywood project.

After explaining how the writer for the project was the one who pitched it and eventually convinced the studio to option the rights, Sanderson revealed that when he eventually got his hands on the script it was nothing like his novel and described it as “one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.”

“The character names were, largely, the same, though nothing that happened to them was remotely similar to the story. Emperor's Soul is a small-scale character drama that takes place largely in one room, with discussions of the nature of art between two characters who approach the idea differently,” Sanderson shared. “The screenplay detailed an expansive fantasy epic with a new love interest for the main character (a pirate captain.) They globe-trotted, they fought monsters, they explored a world largely unrelated to mine, save for a few words here and there.”

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Next, Sanderson explained why the script was so different from his novel, which it was supposed to be adapting, “Hollywood doesn't buy spec scripts (original ideas) from screenwriters very often, and they NEVER buy spec scripts that are epic fantasy. Those are too big, too expensive, and too daunting: they are the sorts of stories where the producers and executives need the proof of an established book series to justify the production.”

“So this writer never had a chance to tell his own epic fantasy story, though he wanted to. Instead, he found a popularish story that nobody had snatched up, and used it as a means to tell the story he'd always wanted to tell, because he'd never otherwise have a chance of getting it made,” he shared.

Sanderson then concluded that this was not a one-time deal, but is a major problem within Hollywood and is one of the many issues affecting the so-called adaptations that are currently being made. “I'm convinced this is part of the issue with some of these adaptations; screenwriters and directors are creative, and want to tell their own stories, but it's almost impossible to get those made in things like the fantasy genre unless you're a huge established name like Cameron.”

“I'm not saying they all do this deliberately, as that screenwriter did for my work, but I think it's an unconscious influence,” he continued. “They want to tell their stories, and this is the allowed method, so when given the chance at freedom they go off the rails, and the execs don't know the genre or property well enough to understand why this can lead to disaster.”

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Sanderson is not the only one to point this out. In March 2023, the Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein admitted to this practice while promoting their film.

The duo were asked by Variety, “To be able to do the kind of storytelling at the level you want to do it, do you feel you have to find a way into a franchise versus writing an original story?”

Goldstein replied, “Using existing IP certainly greases the wheels. Any meeting we have with a studio head starts with, “Here’s four things we own — got any interest?” To some extent, I think we use intellectual property as a bit of a costume to get ourselves in the door. We’re still going to make the movie that we want to make. It just makes it all a bit easier to get it going if it has something that people are very familiar with.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunners similarly noted they were planning to write the book that Tolkien never wrote despite the fact the show is set in the Second Age and Tolkien wrote The Silmarillion, a whole book that his son Christopher published that details the major events of the First Age and the Second Age.

Nevertheless Rings of Power showrunner Patrick McKay told Vanity Fair that the driving question for the show was: “Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?”

What do you make of Sanderson’s anecdote and his speculation that this leads to a number of problems with current Hollywood adaptations?

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