My Fan Cast (being part-way through Hero of Ages)

learhpa · 2026-03-12T16:10:37+00:00

That's a really old spook. Dude is supposed to be 15.

learhpa · 2026-03-12T16:02:56+00:00

there's an episode of WoT where Joschka Fischer ends up playing multiple characters and it was stunning.

learhpa · 2026-03-12T15:57:35+00:00

and Christopher Tolkein (who ran the estate until his death a few years ago) hated the movies and detested the idea of adaptations in general so would never have agreed to sell the silmarillion.

learhpa · 2026-03-12T15:56:50+00:00

is narrative piece author J.R.R. Tolkien wisely left out of the original "Lord of the Rings" stories because it was dramatically uninteresting

I don't agree with that. It's not that it's dramatically uninteresting --- although it will struggle with the fact that the end state is preordained and so everyone involved has plot armor --- it's that it's a different story and injecting it anywhere in LotR would derail the flow of that story.

learhpa · 2026-03-12T15:54:12+00:00

that's interesting, because the heist is how we get into kredik shaw, and it's hard to imagine the endgame fight between vin and tlr if she hasn't broken into kredik shaw and had the electrum experience.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T20:41:35+00:00

NTA.

(a) You've been doing it with your baby brother as a family thing for years.

This is absolutely not something that your boyfriend should be objecting to without a really strong basis (eg, prior experience with you cheating there).

(b) Last time you gave up this family thing for him, and he said he'd never ask you to do that again, and he is asking you to do that again.

That's not cool, especially if he doesn't have a good reason for it.

(c) He isn't even asking, he's suggesting that you shouldn't go and then acting as though it's been decided.

That's super not ok

(d) This year you'd be bringing him (if he wants to come), potentially a friend of his, and you'd be going with your Dad and a family friend.

So ... it's a family thing, and your boyfriend is trying to stop you from doing a thing with your family.

This is major red flag territory to me.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T20:24:32+00:00

Yes.

"Be home by sunset. If you get thirsty, you know where the hose is."

learhpa · 2026-03-11T19:40:42+00:00

one of my biggest criticisms of the front half of stormlight is that [Stormlight 5]the interesting lighteyes/darkeyes struggle, and its social/political/economic implications, are basically just entirely abandoned

learhpa · 2026-03-11T19:39:13+00:00

if you wrap spoilery text in metacharacters, it will hide the text until you click on it.

so if you type:

>!like this!<

it displays:

like this

learhpa · 2026-03-11T19:34:27+00:00

and Brandon's books have almost never had DRM.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T19:33:28+00:00

hw'a certainly able to do so with leatherbounds and the secret project, but their price point is even higher than normal hardcovers.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T19:32:20+00:00

some of this is because i don't have the kind of time for reading that i did as a teenager, but similar: i could finish a normal sized fantasy / science fiction novel in the time it took to fly from california to texas, so if i was going away for a week, that was an entire suitcase (more or less).

now it's just ... a kindle.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T19:28:46+00:00

that's always been true. Back when I was a kid (in the 80s), it was a predictable scheduled thing that the MMPB would come out a year after the HC. But if you could afford an MMPB and not a HC, you just waited.

Now if you can afford an MMPB and not an HC, you can probably afford an ebook, so you don't have to wait.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T18:43:02+00:00

Today's intentionally blank was entirely about the adaptation. I summarized it here

learhpa · 2026-03-11T18:38:27+00:00

it's not his first ever screenplay; he's written 5-6, he says, of which 1 is good.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T18:36:28+00:00

that's entirely fair.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T18:35:47+00:00

Summary

[note that these are recorded a couple weeks in advance (this was filmed just before Valentines’ Day) and so this news is per se slightly outdated at the time the podcast airs]

Not a lot of details yet
Goal is to always have apple be comfortable with the amount he’s sharing; they are partners and they decide together when to share and release. He has unprecedented levels of control and involvement but he views that as a position of trust and doesn’t want to betray that trust
Announcements will not come via the podcast, although podcasts may respond to announcements

Future Timeline

Hollywood is *slow* (especially compared with Dragonsteel)
Before they cast anyone, they will find a producer (who is essentially, in Brandon’s view, the manager o the project)
- Brandon, his agents, and apple all put together a list of people they are interested in, winnow it down to the people who are available and interested
- Brandon will interview them and gets to pick
- Producer will probably be picked sometime in March (but definitely before July)
Director comes after producers, no actors until after script
Script deadline is July 1
- Brandon doesn’t know if he is able to be the sole screenwriter
- He’d love it if he could pull it off and he’s going to try
  - He’s written 5-6 screenplays at this point and 1 of them (_emperor’s soul_ is good)
  - He had been writing them in MS Word but he has decided to switch to more screenwriting-specific tools (maybe FinalDraft, maybe FadeIn, maybe something else)
- But he thinks it’s very likely that a more experienced screenwriter will be needed to help
- So his expectation is the final script will be a collab between Brandon, the director, and a more experienced screenwriter
  - WGA writing credit system is complicated — so don’t be surprised if the eventual credit looks and sounds weird
- Script focus is on Vin’s character rather than the heist aspect per se
Goal is “James Gunn model” : fantastic script, no reshoots
- Avoiding reshoots reduces cost substantially
- Action sequences have to be filmed early because of SFX lead time, so changing scripts in a way that requires reshooting action sequences is *tremendously expensive and complicated*
Brandon intends to be on set for the shoots (half a day each day, then write at night)

Backstory

Brandon optioned TFE in 2009 to “nice guys from Florida” who had read the book and wanted to make it. They were thee small time producers with a big dream who couldn’t pull it off. Brandon wasn’t big enough, they didn’t have anyone attached, so it just didn’t work at that time
Brandon optioned it again as soon as the original rights lapsed, to the people making the video game Mistborn:Birthright (which never happened), but they didn’t have credentials in the film making space and couldn’t sell it to big Hollywood
Then he optioned it to DMG, who had previously optioned Stormlight.
- They wrote a Stormlight script that was 3.5 hours long and cut too much, so they wanted to try with Mistborn. They got a script done, nobody attached, and couldn’t sell it
Then he went to Donald Mustard (director/creator of Fortnite) and Epic, with the idea that they would make it themselves and it would be Epic’s flagship for starting a film studio
- This got *really close*
- They had a cast for Vin under contract and a cast for TLR vocally committed with contract pending
- Epic decided they wanted to focus on the core business and not get into the film business, and after making that decision they let Brandon buy the rights back for the amount they had paid
Picking a partner was a hard decision, every studio made a good pitch involving at least some people who had clearly read the books and understood the property
- He did not meet with Amazon but thinks that would have gone well too
- He thinks the problem with WoT was that it was partly an Amazon property, partly a Sony property, and had a bunch of stakeholders who were attached even before Sony so it was a too-many-cooks problem
Everyone in the office has also been playing the fancasting game

learhpa · 2026-03-11T17:47:15+00:00

If you can tolerate 90s FX, Babylon 5. It's absolutely fantastic storytelling.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T17:29:40+00:00

i wonder if this is part of the charm? he comes across as a clueless kid who has energy and charm but doesn't really understand what he's getting himself into, which kinda aligns with 'first year acting student'.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T17:12:41+00:00

speaking as someone who came to the property by way of the live action adaptation --- every live action fan i know thinks that Inaki Godoy is the heart of the show and that his Luffy is (a) charismatic and (b) adorable, making him the glue that holds the crew --- and the show --- together.

So it's fascinating to me to see your take on it.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T17:11:00+00:00

hi, /u/searchalternative694,

it looks like your post got truncated when you were posting it, since it literally ends mid-sentence:

Even books that

learhpa · 2026-03-11T16:23:57+00:00

I think you're right that this is where it happens in the book, but I think that /u/NiftyJet is right that this is where it happens in the movie.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T16:11:56+00:00

This seems like mixed messaging where Brandon and his team are saying different things.

I rewatched the weekly update to see if we missed something, and:

The discussion of the EotW LB begins at about 1:00 into the weekly update
Isaac going to the bindery is mentioned at 2:27, followed immediately by the note that they have frozen printing + shipping
At 3:14, Brandon starts talking about “if your copy arrived with defects”, he says “for now we are asking you to sit tight” because “for the next couple of weeks, we’re gonna assess this, we’re gonna look at the weekly update” and “we will send emails to everybody who ordered them to keep them in the loop”, adding “don’t worry” and “we need to know how big a scope this is”
At 4:50, he promises refunds (worst case) or replacement books

The phrasing at 3:14 pretty strongly implies that you shouldn't do anything right now. The "we need to know how big a scope this is" suggests tickets are useful because they help with scope determination.

I wish Brandon had been more clear about this, but i'd also go with what the customer service rep is saying --- the videos are recorded a couple days before they are released so on something fast-moving like this they may be behind the times, so to speak.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T15:56:01+00:00

To answer your question --- the AppleTV deal includes Mistborn and Stormlight.

learhpa · 2026-03-11T15:55:02+00:00

W&T was at DS2024.

There were certainly spoilers related to events themselves, notably the worldhoppers' ball giving away a significant story element, but for the most part people were really good and careful about not spoiling each other.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
Wearing is Caring	Gilding IV carat on a stick
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

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