Film rights for Brandon Sanderson's WAY OF KINGS secured for a whopping $270 million

An adaptation of Brandon Sanderson’s Way Of Kings is being planned by DMG Entertainment. Ordinarily news of a movie studio securing the film rights to a book is not big news, but this is not your typical adaptation of a fantasy movie. According to Variety the studio secured the rights for a potential three film prospect for an incredible $270 million. Yes, you read that right and no I didn’t forget to replace the dollar with Rands.

This is a massive investment in the fantasy franchise, which is set to include the three novels of Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive fantasy series, of which Way of the Kings is the first. All of Sanderson’s future work, which are all part of a shared universe called Cosmere, could also possibly be optioned.

Now that is a huge investment to just secure the rights to make movies out of the writer’s work and excludes the actual production costs for which a film of the scale of the novel are likely to be huge in their own right. So, is this either a massive gamble on DMG’s part or a smart move, your call. As someone who has not read any of the novels in this fantasy series, its tough for me to say. I’ve heard good things about the series and how big in scope it is though, so it might work out for them.

Either way, any book series that a film studio is willing to spend that kind of money on must certainly be good and this is something I am definitely looking to put on my reading backlog right away. Though at the rate I am working through my reading backlog, the movies will all be released and on DVD by the time I get to the books.

The script for Way of Kings is set to be written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan who created the Feast franchise and a number of Saw sequels. An odd choice considering all their films were much more low budget affairs. Not sure I would gamble $270 million on that writing pair, but then again, I don’t have $270 million lying around to have that choice to make. Though, I wouldn’t mind.

Last Updated: November 1, 2016