The $30 million toe in the water

Brandon Sanderson's YA sci-fi series Skyward is set for a television adaptation that promises a cosmic scale far beyond The Hunger Games movies.. An upcoming adaptation of a bestselling YA sci-fi book series seems so ambitious in scale that it will likely make even The Hunger Games feel small.

Brandon Sanderson's Skyward is getting a TV adaptation, which, like The Hunger Games, falls in the YA sci-fi genre. Although its core premise is significantly different from The Hunger Games', it dabbles with similar themes surrounding authoritarian control and survival against overwhelming odds.

Readers familiar with the Brandon Sanderson books would know how massive Skyward is when it comes to its storytelling scope.

A familiar pattern from the 2019 crash

The series gradually evolves into a full-fledged space opera where multiple species and star systems are introduced. While the Skyward books also feature allegories surrounding war and trauma, they eventually expand to a far bigger scale and involve many fantastical elements.

Considering the sheer size of Skyward's overarching universe, its adaptation has the potential to be far bigger than the Hunger Games movies. The small-screen formmat will also allow the series to cover most chapters from the original books instead of rehashing the source material and cutting down its important arcs for the screen.

Who is the unnamed buyer?

The Skyward adaptation is being developed by Tomorrow Studios. The studio has proven its ability to get high-fantasy adaptations right by giving us Netflix's One Piece. Considering the fact that the studio succeeded with One Piece even though its anime and manga are known to be incredibly absurd and abstract from a visual standpoint, it should not struggle with Skyward's adaptation.

It may be too soon to tell whether Skyward will eventually become as culturally impactful as The Hunger Games. However, with so much going in its favor, it seems to have immense potential.

A worthy Skyward adaptation will need a massive budget

The Hunger Games movies have benefited a lot from their massive budgets and the scale they brought to Panem. Despite being a small-screen adaptation, Skyward, too, will need a big budget to be able to succeed.

Since Brandon Sanderson is co-writing its pilot script with Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen (Agents of S.H.I .E.L.D.), the show's storytelling will likely not disappoint. However,to be able to plausibly capture everything from the deep-space fleet battles to the surreal, abstract physics of the story's setting, Skyward will need a budget that rivals some of television's most ambitious sci-fi productions.