EXCLUSIVE: Fox has set Carter Blanchard to adapt Steelheart, the first leg of a three-book trilogy by Brandon Sanderson that is being developed as a potential directing vehicle for Shawn Levy. Blanchard was tapped off his work on the Independence Day sequel and Glimmer, the latter of which is in preproduction. Fox bought the book in January — it is referred to as The Reckoners series — after the author had sketched out that first book and a follow-up, Firefight. Levy is producing through his 21 Laps banner.

This could potentially provide a franchise play with an original twist on the superhero genre: the idea of what happens if the handful of all-powerful people lord their powers over everyone else and enslave them. The tale begins with a burst in the sky that gave some ordinary people extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics, but with incredible gifts came the desire to rule. In what was once Chicago, an astonishingly powerful Epic named Steelheart installed himself as emperor. Nobody fights back but the Reckoners, a shadowy group of ordinary humans who spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them. The book centers on David, who wants in the group because Steelheart killed his father, and he alone knows the Epics’ true weakness. The second book centers on the aftermath of that battle and even more questions for David, who has found a new foe that will require a quest darker and even more dangerous.

Daria Cerek is overseeing for Fox with Will Rack for 21 Laps, which has Table 19 in postproduction at Fox Searchlight, Story Of Your Life shooting at Paramount with Denis Villenueve directing Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, a fall start date on the Ice Cube-Charlie Day comedy Fist Fight at New Line, the John Hamburg-directed comedy Why Him? at Fox, and a Netflix supernatural series with Matt and Ross Duffer.

Carter is repped by Paradigm, Madhouse and Nichols, Grossman.