‘Mistborn’ Movie Script Is Officially Finished as Brandon Sanderson Reveals Next Step [Exclusive]

After years of false starts, Mistborn is finally moving forward. Brandon Sanderson has officially finished the script. Sanderson's Mistborn is one of those projects we all thought would never see the light of day, if we're being honest, but now, two decades after it was originally published, it looks like a long-awaited Mistborn movie is finally moving forward with Apple TV. Sanderson has now finished his first screenplay for the fantasy epic, and he recently told Collider what comes next.

Speaking exclusively with Collider's Maggie Lovitt at FanX Salt Lake, Sanderson confirmed that he's personally writing the entire Mistborn screenplay. He's also writing for The Stormlight Archive TV series, although he expects to bring in a writing partner for that project. He told Collider:

“Mistborn movie and Stormlight Archive TV show — I am writing both of them. I will probably have a writing partner for Stormlight, but this one I'm writing the whole thing. I've turned in the first draft. It's actually secretly the second draft because I did a bunch of revisions on the first. It's actually like the 18th. I think I was on 1.17 when I turned it in. Apple's had it, and they've given me their feedback. So now my job is revisions. I gotta go, and I gotta find a way to navigate getting what they want into the story.”

Adapting 'Mistborn' Means Cutting a Lot

Writing the movie also means turning a very big book into a much smaller screenplay. Sanderson estimates that he's taking roughly 200,000 words and cutting them down to around 20,000. Some of it's relatively easy because you don't need to include descriptions of things and people and places, but you still need to include what makes Mistborn, well, Mistborn. Sanderson explained:

“The most difficult thing about adapting Mistborn is taking a 200,000-word book down to a 20,000-word screenplay. That's not as bad as it sounds because you can take out all the stage direction, take out all the descriptions and things like that. But still, Mistborn in book form can be multiple things. Mistborn, if you haven't read it, is one part heist, one part My Fair Lady, one part epic fantasy, and really for the film, I had to distill each of those down, and that was the biggest challenge. But it was a little easier than I thought because adapting my own work, I know the soul of the story. I know what can go and what has to stay.”

That's also one of the advantages of Sanderson writing the adaptation himself. Cuts are inevitable when you're squeezing a novel that size into a movie, but at least the person deciding what survives is the person who wrote it in the first place. For now, the movie remains in the writing stage. Apple has not announced a cast, production date, or release date for Mistborn. Stay tuned at Collider for more and watch Lovitt's conversation with Sanderson above.