Brandon Sanderson has been one of the most popular fantasy and sci-fi authors on the planet for years. He already has a Mistborn movie adaptation in development and a Stormlight Archive series in the works at Apple TV. For most authors, either one of those would be the career highlight. For Sanderson, apparently, that's just Tuesday.
Because now Skyward is getting a TV show, too.
The news dropped on May 20 that Tomorrow Studios, the production company behind Netflix's beloved One Piece live-action series, is officially developing Skyward as a television series. A pilot script is already being written and Sanderson is co-writing it himself.
What is Skyward about?
Before getting into the TV stuff, let's talk about the book itself.
Skyward came out in 2018. It's a young adult sci-fi novel, and Sanderson himself once described it perfectly at a reading: "How to Train Your Dragon, but instead it's a girl who finds a spaceship and goes to Top Gun school."
The story follows Spensa Nightshade, a young girl who has grown up on a harsh underground colony planet. Humanity is trapped there, constantly under attack by a mysterious alien force called the Krell. Pilots are the heroes of this world who fly out and fight the aliens to keep everyone alive.
Spensa has dreamed of becoming a pilot her entire life. The problem is her father was a pilot too and he's considered a coward and a traitor who fled from battle. Because of that, Spensa and her family have been outcasts, living in disgrace.
Despite everything working against her, Spensa refuses to give up. She finds a damaged, ancient starship hidden in a cave and begins to secretly repair it. She also manages to get into flight school, where she starts to prove herself against all odds and where she begins to uncover secrets about the Krell, about her father, and about the truth of her world.
It's a very memorable story about courage, identity, not letting other people's judgments define you, and what it really means to be a hero. There's also a lot of genuinely exciting aerial combat.
The series even expands across four books consisting of Skyward, Starsight, Cytonic, and Defiant with more stories set in the same universe. So there is plenty of material for a long-running show.
Studio behind the One Piece live-action series will be producing SkywardÂ
Tomorrow Studios is the production company leading the project. If that name sounds familiar, it's because they produced Netflix's One Piece live-action series, which turned out to be one of the best-received anime-to-live-action adaptations in recent memory. They sure know how to take a beloved fan property and handle it with care.
Tomorrow Studios is run by Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements, who will executive produce Skyward alongside Sanderson himself.
In a statement to Deadline, Adelstein and Clements said: "Brandon has created a thrilling universe where courage, curiosity and determination to challenge what we think can change the fate of entire worlds. The vision that he, Jed and Maurissa have for a television adaptation is 'defiant to the end.’"
That last phrase "defiant to the end" is also a direct nod to the book series, where humanity's colony is called Defiant.
Sanderson is writing the pilot himself
To nobody's wonder, Sanderson is directly involved.
He will be co-writing the pilot script alongside Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, best known for running Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC. They also co-created Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog with Joss Whedon and Zack Whedon, which won a Hugo Award, a Saturn Award and an Emmy.
These two have real experience adapting genre properties with big fanbases and balancing character drama with action.
Sanderson said of the deal: "I've been working on the Skyward series for nearly a decade, and to have a partner like Tomorrow Studios to help bring this story to television is a dream come true."
A somewhat long road to get here
This announcement didn't come out of nowhere. Fans have been watching the slow progress of a Skyward adaptation for years.
In his 2024 "State of Sanderson" blog post, Sanderson confirmed the series had been optioned for TV and that they were actively searching for a showrunner. At the time it felt stuck in development, which is a common fate for beloved book series.
Then in a 2025 update, things sounded much more hopeful. Sanderson wrote: "Last year, we were hunting showrunners, and we picked them. Last year we were on Step Four, and we technically still are, but we have showrunners, and together we're writing the pilot. So it's a pretty-far-along Step Four, which can often be one of the longest to complete."
And now, in May 2026, the project has officially been announced with Tomorrow Studios attached and the pilot script in progress.
There's no network or streaming platform announced yet. The pilot script is still being written. No cast has been revealed and there's no release date anywhere on the horizon.
But the fact that a team is assembled and Tomorrow Studios with its One Piece track record is behind it? It looks like the wait might actually be worth it.
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