Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn adaptation is one of the most anticipated fantasy films in development right now, but if you are waiting on casting news or a director announcement, you are going to be waiting a while longer. Because the screenplay comes first, and Sanderson wants it locked down before anyone else gets involved.
Brandon Sanderson and co-author Janci Patterson were celebrating the release of Blightfall, Riftwake Book 1, during a recent livestream when he was asked by fans for an update on the Mistborn film in development at Apple TV. Sanderson used the moment to give one of his more detailed accounts of where the project is right now and why his experience on Amazon's The Wheel of Time is directly behind the approach he is taking this time.
Sanderson secured a deal with Apple TV in January 2026, with the Mistborn series earmarked for a theatrical film and The Stormlight Archive set up as a television series. As part of the deal, Sanderson negotiated an unusually hands-on creative role, including writing the Mistborn screenplay himself. The project is now into its second draft.
"I've sent in the first draft, gotten feedback for a second draft. I'm working on the second draft," Sanderson said.
He was clear that the splashy announcements fans are waiting for are not coming until the screenplay is in much better shape, saying "we really can't do anything until screenplay is approved and screenplays take, you know, four or five drafts. Now, once the second draft is good, they'll probably say, 'All right, we can start approaching directors,' would be my guess. But the news that you will be excited by, which is director and actors, none of that happens until the screenplay is where we want it to be."
The Wheel of Time problem Sanderson wants to avoid
Sanderson clarified that the insistence on having a completed screenplay before anything else moves forward is not just Apple's requirement, but his as well. It comes directly from his time as a consulting producer on Amazon's The Wheel of Time, which ran from 2021 until its cancellation in May 2025.
Despite his long association with the series, having completed the final three books after author Robert Jordan's death in 2007, Sanderson shared that his ability to give meaningful feedback on the show was regularly blocked by the fact that later scripts simply did not exist yet while earlier episodes were already being filmed.
He traced his requirement for Mistborn back to that experience during the stream, saying that he decided on it, "After working on The Wheel of Time and having them multiple times go to film with no screenplays... so they were filming the early episodes before they had the later episodes."
When asked if there indeed were no screenplays, Sanderson clarified: "They of course had screenplays when they sat down to make the episodes, but it's like I'm like, I can't give you feedback on the character arcs unless I know where you're going with the character arcs, but they're like, 'Well, we don't have those screenplays done yet.' And that's not uncommon."
Patterson suggested that at least having a treatment in place might have helped bridge the gap. Sanderson said one did exist on The Wheel of Time, but that it was not something he could rely on.
"The treatment wasn't reliable in The Wheel of Time's case because so many people on the high-ups wanted different things out of The Wheel of Time," he explained. "So this isn't even the fault of the writers or the showrunner. It's just that the treatment; there were forces at play saying, 'Well, we're not going to do that.' And then they have to... it was just I knew how much of a headache it was for them... that I'm like, 'Yeah, we will have a screenplay.'"
Sanderson's role on The Wheel of Time was limited in ways that went beyond the screenplay issues. He was largely kept out of major creative decisions despite his producer credit. Sanderson shared during C2E2 2024 that at one point he had tried to rework the show's handling of the character Perrin Aybara, a push that went all the way to Amazon's higher-ups and was ultimately rejected.
The show was cancelled after season 3 in May 2025, ending on an unresolved cliffhanger despite the season drawing some of the strongest reviews it had ever received.
Sanderson's Apple arrangement is totally structured differently. He holds final creative authority over the Cosmere adaptations, and writing the screenplay himself means the foundation of the Mistborn project is in his hands before anyone else gets involved.
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