Brandon Sanderson is known for being a wildly prolific author of fantasy and science fiction books, but right now he's dipping his toe into unknown waters by penning the first draft of a screenplay for Apple TV's Mistborn movie. The streamer and author are in the midst of creating a sprawling franchise of TV and film projects based on Sanderson's Cosmere, which itself spans more than 20 novels set on different worlds in this fictional universe. With Sanderson pivoting from novel writing to screenplays, it begs the question of how it's all going for him. After all, these are very different mediums, and just because he's an expert in one doesn't mean the other won't have snags.
Fortunately, Sanderson is extremely transparent with his fans, so we know exactly how the Mistborn screenplay is going. "I'm well finished with Act One, into Act Two. Everything's going great. I really like how that's turning out, and making really good progress," Sanderson shared in his latest weekly YouTube update, confirming that the first draft of his Mistborn screenplay is 33% finished.
There was never really any doubt that Sanderson was going to make steady headway on this thing, but the update is an ever-welcome bit of reassurance and insight into how the work is going. It also gives us an idea of roughly where in the story he might be at this point in time.
What happens in Mistborn Act One?
Like many of Sanderson's Cosmere novels, Mistborn: The Final Empire is subdivided into parts. There are five parts in the novel, spanning roughly 40 chapters counting the prologue and epilogue. 33% of the book puts us to roughly to the end of Part Two, which leads into a small time jump that likely serves as the break between Act One and Act Two of the screenplay. We now know that Sanderson is done with Act One, meaning that from a story structure perspective, writing on the Mistborn screenplay has now passed its first major milestone.
In the book, Part One, subtitled "The Survivor of Hathsin," serves primarily as an introduction to the main cast of the novel as well as the world of Scadrial at large. This is where we first meet Kelsier, and learn how he's doing his best to give the empire grief. It's also where Vin crosses paths with the titular Survivor, and ends up reluctantly joining his crew. And of course, it serves as the introduction for Allomancy, the all-important metal-based magic system that sits at the heart of the Mistborn series.
By the end of Part One, despite her pervading mistrust of others, the young street urchin Vin has become permanently entrenched in Kelsier's plan to overthrow the Lord Ruler. She's seen her first mistwraith, and gotten a rundown of what her powers as a Mistborn entail. And she's met Sazed, a religious scholar who has a major role to play in the overall series.
Part Two, subtitled "Rebels Beneath a Sky of Ash," sees Vin continue her training and begin to infiltrate the nobility of Scadrial. It's the first time that a Mistborn book features one of the balls where nobles congregate, which often crop up throughout the original trilogy. This is when she meets a bookish nobleman named Elend Venture for the first time.
Afterward, Kelsier leads Vin on a daring raid to the fortress of Kredik Shaw, where we get some of our first real hints about the powers of the Lord Ruler. That serves as the climax of Part Two, after which there's a two-week time jump while Vin recovers from the ordeal. If I had my guess, that's also the end of Act One of the screenplay.
Even just looking back at the events of the first Mistborn book is getting me excited. Following along with Sanderson's screenplay draft is a fun way to refresh the memory about what happened in the 2006 novel for fans who haven't read it quite as recently. Provided that all goes according to plan and this Mistborn film makes it to theaters, we're going to see some iconic characters and scenes come to life in a whole new way. It's a good time to be a fan of the Cosmere!
Sanderson remains hard at work on his Mistborn screenplay. For the latest updates, subscribe and follow along on his YouTube channel.