Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn is one of the most anticipated fantasy film adaptations currently in the works, and the level of creative control Sanderson has negotiated with Apple has given fans considerable confidence in the project.
He had previously confirmed in late July that the first draft of the Mistborn screenplay was complete and submitted. Fans looking for news on the second draft will need to be patient, though. Sanderson shared in his latest weekly update video that it is going to be a longer process than some might hope.
Apple secured the rights to Sanderson's entire Cosmere universe in January 2026 after a competitive bidding process involving several major studios. The first project in the pipeline is a theatrical film adapting The Final Empire, the opening novel in the Mistborn series. Published in 2006, The Final Empire follows Vin, a young street thief who discovers she possesses a gift for Allomancy — a magic system that involves ingesting and burning metals to gain abilities — and is recruited into a crew of rebels plotting to overthrow an immortal dictator who has ruled their ash-covered world for a thousand years.
Sanderson has been writing the screenplay himself as part of the Apple deal, which is an example of how the studio has given him final creative authority over both the Mistborn films and The Stormlight Archive television series.
Brandon Sanderson explains why Mistborn screenplay revision is at 10%
Fans will know that in his weekly update videos, Sanderson uses a progress system with percentage markers he assigns to each active project to give a rough sense of where things stand. The "Mistborn screenplay 2.0" came in low this week, and he was straightforward about the reason.
"First off, the Mistborn screenplay 2.0. I'm going to give this a 10% bing," he said. "This one's kind of hard because I actually haven't started writing the 2.0 yet."
Sanderson shared that what has been happening in the meantime is a back-and-forth with Apple over the direction the revision should take.
"What I've done is I've worked on responses to Apple about how I think we should approach revising the screenplay. I'm sending that to them today," he said, "and then I'm going to fly out and talk over with them what to do, and then we'll be doing the actual revision."
That meeting is the conversation that will determines how the second draft will go. However, Sanderson did not frame it as a setback so much as a necessary part of the process. "It's going to be a little bit of a long and winding road to get the Mistborn screenplay 2.0 done," he said.
He has been consistent throughout that no director or cast will be approached until a screenplay is in a place that both he and Apple are satisfied with, and that screenplays typically take four or five drafts to get there. The second draft has not truly started yet, but this week's meeting is what gets it going.
The author has recently spoken at length about some of the biggest challenges of adapting the story for the big screen in an interview with Collider's Maggie Lovitt.
Separately, Sanderson also confirmed in the weekly video that he is buying the land where Evermore Park once stood in Pleasant Grove, Utah, to expand his Dragonsteel Plaza project. He said the original park's structures cannot be saved but that he has cool things planned for the site.
We'll be on the lookout for more news from Brandon Sanderson, so check back soon for more updates.
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