Brandon Sanderson Completes First Draft of ‘Mistborn’ Movie Script as Adaptation Reaches Major Milestone

After years of starts, stops and behind-the-scenes negotiations, Brandon Sanderson‘s long-awaited Mistborn movie has taken another significant step toward becoming a reality. The bestselling fantasy author revealed in his blog’s latest Weekly Update that he has completed the first draft of the screenplay for the planned Mistborn feature film.

BRANDON SANDERSON: “First draft of the Mistborn screenplay is at—bing—100%. Congratulations. You can check my socials. We posted a picture of the screenplay that I printed off once I finished it. This is the rough draft [and] screenplays go through a lot of drafts… the first draft involved lots of times of me looking at it. This is an early step in a long process. So just want to warn you before people go on and be expecting Mistborn‘s movie soon, there’s still a lot of work to do, but getting the screenplay done is a huge deal for me. I really like how it turned out. I’m quite proud of it.”

First published in 2006, Mistborn is one of modern fantasy’s most acclaimed series. Set in a world where the Dark Lord has already won, the novels (of which there are seven so far) follow an unlikely band of thieves who attempt the impossible: overthrowing a seemingly immortal ruler who has controlled the world for a thousand years. Combining a meticulously crafted metal-based magic system with heist storytelling, political intrigue and epic fantasy, the series has sold millions of copies worldwide and remains one of Sanderson’s signature works.

‘Mistborn’ origins

When approaching what would gradually become a fantasy epic, his primary goal was to create something that truly felt different from other fantasy novels already out in the world. 

BRANDON SANDERSON: “I knew that I wanted a hallmark of my career to be distinctive settings. I’ve always felt that fantasy should be the most unique of all genres. I had grown up reading a lot of wonderful books, don’t get me wrong, that had pretty generic settings. They had felt trapped in this idea of a medieval European kingdom that just felt like it could have been from our world, and I wanted something that didn’t. That if you walked outside, you saw a vista that just could not be from Earth.”

As he reflects on it, there were several elements that resulted in the creation of Mistborn, one of which actually stemmed from a fog.

BRANDON SANDERSON: “One time during this drive, I hit a fog bank at about 70 miles an hour. When you’re driving at that speed and you see the fog, fog almost seems alive; you see variations in it much more strongly. You see it ebbing and flowing and it feels like you’re swimming through it and it’s a current. Rather than you moving, it feels like it’s moving at times and sweeping around you.”

“That moment is when I came up with the idea for Mistborn. That moment’s when I said, ‘Ooh, I love this visual. I love this feeling. I love being in the fog and feeling like I don’t know what’s around the next corner.’ Fantasy is about immersion. Fantasy is about exploration and I couldn’t think of anything more invigorating than the idea of something familiar like a city being made instead into something strange and mysterious.”

Adding to all of this was a visit to the Washington National Cathedral at night, when the stained-glass windows are illuminated from the inside.

BRANDON SANDERSON: “They had done this wonderful thing where they were shining lights onto the stained glass windows, so they seemed to glow as you were approaching. They were shining out into the night, these radiant, beautiful kaleidoscopes of color. That image stuck with me and I said, ‘What if you were looking at these beautiful edifices and they were shining lights out the windows onto this swirling, writhing, alive mist that moved through the city?’ And that is what solidified the idea of what became the noble keeps in Mistborn.” 

“I was positing a world where religion was something different to these people. They had their God, the Lord Ruler, living among them. And I figured that having this echo of cathedrals, this religious symbol from our world, being something that had been co-opted by the nobility to live in and have parties in, really would get across this idea of religion being something very different to these people.”

In the novels, volcanic ash constantly falls from the sky like snow. Instead of white flakes, the landscape is covered in fine black ash that settles on cities, fields, rooftops and people, with residents routinely sweeping it away while accepting it as part of everyday life.  

BRANDON SANDERSON: “The ash is the third real pillar of where Mistborn came from. This idea of a constant falling of ash… I had studied the eruption of Mount St. Helens and that image of ash falling, the idea of Pompeii where the ash came and then just didn’t stop, had always stuck in my mind and been one of the strongest and most striking images from my schooling.”

But there was still more in terms of inspirations, one of which actually came from the greatest fantasy trilogies ever, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. 

BRANDON SANDERSON: “What if Frodo had gotten all the way to Mordor and Sauron had been waiting for him and taken the Ring back? And I figured, echoing the visuals of something like Mordor, echoing the visuals of a world where the Dark Lord won, what would it look like? For me, a book is never one idea. The book is always an intersection of ideas. The idea of mist wasn’t enough, but the idea of mist moving, mist at night, dynamic, powerful buildings full of glowing stained glass. The idea of mist at night and ash during the day where the hero had failed and the Dark Lord had won, those ideas together are what mixed and became the brew that was eventually Mistborn.”

Teaming with Apple

The most recent Mistborn update follows a landmark announcement earlier this year that Apple acquired the rights to Sanderson’s Cosmere universe, with Mistborn planned as a feature film and The Stormlight Archive in development as a television series. The deal is notable not only because it finally secured a major studio partner after years of unsuccessful attempts, but because it also gives Sanderson an unusually high level of creative involvement as writer, producer and consultant. Despite that, at this point there is still no announced director, cast or release date. But, as the author has stated, he will keep readers in the loop as often as he’s allowed to do so.

When it comes to Mistborn, there is something poetic in the fact that its origins are never far from his mind.

BRANDON SANDERSON: “Every time I pass that stretch of road, I think, ‘Here’s where a story began and here’s where imagination sparked.’”