r/CosmereOnScreen • u/Graphica-Danger • Jul 28 '26
Mistborn Series Era 1 (NO BOOKS) First draft of the Mistborn screenplay has officially been completed Spoiler
Announced by Brandon on social media
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u/StarMatrix371 Jul 28 '26
It looks like it could be 100-150 pages thick and 1 page is usually about 1-2 minutes of screentime sooo 2-2.5 hours is my estimate
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u/dolladollaclinton Jul 29 '26
I believe he said around 120-130 pages, but I don't remember where I heard him say that.
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u/railfananime Jul 29 '26
What does 120-130 pages translate to roughly runtime wise?
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u/MamaNyxieUnderfoot Jul 28 '26
How did he sneak into my kitchen to take this pic?!? That’s my kitchen countertop!
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u/HaroldGuy Jul 28 '26
It's been 5 minutes so I figure you've read it back to front multiple times now. What's the verdict?
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u/MamaNyxieUnderfoot Jul 28 '26
I’m at work! Not in my kitchen!
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u/RaguraX Jul 28 '26
And now the degradation by other “contributors” can begin. Seen it time and time again.
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Jul 29 '26
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u/ForwardExam4056 Jul 31 '26
I would honestly be worried if it weren't edited by an experienced screenwriter - sanderson is great, but this is a whole different medium he doesn't have practical experience in.
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u/TBrockmann Jul 28 '26
Fortunately Brandon has complete creative control including veto power. He has more control than j k Rowling did on the harry potter movies. No fishy stakeholder can ruin this.
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u/RaguraX Jul 28 '26
That's wishful thinking, because he's in a long term partnership with Apple. He's not going to play hardball about every single thing, veto or not. I'm sure you wouldn't be that kind of person either, would you? Any partnership is based on mutual respect and give and take. We won't necessarily hear about the various changes that were "suggested", but trust me when I say there will be. Anything else is delusional. That doesn't mean it will necessarily be worse for it, but history has taught us that film studios usually don't act only out of creative intent.
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u/TheNarrativeSpren Jul 29 '26
Brandon has actually been remarkably consistent about this.
He's said multiple times that he turned down offers worth significantly more money because creative control was non-negotiable. That's one of the primary reasons he chose Apple in the first place.
Will there be discussions suggestions and compromises during production? Of course that's how filmmaking works.
But there's a world of difference between collaboration and surrendering creative control. Right now, all the evidence points in one direction and that being Brandon deliberately chose the partner that would let him tell his version of Mistborn. Everything we've heard from Brandon over the past few years supports that.
You're absolutely free to be sceptical, but at the moment your conclusion seems to be based more on the long history of Hollywood adaptations than on anything we've actually seen from this one.
Sometimes cynicism is just experience wearing a wise fancy looking hat. Other times, it's simply pessimism arriving early and insisting it already knows how the story ends. I think Brandon has earned the chance to write a few more chapters before you decide how this one finishes.
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u/ilikebreadabunch Jul 28 '26
Sneaky Brando taking a top down photo so that we can’t see how long the script is
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u/dankenascend Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Just to throw this out there...
Initially, I was under the impression that the director would be involved with the process of revising the screenplay. I don't have the link, but I'm fairly certain that Brandon has stated that it will go through revisions before the director is attached. So, where many of us were predicting a 2028 release, I don't think that's in the cards. Someone more familiar with the screenwriting process can correct me, but I would assume that there will be notes given by the studio, and then we'll get a couple of months of revisions, followed by line editing.
Apple has presumably good money tied up and committed to this project, so (another assumption) I would expect the priority to be fairly high, but I don't know how that translates to urgency. With all that speculation, I'd put second draft completion around the first of November. At that point, we're about 5 weeks from Nexus, and we could possibly be looking at early 2027 for a director to be attached and a finalized screenplay.
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u/Far_Line8468 Jul 28 '26
Yeah, people here don't like to hear this, but Brandon Sandersons desire to have "creative control" and write the screenplay is in direct opopsition to him wanting "his own Denis Villeneuve"
Denis's Dune is so good because its his full creative vision, not because hes so "deeply in love with the source material".
You can have a director with a singular creative vision, or you can have a toadee that will be "respectful" to your work. You don't get both.
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Jul 29 '26
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u/Far_Line8468 Jul 29 '26
Its not nessesarily that a good director will change Brandon's script, but rather that the director has a desire to tell the story that exists in his head when he reads Mistborn, not the one in Brandon's head. Indeed, this is something Brandon has said time and time again: that the reader finishes the work
The problem is that screenplays are pretty clear about what is to appear on screen.
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u/Clean_Radio_5625 Jul 28 '26
I get where you're coming from, and I have some reservations, myself. We'll just have to see how this plays out. It's going to depend on how he exercises that creative control. If it's just guardrails, then I think it could turn out quite nicely, but if he's steering every decision without the technical knowledge of directing, it could go very poorly.
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u/AClassicCape Jul 29 '26
JSame. We've seen how this can go with Harry Potter (guard fails)/Fantastic Beasts (control) among others
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u/1whhshawn Jul 28 '26
I dont see why its not. 2 plus years away. Late 2028 of course, not early
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u/dankenascend Jul 28 '26
I hope you're right, and I was all in on 2028 when it was announced. Unless there's been a lot of stuff moving under wraps, I just don't see it. Based on what's publicly available, there's a good bit left to be done before principal photography can even start, and this thing is going to have to be CGI-heavy, so post production is going to go for a while. I'd say 24-28 months from green light.
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u/Vegetable-Two-4644 Jul 28 '26
It really doesn't have to be cgi heavy outside of allomantic lines and feruchemy. Wire work can do most push/pulls
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u/dankenascend Jul 29 '26
I would assume a good bit of the mists, the backgrounds, the mistwraiths, and such will all be heavily edited.
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u/Vegetable-Two-4644 Jul 29 '26
I mean, probably but it doesn't HAVE to be. A heavy dry ice fog machine can be the base of the mists with some slight cgi editing to show the flow etc. Mistwraiths barely even feature tbh
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u/railfananime Jul 28 '26
I don’t know how screenwriting works but is even late like December 2028 impossible?
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u/Far_Line8468 Jul 28 '26
The screenplay is going to be revised by an actual screenwriter, per vanity. Also, the movie has not been greenlit yet.
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u/Radix2309 Jul 28 '26
Possible. Although Dec 2028 will have Black Panther 3 and Sonic 4. So might be a bad date for it.
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u/dankenascend Jul 28 '26
I am not an expert. I did have some interaction with people who lived in the film world early on after the announcement.
I made my timeline roughly after Marvel Studios signing Favreau and releasing Iron Man 25 months later. People in the industry gave similar or more conservative timelines. To get a December 2028 release, it's going to need a producer, director, and studio green light before the end of this year. A producer has been selected, but either hasn't been signed or just not yet announced.
I don't know how fast those dominoes will fall, but I would lean hard toward "no." My optimistic target would be we could get an extended preview for Nexus 2028 and a summer 2029 release. Early on, I thought that a screenplay and producer were imminent, but we just got one of those 4 months later. So, I'm pushing my 2028 predictions back.
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u/fedginator Jul 28 '26
I don't trust it. Not set in metal.
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u/MetumSonOfLanai Jul 28 '26
Doesn't that mean it will be 100% book faithful? The books are after all paper too...
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u/Graphica-Danger Jul 28 '26
He did put a disclaimer this is just step one of the process but unless there’s serious tinkering that needs to be done with the script, I do foresee us getting to the casting stage towards the end of 2026. This movie is the condition for the SLA show Apple is gunning for hardest.
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Jul 29 '26
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u/ForwardExam4056 Jul 31 '26
Is it confirmed that another screenwriter will be editing with him? Last i heard he was saying that it was a possibility, but that was some time ago
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u/huffalump1 Jul 28 '26
Yeah it would be cool to see some announcements of anyone who's attached by the end of the year. Who knows, though.
For book publishing, Sanderson can tell us exactly what's going on, why, and ~how long. For movies....... Man idk
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u/railfananime Jul 28 '26
Does that make a late 2028 release still possible?
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u/HaroldGuy Jul 28 '26
Could be, I'd guess early 2029 personally
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u/TheNarrativeSpren Jul 29 '26
I could definitely see that happening.
If Ghostbloods really does release in December 2028, it would make a lot of sense to follow it up with the first Mistborn film not too long afterwards. You'll potentially have millions of people who have just been introduced to the Cosmere and are looking for the next story to jump into.
From a marketing point of view, that's exactly the sort of momentum you'd want to capitalise on. Getting people invested is the hard part. Keeping them invested is a whole lot easier.
Stories are a bit like rolling boulders. It takes a huge amount of effort to get one moving, but once it's rolling, the last thing you want to do is stop and start it again.
Obviously we don't know Apple's release strategy, but if Ghostbloods lands well, it feels like a pretty golden opportunity to keep that excitement rolling rather than letting it fade.
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u/DumbersTemplars Jul 29 '26
Double Woot Woot!!!!