Getting a movie adaptation of their books isn’t just a perennial dream of writers. Spend any length of time in online reader circles, and you’ll soon hear multiple fans asking when they can expect to see their favorite books by their top authors on the silver screen.
As most of those authors have pointed out—much to readers’ chagrin—they have precious little say regarding when or even if Hollywood will adapt their work. Standard publishing contracts have long accounted for every right associated with a given book, and movie rights are often viewed as the sweetest plum. So the second an author signs over the rights to a book, primary decision making authority for exercising those rights goes to the publisher.
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The takeaway is that in a the vast majority of cases, a book’s author lacks the muscle to get a movie made on demand. Not even epic fantasy king Brandon Sanderson is exempt from that rule.
Author Brandon Sanderson is one of the biggest writers in the sci-fi/fantasy genre today, but the movie adaptation of his Mistborn series has seemingly stalled. Beginning with the release of 2006’s The Final Empire, Sanderson’s Mistborn Saga concerns a band of Allomancers, people who can burn metals, as they use their powers to overthrow an evil Empire that has ruled for thousands of years. Like the best fantasy scribes before him, Sanderson packed his Cosmere universe with copious details that make the stories feel more real, engaging, and fleshed out.
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In what is perhaps the most disheartening news for fans who have been following the movie’s development for years, author and current screenwriter Brandon Sanderson has revealed that development on the Mistborn movie script is stalled (via Winter Is Coming). In his yearly “State of the Sanderson” address in December 2023, the prolific fantasy writer revealed that “The Mistborn film has been in development but has run into some hiccups and is on pause for now.”
How long that pause will last is unknown, and it doesn’t bode well for the project that has languished in development hell for years on end. The reason for the delay is rather vague, but Sanderson did mention he has “basically put everything else on hold, despite interest, as I decide on a strategy.” Mistborn is still a big priority, even as his adventures in video games, and his ever-expanding literary endeavors, roll on.
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Brandon Sanderson’s latest update on the development of the Mistborn script is anything but hopeful, but it is hardly the first time the project has hit a snag. Sanderson first optioned the Mistborn books in 2010, but the property changed hands in 2016 when DMG Entertainment got ahold of Sanderson’s entire Cosmere universe (via Variety). In an attempt to adapt the first novel, The Final Empire, DMG initially hired F. Scott Frazier to pen the screenplay, but those plans fell through.
The series is still presumably still optioned by DMG, but news has ground to a halt as development stagnated across the last few years of the 2010s and the early part of the 2020s. Brandon Sanderson himself was brought on to write the screenplay after Frazier’s departure, but little has come in the nearly half a decade since the author was tapped.
Related: Neopatron Brandon
With Hollywood’s financial woes continuing unabated, one would think that adapting a popular series of books with a massive audience by the all-time Kickstarter king would be obvious.
When not even King Brandon can get a movie made, it would seem that Hollywood has lost the plot.
Readers can take heart in the knowledge that Neopatronage is a viable option for movies, too; not just books.
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