Brandon Sanderson seems keen for the Mistborn film to be live-action for this reason.

In the world of fantasy novels, Brandon Sanderson is one of the big modern names. While he may not have the lyrical finesse of Patrick Rothfuss or the world-building of J.R.R. Tolkien, he is inarguably one of the most revered authors today. The man puts out a couple of mammoth-sized books a year — often to fan acclaim. He’s finished up The Wheel of Time, created the world of Mistborn, and is approaching the halfway point of The Stormlight Archive. And those aren’t the only series he has.

My point is it’s only a matter of time until his work gets adapted for the screen. Be it big, small, live-action, or animated, we will see a Brandon Sanderson book come to live at some point. The author has given us updates in the past on the progress, and most recently, he discussed working on his own screenplay for Mistborn.

In a recent livestream, he delved a bit into the details. At present, he isn’t working on it due to his novel obligations, but when he returns, he will be working on a treatment. He fully plans to write the first draft of the script before handing it off to a veteran screenwriter to make it work better. He then discussed the possibility of us getting an animated Mistborn project over a live-action one. 

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“Animation is not off the table, even though I would really like to do live-action,” Sanderson said. But why does he have such a preference for live-action over animation? “Just because I think that our chances of doing Stormlight live-action are much lower and our chances of doing something animated or much higher, just because Stormlight has so many weird things going on like spren and the storyline being such that it is.”

Sanderson has a point there. I’m in the middle of Oathbringer, and the deeper I get into the series, the more difficult it seems to adapt. From the differences in cultures to the very alien world itself, it’d be a hell of a task to realize The Stormlight Archive in live-action. 

In the same livestream, Sanderson goes on to say that if they were to go live-action with The Stormlight Archive, they would likely have to go with Asian actors. However, the problem with that is that the skin color of Alethi in the story is darker than most Asian people. In essence, there is no real one-to-one equivalent of one race in Roshar versus a race on Earth. This is another reason he believes it may be easier realized in animated form. And if that one has to be animated, he’d like to make Mistborn live-action.

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And, for what it’s worth, I do think Mistborn is a series that is a better fit for a live-action film than Stormlight. Sure, it may be expensive, but it’s much easier to realize in both its world and more straightforward narrative. In fact, more than any of his series, I see Mistborn as the most accessible and the one with the most live-action potential. May as well run with that as best as you can, right?

How do you feel about Brandon Sanderson wanting live-action over animation for Mistborn? Let us know in the comments down below!

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SOURCE: Brandon Sanderson