Brandon Sanderson
Re: Cyberpunk Mistborn for /u/GalvusGalvoid. I think this is more likely than not, but I don't want to absolutely promise it until we get further along.
Re: White sand for /u/Wubdor, /u/snoogle20, and others. Also very likely in the next few years, as I'm confident after my review that I can make it work as a solid cosmere book of current quality. However, I did have trouble forcing myself to revise it at speed after such a long, demanding revision process on Stormlight. So I'm not committing to a date yet. I perhaps should have said that.
Re: Brandon needs to be edited more. (/u/mattykingkillah92 mentioned this with a very helpfully constructive tone, and it's an idea I see popping up elsewhere.) I assure you, I'm edited more now than I ever have been--so I don't believe editing isn't the issue some people are having. Tress and Sunlit, for example, were written not long ago, and are both quite tight as a narrative. Both were edited less than Stormlight 5. Writing speed isn't the problem either, as the fastest I've ever been required to write was during the Gathering Storm / Way of Kings era, and those are books that are generally (by comparison) not talked about the same way as (say) Rhythm of War.
The issue is story scope expansion--Stormlight in particular has a LOT going on. I can see some people wishing for the tighter narratives of the first two books, but there are things I can do with this kind of story I couldn't do with those. I like a variety, and this IS the story I want to tell here, despite being capable of doing it other ways. Every scene was one I wanted in the book, and sometimes I like to do different things, for different readers. I got the same complaints about the way I did the Bridge Four individual viewpoints in Oathbringer, for example. There were lots of suggestions I cut them during editorial and early reads, and I refused not because there is no validity to these ideas, but because this was the story I legitimately wanted to tell.
That said, we DID lose Moshe as an editor, largely, and he WAS excellent at line editing in particular. I see a complaint about Wind and Truth having more than average "Show then Tell" moments (which is my term for when you repeat the idea too many times, not for reinforcement, but to write your way into a concept--and do it weakly as you're discovering it, so your subconscious has you do it again a few paragraphs or pages later and do it well, then you forget to cut the first one) and this is something I'll have to look at. Plus, I feel that we have been rushed as a team ever SINCE Gathering Storm. That's a long time to be in semi-crisis mode in getting books ready the last few months before publication. We largely, as a company, do a good job of avoiding crunch time for everyone except a little during the year, depending on the department. (The convention, for example, is going to be stressful for the events time, while Christmas for the shipping team, and I don't know that Peter or I could ever not stress and overwork a little at the lead-up to a book turn in.) However, part of the reason I wanted to slow things down a little is to give everyone a little more time--and hopefully less stress--so I can't completely discount all of these comments out-of-hand, and I do appreciate the conversation.
Re: Someone else buying Mistborn film rights and all materials, as /u/TalnOnBraize suggested, then putting it back into production. This is not impossible, and is one thing I do intend to explore, but it's a long shot. One of the issues with Hollywood tends to be that whenever someone takes over on a project, they throw away everything that came before, because they want to do it their way. This is understandable, to an extent, but it causes HUGE budget inflation. So for this to work, you'd need an executive team AND director who both want to keep the material AS IS and not start over. Tough to find in Hollywood, though it is something I would like to do, if the right partner were willing. I think a lot of the work we did was excellent...though our Vin (still not telling you) is now in her mid 20's, not her late teens, as we spent five years in development. So...yeah, tough, but not impossible, to make work.
Re: Isles of the Emberdark shipping next fall by /u/Regula96. While this was explained during the campaign, let me explain a little further. Normally, from finishing editing to a book being out on shelves, publishing likes to have two years. That's what they did during the early parts of my career for me, but as soon as publishing a Sanderson book made the bottom line go BING, they took every project of mine in the line and pushed it out as soon as they could.
This moved us from two years+ to prepare, to often the final draft being turned in mere months before publication. (Reference earlier in this reply, where I talked about this.) Shadows of Self and Bands were an example of this mentality--I wrote one by surprise, and turned them both in, thinking my team would get a break by me getting ahead for them. Then, Tor published them three months apart, instead of waiting a year between.
Peter, Isaac, and I (who mostly work on this kind of production) have been all together trying to resist this the last...well, decade or so, and are finally making headway. Isles of the Emberdark, for example, has given the editorial team a non-stressful deadline. Still challenging, but workable without a single bit of overtime. That meant that me turning it in this July has it ready early next year sometime to be sent out for printing, which these days can take as long as eight months.
So...we'll see how long it takes to get back to us, and ship as soon as we have them. There could be an argument for an earlier ebook release, but I'd personally rather wait until we have print books soon, so that people who prefer to read in print aren't in danger of being spoiled--and also, so we can manage release schedules better.
Re: Horneater. I didn't mention a publication date in my list at the end of the article, but I'm tentatively guessing summer 2027. My schedule has third draft late 2026, and six months should be plenty to get it ready after that. With that, as a novella, we'd be more likely to push out an ebook and audiobook first, with a print version to follow for those who want it. But it could also end up in one of our crowdfunding campaigns.
fishy512
I’m going to write the rest of my question knowing you understandably can’t directly respond (if at all) given NDA’s (and you have way more experience and inside baseball knowledge than me and most of us on here about the greenlight process)—but given the current state of the movie side of the entertainment industry and how new unadapted IP is actively being stalled and slashed, would an episodic television adaptation of Mistborn be more favorable/realistic to you (and producers) at this point? The large ensemble cast, scope of world building, multiple important story set pieces, etc I just cannot shake the feeling that a 3 hour movie run time would be rushing from point to point trying to cover as much ground as possible while trimming away important story and character moments/development that made Mistborn—well, Mistborn.
Brandon Sanderson
I can tell you that it would be much easier to get a Mistborn television show off the ground than a film. But here's my problem: what television properties, especially on premium cable, have made lasting impact on popular culture? Take a popular and well made show like Shadow and Bone, and compare it to an okay film series like, say, Maze Runner. Do a google trends search on that right now, if you want.
The audience of streamers is so fragmented, and people double-screen so often, that things just don't get traction very often. You can even take something fantastic like arcane, and ask if your grandparents/parents would watch it. My mother would never be interested--but she went to the Lord of the Rings films because they were EVENTS.
Beyond that, budgets there are getting slashed in streaming too. Do we really want to make a Mistborn series on a budget, to just be held up beside other shows getting five times the budget?
It's a tough position. Plus, I think Mistborn is the only one of my my mainline books that could be adapted to a feature.
But this could change for me at any moment. I've given serious thought to it over the years. I will say our plan for what we were doing was hybrid: a giant, big budget, first film followed by a season of television covering the year between books one and two which would include all the cut content from film one that is in the books. Movie two would follow book two, then a season between.
Key actors were signed for both film and television season. But alas, we just could not get the greenlight. We picked the absolutely wrong time to be pitching a big, new, expensive IP to Hollywood. Hopefully, with things looking up this year, it will go better moving forward.