eight Brandon – Apple TV is officially developing multiple Cosmere projects in January 2026, with Brandon Sanderson writing the Mistborn screenplay and holding unprecedented creative control. With that momentum, eight lesser-known Sanderson titles—from Elantris to Yumi and th
When Apple TV announced a landmark deal in January 2026 to bring Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe to film and television, it wasn’t just another studio pitch—it was the kind of moment that flips a career from cult favorite to global obsession.
A Mistborn movie and The Stormlight Archive TV series are both officially in development. Sanderson himself is writing the Mistborn screenplay and has unprecedented creative control over both projects. And the buzz doesn’t stop there: Sanderson’s young adult sci-fi Skyward is also heading to television.
Three major adaptations in the works at once is remarkable for any author. For Sanderson, it almost feels like the beginning. With more than 70 books published and a backlist full of wildly different storytelling—intimate character studies. gonzo genre mashups. and everything in between—this is exactly the kind of time Hollywood seems hungry to mine: stories with rich premises and the passionate fanbases that studios dream about.
Some of these titles could work as a single film. Others could kickstart an entire franchise.
Elantris (2005)
Elantris is Sanderson’s actual debut novel, the first book he ever published. It’s also the one that many fans “skip because it came before Mistborn made him famous.” The pitch, though, has always been cinematic in the way it dares you to look away.
The story is set in the kingdom of Arelon, where a magical transformation called the Shaod used to randomly select ordinary people and turn them into Elantrians. These glowing, near-divine beings lived in the city of Elantris and served their world as healers, builders, and gods.
Then, 10 years ago, the magic broke. The Shaod still claims people—but instead of elevating them. it traps them in bodies that feel every wound but can never heal. They feel hunger but can never be satisfied. The afflicted are thrown behind the walls of Elantris, which has rotted from a paradise into a decaying prison. They cannot die. They can only endure.
Prince Raoden of Arelon wakes up one morning and discovers he has the Shaod. His father secretly exiles him to Elantris rather than reveal the truth, declaring him dead. His betrothed. Princess Sarene of neighboring Teod. arrives to find her groom supposedly gone and realizes quickly that something is wrong at court.
Circling both Raoden and Sarene is Hrathen, a calculating high priest from an expansionist empire. He has been sent to convert Arelon by any means necessary before the emperor’s armies arrive.
It has political intrigue. a rotting city full of tormented souls. and a love story between two people who have never actually met. It’s also a mystery about why the magic failed in the first place. The fact that Elantris still hasn’t been optioned feels like an oversight that’s getting louder as the industry sharpens its appetite for Sanderson.
Warbreaker (2009)
Warbreaker has one of the most genuinely clever magic systems in all of Sanderson’s work, and it’s told through characters that manage to be entertaining without sanding down the edge.
The world of Nalthis runs on something called BioChromatic Breath. Every person is born with one unit of Breath, a life force that can be given away or collected. The more Breath a person accumulates, the more powerful they become.
People can “Awaken” inanimate objects by giving them commands, sense people nearby, perceive color with supernatural vividness, and more.
The ruling class of Hallandren are the Returned—people who died in moments of heroism and came back as literal gods, sustained by Breath donated by worshippers each week. Awakeners drain the color from objects as they use them.
Into this world come two sisters: Vivenna, the eldest princess of Idris, raised her entire life knowing she would one day be sent to marry the terrifying God King of Hallandren. Siri, the free-spirited younger sister, gets sent in her place when their father loses his nerve.
Vivenna follows to rescue Siri, only to get caught up in mercenary politics and conspiracy. Siri enters the God King’s palace and starts discovering that the man everyone fears might not be who the world thinks he is.
Lightsong appears too: a god who actively does not want to be a god, spending much of his time making sarcastic quips and trying to figure out what he actually believes. There’s also Vasher, a mysterious figure who carries a sentient, deeply unsettling black sword called Nightblood.
The result is political fantasy with wit and romance that earns its place. As a standalone film, it could be spectacular.
The Rithmatist (2013)
The Rithmatist is strange in the best way. It would make an absolutely wild animated feature or live-action series for younger audiences—while adults who read it tend to love it just as much.
The setting is an alternate-history America called the United Isles, where the continent is made up of islands instead of a landmass. Technology is clockpunk, with gears and springs powering everything.
The twist is that some people—chosen through a religious ritual—are gifted with the ability to practice Rithmatics. This magic system is based entirely on drawing geometric shapes in chalk.
Rithmatists can draw lines of force as shields, lines of warding that repel enemies, and two-dimensional creatures called Chalklings that come to life and follow their creator’s commands.
The story follows Joel, a non-Rithmatist student at one of the country’s eight Rithmatic academies. He attends on a scholarship as the son of a chalkmaker, yet he’s obsessed with Rithmatics despite having no ability to perform it himself.
When Rithmatist students start disappearing from the school—leaving behind unrecognizable chalk patterns—Joel is pulled into the investigation alongside the eccentric Professor Fitch and a talented but unfocused Rithmatist girl named Melody.
It’s a YA mystery-fantasy with a procedural structure that would translate beautifully to screen. The magic system is so visual—literally drawn on floors and walls—that the dueling sequences could look unlike anything audiences have seen. It’s also the rare Sanderson book where the hero has no powers at all.
Steelheart (The Reckoners Trilogy) (2013)
Steelheart is the one that has come closest to a screen adaptation. It was optioned years ago, but nothing materialized.
The story begins 10 years ago, with a mysterious cosmic event called Calamity appearing in the sky. Shortly after, ordinary people began developing extraordinary powers. The public called them Epics. Every single one of them, without exception, became a tyrant.
The Epics now rule cities like feudal lords. Chicago has been renamed Newcago and is controlled by Steelheart, who is considered completely invulnerable. Nobody has ever made him bleed. Ordinary people live as subjects under god-like bullies, and there is no superhero coming to save them.
Except there’s an underground group called the Reckoners—regular humans with no powers—who study Epics’ secret weaknesses and assassinate them one by one.
18-year-old David wants to join them because Steelheart killed his father. David has spent a decade obsessively cataloguing Epics, and he knows something that once made Steelheart bleed.
It’s an inverted superhero story built for an era of superhero fatigue. The “heroes” with powers are the villains. The drama comes from regular human beings using ingenuity to punch far above their weight. And the trilogy has a full story arc with escalating stakes and an affecting conclusion.
The Emperor’s Soul (2012)
The Emperor’s Soul is the shortest entry on this list, but it won the Hugo Award for Best Novella. It’s frequently cited as some of Sanderson’s finest writing—and it feels especially overdue for a screen adaptation.
It could be a limited series of four or five episodes, or maybe even a tight film. Sanderson has also written a screenplay for it.
Shai is an artist-criminal who specializes in creating Forgeries: magical stamps that can rewrite the history of an object or a person. Stamp a door and you can convince reality it was always made of different wood or always painted red. Stamp a person and you can rewrite their soul.
Shai’s work carries deep philosophical implications. A forged soul isn’t fake exactly. It’s a different version of who someone could have been given different circumstances. It’s as real as any other self.
Shai has been captured and faces execution. Before she can be killed. she’s brought a proposition: the Emperor of the Rose Empire is left brain-dead after a failed assassination attempt. His advisors need Shai to Forge him a new soul. one so convincing that no one will know the difference while they buy time to figure out what to do.
Shai has 100 days. The advisors will monitor her constantly. They plan to execute her the moment she’s done regardless.
To reconstruct the Emperor’s soul, she has to learn who he actually was—his childhood, his loves, his regrets, and his secret shames. It’s a small story with enormous emotional weight. For TV, the contained premise and rich interiority could support something like a prestige-drama limited series.
The Alloy of Law (The Wax & Wayne Series) (2011)
Most people know Mistborn as the story of Vin, a thief who overthrows a dark lord using metal-based magic. Sanderson also wrote a second Mistborn era set 300 years later, and it’s arguably even more fun to read.
In the world of Scadrial, industrialization has arrived. What was once a world of feudal oppression is entering something like the 1890s. with trains. electric lights. newspapers. and urban crime. The old Allomantic and Feruchemical magic systems still exist, now coexisting with guns and politics and high society.
It’s a fantasy Western that turns into a fantasy crime thriller.
Waxillium Ladrian is a Twinborn. He can both Push on metal objects, giving himself jetpack-like mobility, and alter his own weight at will. He spent 20 years as a lawman in the frontier Roughs before being dragged back to the city to run his noble house.
Then the criminal gang called the Vanishers starts robbing trains and kidnapping women. Wax reluctantly picks his guns back up along with quick-talking sidekick Wayne, who can create bubbles that slow time, and a sharp-witted engineer named Marasi.
It’s funny, action-packed, and genuinely clever. With the Mistborn adaptation in development, the Wax & Wayne books could serve as a companion franchise targeting a more detective-adventure tone in fantasy.
Tress of the Emerald Sea (2023)
Tress of the Emerald Sea was written as a gift for Sanderson’s wife, inspired by her dissatisfaction with Princess Buttercup’s passivity in The Princess Bride. It’s one of the most purely joyful books in Sanderson’s catalog, and it has a cinematic quality that practically begs for adaptation.
On the planet of Lumar, there are no water oceans. Instead, the seas are made of aether spores, and a single drop of water can trigger a catastrophic reaction—making sailing the most dangerous profession imaginable.
Different seas contain different spores with different properties. Tress lives on a small island in the Emerald Sea, collects cups from sailors who pass through, and has a simple happy life. Her best friend is Charlie, the duke’s son, who tells her stories from around the world.
Charlie’s father forces him on a voyage to find a bride. The voyage goes wrong: Charlie is captured by the feared Sorceress of the Midnight Sea, and everyone assumes he’s simply gone.
Tress doesn’t accept that. She stows away on a ship, falls in with a crew of pirates, learns to use spore-based magic, and crosses the most dangerous ocean in the world to save the person she loves.
The book is narrated by Hoid, a recurring figure in Sanderson’s Cosmere who appears across many books. Hoid’s voice is witty and warm, with gently self-aware humor that gives the story an almost Pixar-like quality. The visual potential is enormous: seas of glowing emerald spores. islands floating in toxic clouds. and a Midnight Sea that reacts to light.
As an animated film or even a live-action one, it could be a fantasy adventure for all ages.
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (2023)
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter might be the most visually striking book on this list—and it would benefit most from a skilled director with a strong visual identity.
It reads like a Studio Ghibli film crossed with a Korean drama, and it wears those influences openly.
The story follows two people in two worlds with no connection—until suddenly there is one.
Yumi is a yoki-hijo, a kind of traveling holy woman in a world of sun, stone gardens, and spirits. Her entire life is built around stacking stones into intricate. gravity-defying formations to summon benevolent spirits that help the communities she visits. She’s revered and isolated, having never made a decision for herself.
Painter, who goes by Nikaro, lives in Kilahito, a city encased in permanent darkness lit by neon hion lines. His job is to patrol the streets every night and capture nightmares—semi-sentient creatures of fear that can devastate a city block—that seep out of the shroud.
One day, Yumi and Painter wake up in each other’s bodies. Neither understands why. Neither can communicate with the world around them in the other’s form. They have to coach each other, ghost-like, through tasks they’ve never performed.
What begins as a strange body-swap romance slowly deepens into something more unsettling as both realize their worlds may not be as separate as they appear. The truth underneath everything is genuinely heartbreaking and involves a machine that has been running a centuries-long deception.
The contrast between Yumi’s sunlit world and Painter’s neon-lit darkness would be extraordinary on screen. Among all the books on this list, it’s perhaps the most emotionally affecting—and the one most likely to make you cry.
In a different kind of story, it would be tempting to treat this as pure wish-list fandom.
But with Cosmere projects officially in development in January 2026—plus Mistborn’s screenplay already on Sanderson’s desk—this doesn’t read like a far-off fantasy. It reads like a set of doors already opening. Any one of these eight could be the next great fantasy franchise.
Brandon Sanderson Cosmere adaptations Apple TV deal January 2026 Mistborn screenplay The Stormlight Archive TV series Elantris Warbreaker The Rithmatist Steelheart The Emperor's Soul The Alloy of Law Tress of the Emerald Sea Yumi and the Nightmare Painter