Elden Ring is the crowning achievement of video game developer From Software, a sprawling fantasy game where players explore a dark and dangerous world full of gods and monsters. Typical for a From game, the story mostly plays out in the background while the player soaks in the atmosphere and tries not to die. But there's definitely enough story there for a movie, if it's handled in the right way. Now, according to Deadline, who know who's going to try and try and handle it: Alex Garland, the writer and director behind films like Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War and Warfare, which is in theaters now. He also wrote Dredd and the classic zombie flick 28 Days Later; he's also working on sequel movies, starting with 28 Years Later.
This is an impressive resume. I don't know quite who the perfect writer-director would be for a From Software adaptation, because there's never been one before, but I think Garland is a good choice. The Elden Ring movie is being produced by A24, a studio known for making classy, daring, dark pictures in a variety of genres, from Hereditary to Moonlight to Everything Everywhere All At Once. Again, it's a good pick.
Producers will include Peter Rice, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich, Vince Gerardia and George R.R. Martin, the author of the Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy books, turned by HBO into Game of Thrones. Martin helped develop the story of the original video game. It does kind of sound like him: Elden Ring takes place in a dark fantasy world where a family of demigods have been fighting each other in a brutal war of succession. The player character arrives after the war has been raging for awhile, the landscape blasted and hope in short supply. In the game, the player character is a cipher; will the movie fill them out? Or maybe it'll just focus on the demigods? Again, this is uncharted territory.
A new Elden Ring spinoff game called Elden Ring Nightreign is coming out on May 30, so this news is well timed. Nightreign is mostly focused on a multiplayer experience whereas the original is more of a solo affair. There's no release date as of yet for Elden Ring movie; considering the other stuff Garland has on his plate, I wouldn't count on seeing it for a while. We also don't know anything about casting, but we have plenty of ideas on that score:
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