The Elden Ring live-action film’s production is now underway, and if you ask us, Alex Garland is the best director for the job.
In case you missed it, this new Elden Ring movie was announced last year. At the time, Alex Garland was confirmed to be the film’s director, with A24 co-producing alongside Bandai Namco Filmworks.
It has been nearly a year since the film’s announcement, and now, it has officially entered production, as confirmed by Bandai Namco. Along with the start of filming, the announcement also revealed the film’s March 2028 release date, as well as its main cast.
The film’s confirmed cast members include:
- Kit Connor (Warfare, Heartstopper)
- Ben Whishaw (Skyfall, Paddington)
- Cailee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus, Civil War)
- Tom Burke (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Black Bag)
- Havana Rose Liu (Bottoms)
- Sonoya Mizuno (Ex Machina)
- Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes)
- Ruby Cruz (Willow, Bottoms)
- Nick Offerman (The Last of Us)
- John Hodgkinson
- Jefferson Hall
- Emma Laird
- Peter Serafinowicz
It’s fair to say that Elden Ring is a tough game to adapt into a movie. After all, it’s hard to imagine its massive scale and epic fights being done justice in live-action. Plus, there’s also the fact that, while it has deep lore, the game’s story doesn’t explain much of what’s exactly going on; you’ll need to piece together the events yourself and form your own interpretation. Given these challenges, Garland is the perfect director for the job.
For those unfamiliar, Garland has directed plenty of critically acclaimed films, including Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Civil War. He was also the writer of all the 28 Days Later movies. More than these, though, Garland is no stranger to the world of video games, as he has worked on the stories of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and DmC: Devil May Cry.
Yes, that means Garland is himself a gamer. In fact, Garland has played Elden Ring, and he enjoyed it enough that he got into talks with A24 for the development of a live-action adaptation. What happened was that Garland wrote a spec script (aka a non-commissioned screenplay) and added forty pages of imagery to accompany it. After this, A24 flew Garland to Japan to meet with FromSoftware. Soon, FromSoftware signed an agreement, which likely meant that they were impressed with the script and Garland’s vision for the film.
Aside from Garland and A24’s impressive track record, the Elden Ring movie also promises to be large in scale, as it has an over USD 100 million budget. While it’s not as big as other Hollywood blockbusters, this is one of A24’s most expensive movies.
Given all of these, we have high hopes that this adaptation will do the game justice. Of course, we’re not expecting a straight adaptation of the game’s story. Instead, we expect this to be a prequel, so that demigods in the game are highlighted. Hopefully that’s the case, as we’d love to see what the likes of pre-Shattering Marika and Radahn would look like on the big screen.
The Elden Ring live-action film directed by Alex Garland will be released on March 3, 2028.