Video Game adaptations have come a long way from their humble beginnings, and sink or swim, they’ve become projects worth following. Shows like Fallout have shown that big studios can put out great pieces tying directly into the canon of existing universes, while Castlevania is a showcase of just how strong alternate retellings can be.
A24’s Elden Ring film is amongst the most anticipated video game adaptations of all time, with a grand scale, exciting production, and the biggest budget of any A24 project ever at $200 million. A24 has been on a hot streak, with massive successes like The Backrooms giving them plenty of money to throw around for a huge production like Elden Ring.
Western and Eastern Fantasy Combined
Elden Ring is another world that uses FromSoftware’s fantastic balance of Western and Eastern fantasy trappings to devastating effect. Much of the world-building and characters were infamously written by George R.R. Martin, author of the Song of Ice and Fire series. As such, the world of the Lands Between is the most lived-in of the Souls settings, making it prime material for an alternate media adaptation.
A24’s great treatment of other existing properties brings hope that the company will be respectful with the source material while also giving the team behind it the creative freedom needed to pull this off. Their trust in and patience with the Backroom’s first-time director, Kane Parsons, is credited as a large reason why the film stands so strongly, and the whopping $200 million budget makes it clear they’re confident in the project while understanding just how much of an undertaking it will be.
A24 has been on a hot streak, with massive successes like The Backrooms giving them plenty of money to throw around for a huge production like Elden Ring.
Their experience with smaller-scale films makes Elden Ring a massive gamble, one that makes it clear they’ve been stacking the deck over the course of years now. A24 has been remarkably tight-lipped about the film, with the budget itself revealed in a Wall Street Journal article covering a totally different film.
In that article, the director for A24’s upcoming film Telluride, Julie Huntsinger, described A24 as a “Goldilocks company. Just the right amount of people doing just the right amount of things.” With the modern film and gaming industry so bogged down by bloat and corporate politicking, it’s so refreshing to hear about projects with genuine promise getting the care they need, without setting the team behind it on fire to meet a deadline.
The Future of Gaming Adaptations
After the struggles of the hotly anticipated Street Fighter film, we’ve been given a reminder of just how sloppily massive gaming icons can be treated by the larger monolith of the entertainment industry. Most bad adaptations are the product of one of two mistakes: hubris and boredom.
Plenty of middling films, adaptation or not, are caused by overeager production biting off more than it can chew. Going over budget, simply being unable to put out what you thought you could, is the easiest mistake to make in the world; plenty of live-action adaptations specifically fail to match the charm of their original worlds because of this.
Confidence isn’t an issue, but overconfidence can kill. Alex Garland, the man set to direct Elden Ring, already has experience writing and producing films that use larger-than-life production to deliver on their promises well.
His screenplay credit on the Dredd adaptation has me particularly excited. While Dredd won’t be winning any film awards, it captured the original feeling of the comics perfectly, making me very confident that Garland will be able to step up and show a larger audience the Lands Between well.
- Released
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February 25, 2022
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
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