If you were to ask me, first, what my favourite game of the last five years has been, and then what game from the last five years I think would be most difficult to adapt into a movie, I'd give you the same answer for both: Elden Ring.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion might be my favourite game from my childhood, but Elden Ring pushes it very close in the overall rankings, and some huge news just filtered out about it. Bandai Namco, the game's publisher, and A24, the hit indie film label, just announced what had been rumoured recently – there's an Elden Ring movie on the way.
It's going to be written and directed by Alex Garland, famous for hits like Ex Machina, Annihilation and Civil War, and we don't know much more than that at this stage.
Happily, though, some Reddit users pulled up a Q&A thread that Garland participated in recently to promote his latest movie, Warfare. In it, Garland at one point mentioned his love of Elden Ring, confirming that he was playing its expansion Shadow of the Erdtree to death, and that he'd reached New Game +6 (meaning he's looped through the whole game six full times with one character).
Those are the stats of a true enthusiast, which underlines the fact that Garland is extremely eager to do the project right. That doesn't make his job any easier, though. A huge part of what makes Elden Ring magical to play through is the way it metes out information about its plot, almost all of which takes place before the player enters the game.
That player character, a so-called "Tarnished", is making their way through an effectively ruined world, torn apart by conflict between demi-gods and their offspring, and gripped by the spread of rotten diseases.
It's not a world full of regular dialogue and normal conversations – those characters you do meet generally have weird stuff to say, esoteric requests to make and bizarre fates when pursued.
Will Garland make the Tarnished his protagonist? Or will he set his movie in the build-up to the game, letting us see the conflict between characters who will later become endgame bosses, like Starscourge Radahn and Malenia, Blade of Miquella? Those names will resonate if you've played Elden Ring, but even if not, you'll probably get a sense for the grandiose tone it summons.
Either way, if he does as good a job of translating the game's mournful, melancholic vibe as he did for Annihilation's source book, then he'll be off to a great start. Still, this sort of announcement is a very early one – we won't get a look at the movie for years, yet. Frankly, it could still fail to get off the ground at this stage – but that's just the pessimist in me preparing for disappointment.
When something you love gets adapted into a movie, it's hard to avoid that sense of fear. Still, until we know more, I'm going to stay excited about what could be something of a dream project.
