Alex Garland set to direct huge video game adaptation for A24

A live-action adaptation of the popular video game Elden Ring is confirmed to be in development with director Alex Garland at the helm.

The 2022 fantasy game was directed by FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, who reached out to A Song of Ice and Fire author George RR Martin to develop the story and mythology.

Set in the mythical world of the Lands Between, the player takes on the role of an exiled warrior called the Tarnished who must defeat powerful demigods while collecting Great Runes to restore a powerful artifact known as the Elden Ring.

Elden Ring has long been considered one of the greatest games, having sold more than 30 million copies and winning multiple awards.

The film adaptation, which was first reported by InSneider, will be released by A24 in partnership with Bandai Namco Entertainment.

It will be written and directed by Garland and produced by Peter Rice, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich as well as George RR Martin and Vince Gerardis, according to Deadline.

Martin had teased the adaptation in February this year saying: “Well, I can't say too much about it, but there is some talk about making a movie out of Elden Ring.”

He had caveated the announcement saying he could be prevented from being involved because he was still working on the next A Song of Fire and Ice book, the long-awaited The Winds of Winter.

“We'll see if that comes to pass and what the extent of my involvement was, I don't know,” he told IGN, referring to the Elden Ring movie. “I'm a few years behind with my latest book, so that also limits the amount of things that I can do.”

A spinoff of the Elden Ring game titled Elden Ring Nightreign is scheduled to release on 30 May.

After the game’s release in 2022, The Independent’s Jasper Pickering wrote: “Elden Ring is by far the most accessible game the developer has made, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Rather than lowering the difficulty ceiling, it has instead raised the floor. By throwing open the doors of its vast world, Elden Ring maintains the genre’s reputation for challenge without being marred by artificial barriers to entry.”

Elden Ring’s worldbuilding by Martin has received widespread praise.

“Elden Ring was going to take place in, let’s say the present of their game universe. But what they wanted me to write was what happened like 5,000 years before that,” Martin said in an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

“So I went back and wrote a history of what happened 5,000 years before the current game, and who all the characters were and who was killing each other and what powers they had. They had these runes that were at the center of the game, and the rune got split into many pieces, and that’s what screwed up the world. I laid all that out.”