A24 is spending about $200 million on its Elden Ring movie, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. That figure would make the Elden Ring movie the studio’s most expensive production by a wide margin. A source told the newspaper the budget is on par with a Marvel film.
The number stands out because A24 built its name on smaller bets. The studio rarely spends anywhere near blockbuster money, and many of its biggest hits came from modest budgets. Elden Ring is also its first adaptation of a video game.
What we know about the Elden Ring movie
A24 announced the project last year. Alex Garland, the director of Ex Machina and Civil War, is attached to direct. Beyond that, the studio has shared few details about how it plans to bring the game’s world to the screen.
The source material is the 2022 action RPG from FromSoftware, published by Bandai Namco. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki built its world with mythology written by George R.R. Martin. Players piece the story together from item descriptions and scattered dialogue, so the Elden Ring movie has no conventional plot to lift straight from the game.
How $200 million compares to A24’s past films
Before this project, A24’s most expensive film was Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, which cost $70 million. That film more than doubled its budget at the box office. The reported Elden Ring movie budget is nearly three times as large.
Only one A24 release has earned more than $200 million so far. That film is Backrooms, a surprise hit this year that cost around $10 million to make. As a result, simply matching its production cost in ticket sales would require a gross that only Backrooms has reached.
Meanwhile, the studio’s current release is doing better than expected. The experimental documentary You Can See Everything is holding its own in its second weekend against bigger releases such as Clayface and Street Fighter.
A darker bet than most game adaptations
Some video game adaptations have reached the billion-dollar mark at the box office. However, the biggest successes lean toward family audiences. The Minecraft movie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Sonic the Hedgehog films all fit that pattern.
Elden Ring is a different kind of property. It is a dark fantasy with grim themes and a reputation for punishing difficulty. There is little precedent for how that tone performs in theaters at this budget level, which puts the Elden Ring movie in largely untested territory.
A24 also has a second game adaptation in development. The studio is working on a film based on Death Stranding, the game from Hideo Kojima. That project has no release date yet, and no budget figure for it has been reported.