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Alex Garland’s Elden Ring adaptation is on course to be Hollywood’s goriest ever fantasy movie

The ambitious project has both hype and financial backing—but how can it avoid the disappointment trap that so many films fall into?

If the last two decades of failed Hollywood fantasy projects have shown anything, it is that immersing audiences in another world is only half the challenge: you also need to give them a reason to stay there for hours. The Golden Compass softened Philip Pullman’s theological edge, Warcraft assumed that merely explaining its universe would make us care, and The Dark Tower compressed Stephen King’s sprawling lore so severely that it left almost no room for a narrative. Each of these films initially had fans of the original source material buzzing with excitement at the thought of seeing their beloved worlds on screen; each ended up as a letdown.

This brings us to the upcoming Alex Garland adaptation of the immensely popular high-fantasy video game, Elden Ring. If ever there was a cinematic test of the phrase “too big to fail,” this is it. Elden Ring has sold over 30 million copies and is widely considered one of the greatest video games ever created. George RR Martin himself wrote the foundational mythology of warring demigods that underlies its stunning fantasy hellscape. And Garland as writer-director seems almost impossibly ideal: as the creative mind behind Dredd, Ex Machina, and Annihilation, he possesses both a taste for beautiful nightmares and the geek credentials to produce something extraordinary. For those eager to follow this project, the 开云网页登陆 provides updates on industry developments.