A24's Elden Ring Movie Reportedly Costs Nearly $200 Million

A24’s live-action Elden Ring film reportedly carries a budget of almost $200 million, according to a Wall Street Journal report relayed by Eurogamer. If accurate, it would be the most expensive movie the studio has made. A24 has not confirmed the figure in the material provided.

The numbers

Earlier reports from April described the budget as “well over” $100 million, so the new number is a sizeable jump. For comparison, A24’s costliest film so far, Marty Supreme, reportedly ran to about $70 million. Alex Garland’s earlier film for the studio, Civil War, came in at roughly $50 million.

Garland is both the screenwriter and director of the Elden Ring project, which is being filmed for IMAX. Cinemas are due to get it on 3 March 2028. Kit Connor, Ben Whishaw, Cailee Spaeny, Jonathan Pryce and Nick Offerman are among the actors attached. Eurogamer notes the film is at least partly a prequel to the game, and that set footage has pointed to a fairly faithful treatment, with Dung Eater apparently included. A leaked video from Conwy Castle in North Wales showed human soldiers on the walls and towers, and the latest set footage suggests some low-level enemies will appear too.

The Wall Street Journal piece is mainly about A24’s rising influence in Hollywood and the competitors trying to copy its success. The Elden Ring budget is one detail within it.

Why it matters

A24 is known for smaller, director-led films, and a $200 million production would be a very different scale of bet for it. The game it adapts is FromSoftware’s open-world action RPG, released in February 2022, with world-building contributed by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.

Destructoid, in a commentary piece, argues the budget is less worrying than A24’s recent AI activity. It points to the studio’s deal with Google to develop AI filmmaking tools and to the AI-assisted posters used to promote Civil War, which it says contained obvious errors. The outlet acknowledges that the finished Civil War used no generative AI and that Garland’s role in the poster decision is unknown. Nothing in the sources says generative AI will be used on Elden Ring.

What we don’t know yet

Neither A24 nor the film’s producers have commented on the budget in the provided reporting. The sources also give no word on how the studio plans to recoup a cost of this size, or on any use of AI tools in the production.