Elden Ring movie reveals cast and release date as video game adaptations find mainstream respectability

Not long ago in the before-times (ahem, pre-2019), any mention of a TV or movie adaptation of a video game elicited the same reaction: a groan and an eyeroll.

Up until then, no adaptation had scored a positive score on Rotten Tomatoes – and why would it, when the not-so-illustrious roll call included the likes of the 1994 version of Street Fighter (11 per cent), the 1997 stinker Mortal Kombat Annihilation (4 per cent) and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (18 per cent).

That changed with an unlikely candidate, Detective Pikachu in 2019, which was surprisingly fun, emotional and had a coherent plot and decent performances. Shocker, we know.

Since then, there have a been a raft of well-received films and TV projects whose origins are in the gaming world – Sonic the Hedgehog, Gran Turismo, The Last of Us, Fallout, Arcane and, depending on who you ask, The Witcher.

So, an upcoming adaptation of a beloved game is now something people are actually excited about. The odds are getting better!

Even more so when British filmmaker Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Civil War, screenplays for 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go) is the writer and director.

Garland’s adaptation of fantasy game Elden Ring has officially started production and has added Nick Offerman, Tom Burke, Sonoya Mizuno, Jonathan Pryce and Havana Rose Liu to its previously announced ensemble of Kit Connor, Ben Whishaw and Cailee Spaeny.

Garland has gathered a lot of returning collaborators in his cast - Connor was in Garland’s brutal battle picture, Warfare, Spaeny was in Civil War, Offerman was in miniseries Devs and Mizuno was in Ex Machina, Civil War, Devs and Annihilation.

With the inclusion of dragons, giants and medieval castles, Elden Ring is set to be indie studio A24’s most expensive project to date with a reported budget over $US100 million (Marty Supreme had held A24’s record with a $US70 million budget), and is shooting in the UK. The release date will be March 2028.

Elden Ring was released as a video game in 2022 and has since sold more than 30 million copies globally. The game was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki who co-wrote it George R.R. Martin. Martin was brought on to build out the game’s complex fantasy world.

The open-world game is set in a fictional realm called the Lands Between, and the story of the film will centre on a warrior who is tasked with reuniting the shattered shards of a powerful ring that has been divided among bad demigods.

If the warrior repairs the ring, he will be granted its power and become the Elden Lord.

Elden Ring is just one of a crowded slate of upcoming adaptations of video games. Now that the stink of B-grade movies have washed away, games have become lucrative source material for Hollywood, attracting big-name talent in front of and behind the screen.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Lara Croft TV series is currently filming in the UK with Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner in the title role. Waller-Bridge, the acclaimed creator of Fleabag, has been working on the series for years and will be the first project she’s completed under a long-running Amazon deal.

Despite the critical drubbing of two previous Street Fighter movies (the first one famously starred Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue), the franchise is attempting another, set for release in October.

With a cast which includes Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Eric Andre and David Dastmalchian, the trailer was released last week to largely excited and positive reactions among the gaming community.

One of the holy grails has been a The Legend of Zelda movie, which was in the works about two decades ago but was ultimately kiboshed by Nintendo because of the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie.

The more recent Mario films are critically derided but hugely commercially successful, grossing more than $US2 billion between them, which seemingly gave Nintendo the confidence to pursue Zelda.

The production started filming in New Zealand in late 2025 and only just wrapped, aiming for a May 2027 release.

The cast includes young British actors Bo Bragason and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Zelda and Link, with Maze Runner director Wes Ball at the helm shooting from a screenplay by Derek Connolly (Detective Pikachu) and T.S. Nowlin.

There’s also a second Mortal Kombat movie, a third Angry Birds flick, a fourth Sonic the Hedgehog film upcoming, as well as adaptations of Watch Dogs, Call of Duty, Bloodborne, Resident Evil, Ghost of Tsushima and more Minecraft.

Plus TV shows of Far Cry, Mass Effect and another attempt at Assassin’s Creed for the screen, after the 2016 movie version bombed (the only creative blip on renowned Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s filmography).

Margot Robbie’s production company is even working on a film version of The Sims.

The genre has come a long way since the first adaptation of a video game – an animated TV series of Pac-Man in 1982.