A24 built its name on acclaimed films made for a fraction of blockbuster budgets, but its Elden Ring adaptation reportedly plays in an entirely different league. If the reported figure holds, Alex Garland's film would cost nearly three times as much as the studio's previous record-holder — a scale of spending the arthouse label has never attempted before.
The Wall Street Journal reported the budget at nearly $200 million, citing people familiar with the matter. A24 has not commented on the figure, and the number comes from the Journal's sources rather than from the studio itself.
For comparison, A24's previous most expensive film was Marty Supreme at a reported $70 million, and before that, Garland's own Civil War at roughly $50 million. The reported Elden Ring budget would put the video game adaptation in the same spending bracket as Marvel tentpoles like Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The figure has climbed as the production has gone on. When filming began in the United Kingdom in April, reports placed the budget at well over $100 million, and the shoot wrapped in July after four months — leaving a long, effects-heavy post-production ahead of its release.
Garland, the director of Ex Machina, Annihilation and Civil War, is writing and directing the film, which A24 is making with Bandai Namco. George R. R. Martin, who built the game's mythology with FromSoftware, is among the producers.
The cast, revealed when production began, underlines the scale of the attempt: Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Ben Whishaw, Nick Offerman, Tom Burke, Havana Rose Liu, Sonoya Mizuno, Jonathan Pryce, Ruby Cruz, John Hodgkinson, Jefferson Hall, Emma Laird and Peter Serafinowicz. By the usual rule of thumb that a film must gross roughly two and a half times its budget to break even, the reported cost would demand a worldwide haul in the region of $500 million — territory only a handful of game adaptations and almost no A24 releases have ever reached.
The bet rests on one of the biggest games of the decade. Elden Ring, developed by FromSoftware and directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with worldbuilding by Martin, launched in 2022 and has sold more than 30 million copies, later expanding with Shadow of the Erdtree.
No trailer or official image from the film has been released yet. Elden Ring is set to open in theaters, including IMAX, on March 3, 2028.
The reported budget also marks a deliberate change of direction for the studio, which spent 14 years competing on creative identity rather than scale. The Journal's report framed Elden Ring as the centerpiece of A24's push into bigger films — its first major swing at a video game adaptation, and a wager that a global game audience can carry an arthouse label into tentpole territory.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
