With every major studio looking for the next franchise to make them the big bucks, Fox has placed its eye on Hasbro’s world-wide popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering. Almost nothing is known about the direction of the film as of now, but what we do know is available after the jump.
Simon Kinberg, who is currently attached to Fox franchises X-Men and Fantastic Four, will be producing this adaptation of Magic: The Gathering. Beyond that the only announcement is that a whole multitude of execs from Fox and Hasbro will be overseeing the production for their respective companies.
What is intriguing about the whole announcement is how the words “series” and “movies” are sprinkled in throughout indicating that the companies have no intention of creating a single Magic: The Gathering film, but are banking on multiple films being produced.
While having multiple big-budget Magic movies could be a great thing for Wizards of the Coast in attracting an even wider audience to their game, why not start by creating a solid, self-contained film? It is possible to simply create a film, based on a franchise, without stretching the full story across three films.
I have no problem with studios creating a multi-film franchise, but thinking two or three films down the road instead of focusing on hitting the first one out of the park does trouble me. Create a solid foundation and then starting branching out from there.
What are you thoughts on this announcement? I know we have some big Magic fans out there; are you happy to know your favorite game will be adapted to the big screen? Take to the comments and let us know what you would like to see in the a Magic film.
5 Comments
I’m scared to death of this, I saw this article yesterday on the verge and had a mini panic attack. I love the idea of a magic the gathering movie, but from what I’ve seen Fox do with the Marvel movies I have a lot of reservations. My biggest question is what storyline will they be using? I just really hope they don’t mess up. In the end the card game will continue regardless of how the movie fairs in the box office, but I’m not holding my breath for an amazing movie that will bring tons of people to the gaming table.
My fear is it that it takes kids from the real world and transports them into the MTG Universe and grants them magical powers so they can fight some great evil (and each other)
That is my fear as well. If such a film is a colossal flop, the core fan base of the card game would not be largely affected by its failure. A great movie will continue building MTG’s momentum that started during the Innistrad block’s success. A terrible movie would get their name out there for others to see and pique curiosity on what the source material actually contained. Either way, the player base would use the movie’s media attention to their advantage. I am keeping expectations low and hoping this whole thing doesn’t become a sad and terrible joke.
This could be amazing! It could be great, but for that to happen, it needs to be done right. Base it off one of the actual blocks; maybe Agents of Artifice, Time Spiral, or, if they can make it work properly, The Secretist or The Weatherlight Saga
This was interesting timing – I recently just started listening to “Drive To Work” Mark Rosewater’s ‘historical’ Magic podcast.
In one of the early episodes (I believe the one about Planeswalkers) he mentioned how they’ve been trying to get a Magic movie made for a long time – but Studios would always ask them “Who is your Mickey Mouse?”
That is one of the reasons they started including the Planeswalkers in the set, and have been building backstory via comics, etc
So my guess is we are looking at Jace [possibly] or Chandra [probably] as the main character – possibly against Sarkhan Vol (which could lead into a Nicol Bolas reveal as the big bad in the next movie) or stay simple with Liliana or some other recognized ‘black = bad’ threat
I think if they take the time to do the story right, it could be really good. One thing Fox has going for it, is their habit of using the source material in a loose way – so they have Planeswalkers, and certain races on a certain plane – but won’t worry about having specific monsters, people etc.
I’ll be keeping tabs on this one definitely.