A24 BETS $200 MILLION ON ELDEN RING

The Wall Street Journal reports that Alex Garland's live-action Elden Ring cost A24 nearly $200 million, sourced to people familiar with the matter, which is reporter for nobody at A24 will say this with their name attached. The studio's previous record was Marty Supreme at around $70 million. Civil War was roughly $50 million. The company built on small director-driven movies is now spending Marvel money on a game whose core gameplay loop is dying in a field. The number also moved. When cameras rolled in April, the figure floating around was just over $100 million. The shoot ran four months in the UK and wrapped in July, which leaves a year and a half of post before the March 3, 2028 release, all of it VFX artists building the Lands Between for IMAX. George R.R. Martin is a producer, so at least one guy on the call sheet is comfortable with a long delivery window. The part that makes the math funny is A24's other recent swing. Backrooms cost $10 million, came from a 20-year-old YouTuber, and did $400 million worldwide. The studio proved it can print money on pocket change, then turned around and put twenty Backrooms on one dark fantasy epic.

Why you should give a shit: A24 built its whole name on cheap weird movies that were allowed to fail, and $200 million is exactly the number where that stops being true.