A24 has built its reputation on delivering acclaimed cinema on relatively modest budgets. That strategy is about to be tested at an entirely different scale. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Alex Garland’s live-action Elden Ring movie is costing nearly $200 million — almost three times the studio’s previous record and a figure that places it squarely alongside Marvel blockbusters in terms of production spend.
The reported budget dwarfs earlier estimates. When cameras began rolling in April 2026, industry sources pegged the film at just over $100 million. Either those initial figures were inaccurate, or the production’s costs ballooned significantly during its roughly 100-day shoot. Neither A24 nor Bandai Namco has confirmed the number, and the Wall Street Journal’s article sits behind a paywall, so the details remain sourced to unnamed insiders.
What $200 Million Buys You
To put the figure in perspective, A24’s most expensive film before Elden Ring was Marty Supreme at approximately $70 million, with Garland’s own Civil War coming in around $50 million. The new Elden Ring budget would place it in the same ballpark as Spider-Man: No Way Home and Jurassic World Rebirth — territory that A24 has never operated in across its 14-year history.
Key context: The $200 million figure covers production costs only. Marketing spend, which for a blockbuster release can easily add another $100–150 million, is not included.
Some clues about where the money is going have emerged. The film was shot for IMAX, which carries substantial technical costs, and principal photography ran approximately 100 days — a tight four-month window from April to July 2026. Much of the remaining budget is expected to flow into post-production, where the visual effects required to bring the Lands Between to life will demand significant resources. The film doesn’t arrive until March 2028, giving the post-production team a long runway.
Garland’s Vision Takes Shape
Despite the enormous price tag, details about the film’s actual content remain scarce. Alex Garland is writing and directing the adaptation, working from the open-world action RPG that FromSoftware released in February 2022 with lore by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. The cast includes Kit Connor, Ben Whishaw, Cailee Spaeny, Tom Burke, Havana Rose Liu, Sonoya Mizuno, Jonathan Pryce, and Nick Offerman.
Set leaks and production photos have offered tantalising glimpses. Footage from Conwy Castle in North Wales showed human soldiers patrolling the walls — apparently before the Shattering occurs in the game’s timeline — suggesting the film is at least partially a prequel. Fans have also spotted what appears to be the infamous Dung Eater character, along with low-level enemies from the game, fuelling expectations of a fairly faithful adaptation.
A Defining Moment for A24
The Elden Ring movie represents something of a Rubicon moment for A24. The studio has spent over a decade cultivating an identity as the home of intelligent, mid-budget cinema — the kind of company that Telluride Film Festival director Julie Huntsinger described to the Wall Street Journal as “a Goldilocks company. Just the right amount of people doing just the right amount of things.”
Betting $200 million on a video game adaptation, even one based on one of the best-selling RPGs of all time, is a fundamentally different kind of gamble. The video game movie curse has largely been broken in recent years — the Resident Evil film recently set box office records, and animated adaptations continue to perform — but the stakes here are considerably higher than anything A24 has previously attempted.
For now, the film remains in post-production with a March 3, 2028 release date. Whether the final product justifies its extraordinary budget will depend entirely on whether Garland can translate the sprawling, atmospheric world of Elden Ring into a cinematic experience that resonates beyond the game’s existing fanbase.
