Elden Ring
If you can’t get enough of FromSoftware’s hit video game Elden Ring, you could be in luck. Not only is there the multiplayer spinoff, Elden Ring: Nightreign, just around the corner, but a film adaptation is apparently on the table.
Don’t get too excited. This is just talk, but both Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin (who helped write the game’s story) and FromSoft chief Hidetaka Miyazaki have mentioned the possibility of an Elden Ring film.
When asked about possibly getting involved in a sequel, Martin told IGN “Well, I can’t say too much about it, but there is some talk about making a movie out of Elden Ring.”
This echoes Miyazaki, who earlier noted “I don’t see any reason to deny another interpretation or adaptation of Elden Ring, a movie for example. But I don’t think myself, or FromSoftware, have the knowledge or ability to produce something in a different medium.”
As for Martin’s possible involvement in a movie, he told IGN “We’ll see if that comes to pass and what the extent of my involvement was, I don’t know. I’m a few years behind with my latest book, so that also limits the amount of things that I can do.”
“A few years” is a mildly hilarious way to describe the tardiness of Martin’s theoretically upcoming novel The Winds Of Winter. It’s been almost fourteen years since the publication of the last entry in A Song Of Ice And Fire, A Dance With Dragons, which came out in July of 2011. Martin originally hoped to publish the next book in 2016. This clearly did not go as planned. The entire run of HBO’s Game Of Thrones TV series came out in the intervening years, as well as two seasons of the spinoff series, House Of The Dragon.
A second spinoff, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, is is set to release later this year, almost certainly before any hint that The Winds Of Winter is, in fact, coming. Martin has been involved in countless other projects, including his work on Elden Ring, between the two books. Why finishing the book is taking so long remains a big question mark, but many fans believe he’s written himself into a corner and simply doesn’t know how to finish the story.
A seventh and final novel, A Dream Of Spring, will still need to be written once Winds is finished, though the title may end up being rather prophetic.
As far as an Elden Ring movie is concerned, I’m not sure I particularly care for the idea as much as I do love the game. FromSoftware’s unique storytelling style is woven so entirely to video games, it’s hard to imagine how that would even translate to the big screen. There isn’t much in the way of dialogue or character outside of NPCs, and what snippets of conversation we do get in the game tend to be brief, opaque and cryptic. Much of the story is told through environments and in the lore players discover when reading about items they’ve found. Much of the magic that comes from playing is in organic, player-driven discovery and overcoming enormous obstacles.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be an Elden Ring movie, but given Hollywood’s overall track record adapting video games, it makes me nervous. One of From’s other games might work better, in fact. Sekiro or Bloodborne, for instance.
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