Fox has lined up writer Simon Kinberg to produce a movie series based on Magic: The Gathering. That’s right. Not just one movie. A whole series.
It’s hoped that the films can be Fox’s own competitor to stuff like Lord of the Rings. Big talk for a property that’s primarily a card game, and not a literary classic, but then the card game is popular enough – and has enough awesome art design behind it – that, hey, it might just work.
Then again, it might end up like most video game movies and never get made.
Fox to Bring ‘Magic: The Gathering’ to the Big Screen (Exclusive) [THR]
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12 responses to “Hollywood Is Making A Magic Card Movie Series. Yup.”
Some great potential here, but as with all things, the larger and more varied the concept pool is to draw from the more likely it is to miss the mark. That said I am cautiously optimistic providing they don’t try to fill it with fan service and instead focus on a good, solid, stand alone movie that doesn’t fall prey to what happens when hollywood tackles video game IPs. They should realise at this point that they aren’t trying to sell the movie to us as we are likely movie-goers already, they need to sell the idea to the people who “don’t” know the IP.
I think the idea of selling to people who don’t like the IP is just as wrong as the fan service approach. Both have failed pretty miserably in the past.
It’s actually a lot more complicated, the adaptation needs to be respectful of the source material and avoid too many unnecessary changes to the lore.
At the same time they need to create and structure a plot that will stand alone and attract new audiences. Here’s where a lot more of the changes and creativity should occur and the writer should spend more time.
Basically the film should seem familiar to those invested in the IP, whilst inviting to new audiences. LotR did this really well, even though it had to squeeze in a lot of exposition.
Yeah, it’s idiotic of Hollywood and has resulted in damn near every video game movie being an utter steaming pile of shit.
“So, why are you taking on this project?”
“We hear there’s a LOT of buzz about this video game, and we’d really love to tap into the nerd demographic.”
“So why are you making these changes so that it in no way resembles the game?”
“There were a lot of elements of the game (read: everything) which doesn’t really ‘work’ for movies.”
“How do you know this?”
“It doesn’t test well with audiences. We’ve had a lot of time to get this formula down.”
“But if you make these changes, the fans of the original game will dismiss it and write it off, not seeing the movie.”
“True, but the nerd demographic isn’t really a movie-watching demo. More like a ‘movie pirating’ demo, so we don’t really care what they think. We actually want people to SEE it.”
“So why are you taking on this project?”
“We hear there’s a LOT of buzz about this video game, and we’d really love to tap into the… ohhhhh. Hah. Nice. Yeah. Well. We figure we’ll at least trick the most enthusiastic nerds into it, and any normal people who have nerd relatives or coworkers who won’t shut up about the game; it creates awareness, see.”
“You are everything that’s wrong with the world.”
“Not everything, but we try.”
What I was trying to say but you did it far more eloquently, in my defence it was 6:30am 😛
I think that the majority of Magic: The Gathering fan-base do not particularly pay much attention to the ‘story’ behind the more prominent characters of the game. So to make a movie series may sound good on the surface but as a big fan of the cards myself I don’t feel motivated to watch a story that I only care about the cards more than the ‘characters’.
I dunno… I know a lot of my friends who play it know a decent amount of the lore after being teased with intrigue from the flavour text quotes on the cards with the most impressive art.
Especially the Eldrazi shit. That’s some dire, dark art and text, man.
…I doubt the movie series will touch the Eldrazi. Or do them justice.
I read quite a few of the books back in the day. Most were mediocre, but the ones by Jeff Grubb were perfect (at least in the eyes of my younger self).
If they truly want a full series of movies etc, then they need to start at the beginning and tell something like The Brothers’ War which was all about Urza and Mishra, and the birth of Phyrexia. It then led into him becoming a Planeswalker and the rest of the MTG mythos etc. I barely remember anything about it all nowadays, but I did love that one book; the characters made it.
Yup, there is lore in there, but you’ll end up with another Battleship.
I honestly just laughed to myself trying to figure out how you could incorporate tapping to attack into a movie… Personally I thought the way they did the grid locations to attack in Battleship was hilariously well done (the movie itself was a pretty much a pile of crap tho).
To be fair, there are heaps of books…
While they have my attention, I can’t help thinking it’s going to be an underdog story about a kid who is a nobody at school and then wins an MTG tournament and the admiration and respect of his peers. Then the sequels will be progressively harder tournaments against tougher opponents with less morals.
My prediction: FLOP!