A24’s ‘Elden Ring’ Movie Is Reportedly Shaping Up to Be a Marathon

For years, A24 has been the studio associated with auteur-driven works and smaller productions. Dragons, demigods and 9-figure budgets were never really part of the brand.

That is exactly what makes its ‘Elden Ring’ adaptation such a fascinating gamble. The game won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022, and Alinea Analytics estimates it has sold 36.4 million copies across Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.

Now a new tidbit about the film’s size is making the rounds. Cinema Now reports that A24’s live-action ‘Elden Ring’ has a runtime of nearly 3 hours, and the post adds that it would be the second-longest film in the studio’s history and the most expensive A24 has ever made. The post also notes it arrives in theaters and IMAX on March 3, 2028.

The runtime figure traces back to a report from Deadline saying the screenplay runs at least 180 pages including visuals. That suggests the movie could approach 3 hours.

The math comes from Hollywood’s usual rule of thumb. It holds that 1 script page equals roughly 1 minute of screen time. Still, nothing is locked in, since the final duration has not been confirmed.

Director Alex Garland has been thinking big from the start. He reportedly put together a 160-page draft with 40 additional pages of imagery before A24’s head of film, Noah Sacco, flew with him to Japan to close the deal with the game’s developer and publisher. A script this large looks like a feature of the project, not a fluke.

The money matches the ambition. The film is heading to the American Film Market with a budget of $175 million to $200 million, which could make it the most expensive standalone project ever offered at a film or television market. For context, the studio’s previous budget record belonged to ‘Marty Supreme,’ estimated at around $70 million.

A24 isn’t going it entirely alone, though. Amazon MGM Studios has purchased several international pay-1 streaming rights, which covers streaming after the initial theatrical and digital release in certain foreign markets. The studio is also guarding the material closely, and prospective buyers can only read the script with A24 staff present.

The cast is stacked as well. Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Ben Whishaw, Nick Offerman, Jonathan Pryce, Sonoya Mizuno and Tom Burke are among those confirmed. Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, who helped develop the game’s story under FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, is producing the film.

Production appears to be well along, too. A since-deleted Instagram post from a prop maker indicated that shooting wrapped after roughly 6 months, which sends the film into a long post-production phase.

The big question is whether a story this sprawling can fit on screen at all. The game can take hundreds of hours to play, and a movie has nowhere near that much time. A near-3-hour cut would give Garland far more room to work with than a standard blockbuster, though it will also test the patience of casual moviegoers.

For fans, a longer runtime is probably welcome news. If A24 really is betting this big, it seems to want the Lands Between to feel as vast on screen as it does in the game.