Fox Taps Game of Thrones Writer For Magic The Gathering Movie

[Pickapok]

What I really want to see is a trilogy of movies covering the story of Elspeth Tirel. Set the first one during Shards of Alara block, introduce her complicated past with the Pherexians and run through the Conflux story. Second one in Scars of Mirrodin/New Pherexia block fighting against the Pherexians and then third and final on Theros where she defys the gods and sacrifices herself to save her love.

 

[jFr[e]ak93]

That title alone made this news worth it.

A Ravnica conspiracy theory thriller would be cool, but we all know fantasy universes can never be used for anything other than war-jerking.

I was tossing around plot ideas for this, and Ravnica was a setting that kept coming up. I'd love that.

It is a GoT writer we can only hope that the betrayal and conspiracies of the show seep in a bit.

 

[Something Amyss]

Thanks for the info! Admittedly, I didn't research Bryan Cogman. I was just going off of the information presented in the article...

my first stop was Google to see if he had done anything I cared about. I was surprised at how little I found, so it's not shocking you didn't know anyway.

Anyway, glad to share.

 

[Omnicrom]

As a long-time Magic fan I'm not sure what to make of this.

On one hand Magic has the settings and style of a big fantasy blockbuster movie. The art design is striking and excellent, there's plenty of dragons and angels and demons and sphinxes and hydras all going at it with each other, the various Planes have more than enough to hang a movie script on, and a single full duel animated with a couple of million dollars would look glorious.

On the other hand the overall story behind Magic is generally pretty meh. Most of the planeswalkers just aren't interesting and the novels range between mediocre and awful. In my experience the individual settings, ideas, creatures, and lore are much more interesting than anything that Magic does with them. This is fine when all you have are a set of a couple hundred cards that depict snapshots of the setting, the ideas, the creatures, and the lore, but Magic has a poor track record when trying to pull it all together.

Well People say Game of Thrones was a good series, so we'll see. Maybe a determined adaptation writer can put together something more pleasing than Wizards array of mediocre pulp writers.

 

[Another]

God I hope they go with the source material, cause while it's not necessarily well written, the lore is interesting. I'm pulling for a Ravnica movie. Would want Brother's War, but that's kind of done away with in modern MtG lore.

 

[MorganL4]

Er, George RR Martin wrote Game of Thrones. He's the writer of Game of Thrones.

Bryan Cogman is a producer and story editor. His job is completely different than that of a writer.

Well as a story editor you are going to be working right alongside the screenplay writers, and probably will have some of your own writing show up in the final product.

I think the discrepancy is in writer of the book, vs writer of the show.

I myself chuckled at my immediate thought: George RR Martin writes a MtG screenplay....

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

OT: There is so much to work with, they could go for the post Planar chaos Loweryn 5 walkers or they could do one of the stories told before then, Urza's maybe but that might be a bit old for a lot of people.

My hope is that they at least focus on the Planeswalkers as the central characters and not some knight. I almost want the kingdoms themselves to be non entities, pieces for the Walkers to manipulate into doing their bidding.

Or, if they don't, that they perhaps cover the rise of Phyrixia, where a relatively normal kingdom's technological researcher captures a Planeswalker, assisting in experiments to slowly transform it into a horrifying kingdom of death.

A Ravnica conspiracy theory thriller would be cool, but we all know fantasy universes can never be used for anything other than war-jerking.

To be fair, conspiracy thrillers don't sell nearly as well as war stories, but the generally lower production costs that come from the locations and props help balance that out. Trying to do a conspiracy movie in a fantasy setting will up the cost significantly with not nearly as much potential gain.

 

[Atmos Duality]

So, the same company that strangled Firefly in the crib is now reaching out to do an MtG movie?
What a strange world I live in.

 

[Flavius Caprioru]

Can someone please make a series or franchise after LEGACY OF CAYN ?????? FUCKING HELL !!! ABOUT DAMN TIME

 

[Brian Tams]

Jesus H. Christ, people. The MTG lore goes way, way, way, way farther back than Jace and the super friends.

Come on, Urza vs Mishra!

 

[Norix596]

My bet is solidly on origin-story rebellious Jace with Chandra love interest fighting Nicol Bolas.

 

[Faith Meade]

Come back when we're talking about Akroma or the Kamigawa cycle.

If I get a Kamigawa movie (or a Lorwyn movie) I think I would fangirl myself to death.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Well there is only one thing you can look forward to: Glorious trainwreck cgi or glorious glorious cgi.

It's fox, lets hope they let it play in order...

Honestly, I have little hope as they will probably use the newer characters and completely ignoring the earlier characters as I don't think they are around anymore...

Honestly, my delirious vision of this being good is a Magic players gets thrown into the setting as a new Planeswalker, makes the alliances kicks some ass, only for the bad guy to say as his dying words, "But current big bad summoned you here."

 

[hittite]

A Ravnica conspiracy theory thriller would be cool, but we all know fantasy universes can never be used for anything other than war-jerking.

It'll never happen, but I want a Buddy Cop teamup between a Wojek Investigator and an Azorius Arrester. Seriously, it writes itself.

 

[Remus]

Urza saga plz. Sure it was a long time ago, but 3 words - CGI Robot Dragon. Actually that's 2 words and an acronym. Also seeing Rhammidarigaaz in his original form and later, as a Primeval, along with several others, this I must see on a very big screen.

 

[freaper]

A Ravnica conspiracy theory thriller would be cool, but we all know fantasy universes can never be used for anything other than war-jerking.

It'll never happen, but I want a Buddy Cop teamup between a Wojek Investigator and an Azorius Arrester. Seriously, it writes itself.

I had a D&D campaign with exactly those two characters

 

[Mangod]

On the other hand the overall story behind Magic is generally pretty meh. Most of the planeswalkers just aren't interesting and the novels range between mediocre and awful. In my experience the individual settings, ideas, creatures, and lore are much more interesting than anything that Magic does with them. This is fine when all you have are a set of a couple hundred cards that depict snapshots of the setting, the ideas, the creatures, and the lore, but Magic has a poor track record when trying to pull it all together.

This, far as I'm concerned, is the biggest hurdle to this whole M:tG Movie idea. While WotC are amazing at creating settings (although I was personally rather underwhelmed by Theros), the simple fact is that I've Always found the settings themselves more interesting than what WotC wind up doing with them.

A world where everything is run by ten different factions who all disagree in how the world should work? A world that has undergone so many Apocalyptic scenarions that the space-time continuum is tearing itself apart? A world made of metal that's being slowly corrupted from the inside by concentrated Body Horror? A world where Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Frankenstein-ian monsters, Ghosts and God-knows-what-else are pushing humanity to the brink of extinction? A world where the entire planet is actively trying to kill anything sapient because Cthulhu wrecked the place once?

All of these are more interesting than the actual stories they told with these places were. In the Teeth of Akoum, anyone?