The Magic: The Gathering game franchise is heading to cinemas and TV, as a live-action feature film, and television series.
Hasbro Entertainment has announced a brand-new partnership with Legendary Entertainment to create a live-action feature film and television universe based on the fantasy series Magic: The Gathering, with the first priority being to adapt the game into a film.
Created in 1993, Magic: The Gathering is recognised as the world’s first trading card game. Players take on the role of “planeswalkers” in the game – powerful spellcasters who summon creatures, cast spells, and use artefacts to defeat their opponents. The game is known for its deep strategy, complex mechanics, and the ability to customise decks from a vast library of thousands of unique cards.
Hasbro has estimated that the strategy tournament represents a $1 billion piece of intellectual property, thanks to over 50 million players of all ages engaging with its worlds.
“We pride ourselves on being thoughtful caretakers of singular, beloved IP, and no property better fits that description than Magic: The Gathering,” said Mary Parent, Legendary’s chairman of Worldwide Production. “Alongside the fantastic Hasbro team, we look forward to creating a multimedia universe that thrills longstanding fans and creates a broad wave of new ones.”
Zev Foreman, Hasbro’s head of Film, said that the planned content slate was an “exciting and complementary partnership, uniting one of the world’s most iconic brands with a powerful and proven steward.”
Legendary Entertainment has translated a variety of popular brands into franchises, including Godzilla vs Kong and Dune, both of which span film and TV. The company is also behind Netflix’s Enola Holmes movies. Upcoming projects include a Minecraft movie starring Jason Momoa, produced in collaboration with Warner Bros. Meanwhile, Hasbro has an existing animated Magic: The Gathering TV show set up at Netflix, announced last year.
“This is an exciting and complementary partnership, uniting one of the world’s most iconic brands with a powerful and proven steward,” said Hasbro Entertainment head of Film Zev Foreman. “Magic: The Gathering has inspired decades of epic world-building and creative storytelling. It is a perfect match for Legendary’s diversified approach to marquee IP, and we are excited to work together to build a whole new Magic: The Gathering universe.”
Web Links
• Magic: The Gathering (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
• The Art of Magic: The Gathering
The ultimate resource for Magic: the Gathering Art
• Magic The Gathering The Visual Guide (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
by Jay Annelli
Magic: The Gathering is a fantastical Multiverse of mystical beings, fabled realms, and mythical creatures. Dominating all are the mighty magic users known as planeswalkers. To be a planeswalker is to be powerful beyond measure-a being who can bend magic to their will and step through the veil of reality itself. These fearsome mages cross between the planes of existence, battling to save others or to destroy them, to fight darkness or to create it.
Magic: The Gathering The Visual Guide illuminates the wondrous worlds they traverse, reveals their arcane lore, weapons, artefacts, and spells, and recounts their legendary exploits. Produced in close collaboration with Wizards of the Coast and featuring never before published profiles of new planes, such as Strixhaven and Kaldheim, this book is the first time MTG’s key characters and locations are showcased in one sumptuous, indispensable, and up-to-date guide to its vast and expanding Multiverse.
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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