Avengers: End Game might have stopped short short of toppling Avatar as the highest-grossing film worldwide, but it has still raked in a staggering $2.71 billion globally. And now Deadline Hollywood reports that the next project for co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo will be an adaptation of the hugely popular and influential card game Magic: The Gathering into an animated series for Netflix.
Clearly, Netflix is looking to tap into that lucrative Russo brothers box office mojo, and who can blame them? The brothers have produced "four Marvel Studios hits in five years with $6.61 billion in global box office," per Deadline Hollywood. Octopie Network will be co-producing with Bardel Entertainment overseeing the animation.
“Our goal is to not only tell a compelling story leveraging Magic: The Gathering’s incredible body of work, but to also push the medium and perception of storytelling through animation,” Octopie CEO Isaac Krauss told the site. “This series will cross the genres of suspenseful thriller, horror, and drama with deeply developed characters the likes of which are not often seen in animation.”
Invented by combinatorial mathematician Richard Garfield in 1993, Magic: The Gathering casts players as planeswalkers, spell-casting wizards that traverse the Magic multiverse doing battle by summoning various creatures, artifacts, and elemental powers via collectible trading cards. Ars' own Aurich Lawson—an avid Magic player since before the first official expansion pack, Arabian Nights (so he's got the cred, y'all)—calls it "poker for nerds who are worried plain poker might make them too cool and socially acceptable." There are now 20 million players worldwide, dedicated tournaments, and over 20 billion Magic cards in circulation, along with spinoff comics, games, novels, and online short stories.
We don't have much in the way of details as to what the animated series will be about; it's early days yet, and the future series doesn't even have a title. But the teaser art pictured above features "Chandra Nalaar, a fiery spellslinger from the plane of Kaladesh who has become one of Magic’s most recognizable heroes," per io9. Apparently the Russos will “oversee the creation of an all new storyline and expand on the stories of the Planeswalkers and will see the heroes and villains of the universe contend with stakes larger than any one world can hold.”
The Russo brothers, avid gamers themselves, said in a joint statement, “We have been huge fans and players of Magic: The Gathering for as long as it has been around, so being able to help bring these stories to life through animation is a true passion project for us.”
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/06/post-end-game-russo-brothers-to-adapt-magic-the-gathering-for-netflix/
2019-06-03 15:39:00Z
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