The Gathering Live-Action Movie Has Found Its Writers

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that it requires a certain kind of magic to successfully create a new cinematic universe. It stands to reason then that for Hasbro and Legendary to successfully create their burgeoning Magic cinematic universe will take some David Copperfield level wizardry. And now, having courted BlackBerry‘s Matt Johnson to direct the first live-action Magic: The Gathering movie, Deadline is reporting that the studios have snapped up screenwriters Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald to help bring the billion dollar trading card game to the big screen.

Having previously worked with Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez on innovative all-star Apple TV+ thriller Calls, and written a slew of ultimately unrealised but nevertheless tantalising projects (including cancelled James Wan Aquaman horror spin-off The Trench), it’s clear that Gardner and Fitzgerald have the juice to get Johnson’s movie off the ground — but there’s no doubting it’ll take a hell of a squeeze to realise such an ambitious undertaking. With over three decades of rich lore and iconic characters to mine, and the fantasy TCG’s anything-could-happen world of spellcasters and monsters at their disposal, the possibilities of a Magic: The Gathering movie are simultaneously limitless and also just a teeny bit daunting.

The successes of Lord Of The Rings, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, and — more recently — the likes of The Rings Of Power and House Of The Dragon have long-since proven that there is an enduring hunger for epic fantasy on screens both big and small, and fantasy scarcely gets more epic than Magic. At the same time, you’ve only to look at the huge swing and a miss that was Duncan Jones’ Warcraft movie, or the hasty cancellation of Amazon’s excellent but undersupported Wheel Of Time, to see how fine the margin between the next big thing and the next cautionary tale truly is. Still, with eye-catching choices already being made on the creative side of Hasbro and Legendary’s Magic: The Gathering, and probably the blankest of blank cheques at its disposal, we’re cautiously optimistic that the mana may yet prove strong with this one. Planeswalker, assemble!