Elden Ring Movie Budget Hits Nearly $200 Million

A new report from The Wall Street Journal puts the budget of A24’s live-action Elden Ring movie at nearly $200 million, making it by far the most expensive film the studio has ever made.

The figure comes from the Journal’s October 23 feature on A24’s year, which cites people familiar with the project. A24 has not publicly confirmed the number, so it should be treated as reported rather than official — but if it holds, it puts the studio in a completely different spending league.

For context, A24’s previous record holder was Marty Supreme at around $70 million, and before that the record belonged to Alex Garland’s own Civil War at roughly $50 million. The Elden Ring figure is nearly triple the studio’s old high. It is also nearly double the earlier estimate: when filming began in April 2026, The Hollywood Reporter put the budget at just over $100 million.

The film is written and directed by Garland, the filmmaker behind Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Civil War. It adapts FromSoftware’s 2022 game, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with worldbuilding by George R.R. Martin, who is also a producer on the film. The game has sold more than 30 million copies, making it one of the biggest games of the decade.

The cast includes Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Ben Whishaw, Nick Offerman, Jonathan Pryce, Tom Burke, Havana Rose Liu, Sonoya Mizuno, Emma Laird, and Peter Serafinowicz. Filming ran a tight four months, from April to July 2026, with a long post-production period ahead.

A24 plans to release Elden Ring in theaters and IMAX on March 3, 2028. The reported figure covers production; marketing, which usually adds a large separate cost, is not included.

The stakes are easy to see. Using the usual industry rule of thumb that a film needs roughly two and a half times its budget to break even, Elden Ring would need about $500 million worldwide just to get into the black. That is an analyst rule of thumb, not a studio claim — but it shows how much rides on A24’s biggest swing yet. The studio built its name on relatively low-budget auteur films. With Elden Ring, it is spending like a major franchise studio.