Image: Wizards of the Coast, Netflix
A brand new Magic: The Gathering universe is coming to screens near you.
Hasbro Entertainment and Legendary Entertainment are coming together to produce a live-action feature film and television universe based on the Magic: The Gathering. The Command Zone, a popular YouTube podcast channel focused on the Commander format from the card game, announced the news on 7 February, 2025. The announcement was also corroborated by The Hollywood Reporter.
The live-action feature film is slated to release first, before the television universe and other forms of content are “developed as the universe expands," echoing a similar trajectory the immensely popular Marvel Cinematic Universe had undertaken more than a decade ago. Magic: The Gathering is the first trading card game of its kind, released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast before being acquired by Hasbro, Inc. in 1999. It is the first billion-dollar brand for Hasbro, Inc. as well, as its revenue hit $1 billion in the financial year of 2022.
Besides being a record-earning game for Hasbro, Magic: The Gathering also boasts a multiverse, countless storylines, and a multitude of characters written across 30 years of its history, and it is the “perfect match for Legendary’s diversified approach to marquee IP” according to Zev Foreman, Hasbro Entertainment’s Head of Film.
Legendary Entertainment, best known today for the space epic Dune film franchise “pride (themselves) 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.
This is not the first time Hasbro Entertainment has tried to bring stories from Magic: The Gathering onto screen. Wizards of the Coast announced in 2019 that an animated Magic: The Gathering series would be released on Netflix in 2022, with Brandon Routh of Superman Returns fame poised to be the voice actor of protagonist Gideon Jura, a Planeswalker from the world of Magic: The Gathering.
The animated series has been delayed, but it was last announced in Geeked Week 2024 that the series is currently under production with a new showrunner named Terry Matalas. According to The Command Zone, the animated series will remain separate from the newly-announced live-action feature film and subsequent television universe.
