A24 is quietly grinding away on one of the most watched nerd gambles in Hollywood: a live-actionElden Ring. And now the internet’s doing what it always does, zooming, enhancing, arguing, after new set photos circulated in the English-language genre press that appear to show two heavy hitters from FromSoftware’s nightmare fairy tale: Queen Marika and the Dung Eater.
If you’ve played the game, you know why this matters.Elden Ringisn’t a story you’re handed. It’s a story you excavate, through item descriptions, half-muttered NPC dialogue, and the kind of environmental dread that makes a crumbling staircase feel like a plot twist. So when recognizable silhouettes show up on a real-world set, fans don’t just clap. They start placing bets: How faithful is this going to be? How weird? How bleak? And is A24 actually going to have the nerve to keep it nasty?
The stakes are real. Released in 2022,Elden Ringbecame a monster hit for FromSoftware, the studio behindDark Souls,Bloodborne, andSekiro. The game’s world was built in part with George R. R. Martin (yes,Game of ThronesMartin), which helped shove it into the mainstream. But adapting it is like trying to film a fever dream someone else had and only described to you in riddles.
Marika vs. the Dung Eater: the holy throne and the sewer underneath it
Queen Marika isn’t just “lore.” She’s the load-bearing beam. InElden Ringmythology, she’s tied to the Golden Order and the central fracture that sends the Lands Between into rot, civil war, and spiritual collapse. Put Marika on screen and you’re not decorating the background, you’re steering the whole movie toward origin stories, legitimacy, and the quasi-religious machinery of power.
That’s why these photos, if they’re legit, feel like a tell. A film that includes Marika in a meaningful way probably isn’t settling for “Tarnished guy fights monsters for two hours.” It’s aiming at the theology and politics baked into the setting. That’s the good news.
Then there’s the Dung Eater, one of the game’s most aggressively unsettling characters, a walking curse with a worldview that says humanity deserves the worst version of itself. If A24 is puttingthaton the board, it’s a signal flare about tone. This studio made its name on horror, dread, and psychological grime. AndElden Ringneeds grime. The Lands Between aren’t “dark” in a Hot Topic way, they’re dark in a “your soul is a consumable resource” way.
Marika and the Dung Eater together sketch a pretty wide moral spectrum: sacred authority on one end, contamination and nihilism on the other. That’s not random casting. That’s a mission statement.
What the set photos hint about A24’s look, and what could go wrong
Elden Ringlives and dies on visuals: colossal architecture, bruised skies, solemn silhouettes, armor that looks like it was dug out of a cathedral’s grave. So even partial set photos become a stress test. Do the costumes look like relics, or like cosplay? Do the textures feel lived-in, or like a clean Netflix fantasy set that smells faintly of fresh paint?
Marika is a particularly tricky problem. In the game, she’s as much icon as character, kept at a distance, fragmented, half-myth. Film her too plainly and you puncture the aura. But if you never commit to showing her, you risk making the whole thing feel like a two-hour trailer for a story you didn’t tell. A24’s job is to thread that needle: give her presence without turning her into a standard-issue fantasy queen delivering exposition.
The Dung Eater is a different kind of trap: how far do you go in live-action before “horrifying” becomes “accidentally goofy”? In the game, a lot of his power comes from implication, language, threat, the sense of moral infection. A movie has to decide what it shows, what it suggests, and how it avoids turning the abject into a punchline. If the production is willing to get bold with makeup and costuming, great. If it flinches, fans will smell it instantly.
A24’s reputation helps here. Even when it plays in genre sandboxes, it tends to favor strong art direction over theme-park spectacle. The real goal isn’t perfect accuracy to every helmet and monster. It’s recreating the feeling: isolation, ruined grandeur, and that constant sense you’re trespassing in a world that doesn’t want you.
The real adaptation problem: FromSoftware doesn’t tell stories like Hollywood does
FromSoftware narratives aren’t built like screenplays.Elden Ringis stitched together from gaps. The player becomes the editor. A film can’t do that in the same way. It has to pick a spine: a central protagonist, a clear objective, recognizable antagonists, a progression that doesn’t feel like a random boss rush.
And then there’s “difficulty,” which isn’t just a gameplay slider, it’s the drama. Failure, repetition, learning, stubbornness. That’s the emotional engine. Strip that out and you risk makingElden Ringfeel like generic fantasy: chosen one, prophecy, sword, monsters, credits.
The set-photo rumor mill, Marika plus the Dung Eater, suggests A24 might be resisting the generic route. Marika points toward a story about systems: power, faith, legitimacy. The Dung Eater points toward moral rot. That’s closer to the game’s actual vibe than a simple hero’s journey with better armor.
George R. R. Martin’s name, A24’s brand, and the hype machine built from scraps
Martin’s involvement remains a marketing magnet, even if his contribution toElden Ringwas largely world-building groundwork rather than scene-by-scene plotting. For A24, this project fits a bigger play: take a globally known IP and try to make it feel like cinema instead of content.
And those set photos? They’re free advertising with teeth. No trailer needed, just enough to get every fan account dissecting costume seams like they’re decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls. Seeing Marika and the Dung Eater isn’t a cute Easter egg. It’s a statement about what parts of the mythos the film thinks matter, and how much darkness it’s willing to keep.
A24 also has to juggle two audiences that don’t naturally agree. Players want the FromSoftware code: constant menace, oblique storytelling, beauty that feels poisoned. Regular moviegoers will want a plot they can follow without reading a wiki at intermission. Putting Marika in the mix early could be the studio building a clearer mythological backbone. Keeping the Dung Eater around would be the studio saying, “Clearer doesn’t mean cleaner.”
The most interesting part is the implied hierarchy.Elden Ringhas no shortage of iconic figures. If the production is choosing to spotlight Marika and the Dung Eater, of all people, it’s signaling a film more interested in power structures and curses than in simple heroics. That’s the right instinct. The Lands Between shouldn’t feel like a victory lap. They should feel like a place that charges interest on hope.
