Alex Garland’s Elden Ring adaptation is on course to be Hollywood’s goriest ever fantasy movie

The expansive project has hype and money behind it – but how do you avoid it falling into the disappointment trap so many films end up stumbling into?

If the history of failed Hollywood fantasy projects over the past 20 years has taught us anything, it is that transporting audiences to another world is only half the battle: you also have to give them a reason to spend several hours there. The Golden Compass diluted Philip Pullman’s theological bite, Warcraft thought that just explaining its world would make us care about it, and The Dark Tower compressed Stephen King’s sprawling mythology so ruthlessly that it scarcely left room for a story.