The Wall Street Journal reports, via IGN and Dark Horizons, that Alex Garland's live-action Elden Ring film carries a budget of "nearly $200 million" — far and away the most expensive movie the arthouse studio has made in its 14 years.

The figure puts Garland's adaptation in the same budgetary territory as Marvel's Spider-Man: No Way Home and Jurassic World Rebirth, a striking place for a company built on modest, auteur-driven projects.

The scale of the swing is the story for film watchers. As World of Reel notes, A24's previous record-holder was Marty Supreme at $70 million, with Garland's own Civil War at $50 million before that — making Elden Ring roughly three times the studio's prior high-water mark.

Earlier reports had pinned the film at just over $100 million, suggesting the budget either ballooned during production or initial rumors were inaccurate.

Dark Horizons frames the stakes bluntly: the company's future may ride on its success, with a long post-production runway likely to absorb a good share of the VFX spend.

World of Reel applies the usual rule of thumb that a film needs about 2.5 times its budget to break even, meaning Elden Ring would need roughly $500 million worldwide just to get into the black.

By that outlet's count, only one A24 movie has ever come close: Backrooms, which grossed $400 million worldwide on a reported $10 million budget — the exact opposite of this VFX-driven epic.

World of Reel argues that if the film hits, A24 will officially be a full-blown major studio; if it fails, the outlet worries it could be discussed the way cinema talks about Heaven's Gate.

World of Reel reports that Elden Ring only exists because Garland wrote a 160-page spec script, flew to Japan, and personally won over FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki, treating the material as an artistic obsession rather than an IP play.

The adaptation is based on the 2022 RPG built from a mythological story by George R.R. Martin, set in the shattered realm of the Lands Between; MovieWeb cites analyst figures of over 36 million copies sold and roughly $2 billion in game revenue.

The cast includes Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Ben Whishaw, Nick Offerman, Havana Rose Liu, Jonathan Pryce and others — though outlets agree that is not where the money is going.

World of Reel frames the irony: while major studios chase the A24 playbook of cheap, distinctive filmmaking, A24 is chasing the majors' playbook — video game IP, nine-figure budgets, and a long IMAX-scale runway.

The outlet notes the Wall Street Journal piece portrays A24 as the company everyone is now trying to copy, with online horror properties sparking multimillion-dollar bidding wars and Universal backing a big-budget film from the Daniels.