You'd be forgiven for forgetting that Netflix was making a Magic: The Gathering series. The show has been a twinkle in the streaming service's eye for many years now, but not much meaningful progress seems to have been made. We know there's a script, though there's still no sign of a release date. The problem is that when (or, maybe, if) this thing finally does have a material announcement to make, I'm not sure I'm going to care.
Part of that apathy comes from the development hell the adaptation has been stuck in. Wizards of the Coast has been trying to get a screen version of MTG off the ground since 2001. Back in 2019, the Russo brothers were attached to the project, but their team couldn't agree on a vision for a potential MCU (Magic Cinematic Universe). The IP passed to a new team headed by Transformers: Prime's Jeff Kline in 2021, but updates quickly fizzled out, and it seemed that the show was unofficially cancelled. Now, the role of executive producer is in the lap of Terry Matalas.
Plenty of media has survived development hell in the past. I thought 28 Years Later was pretty good, despite the fact it took almost 20 years to make. Another recent success story is the Barbie movie, which had been in development since 2009.
Still, I think the phrase 'development hell' is more associated with stinkers. The Cats movie, for example, or Alien Vs Predator. In the world of videogames, development hell brings to mind titles like Alien: Colonial Marines, Duke Nukem Forever, or the recent (and, apparently, incredibly mid) Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2. None are shining examples of what can happen to an IP that is given time to marinate.
There's another challenge to adapting Magic that could turn this long-awaited series into an underwhelming flop. Simply put, the story of Magic: The Gathering feels like less of a priority than ever before for the TCG.
We now live in a world where Universes Beyond sets, which are based on external, already-popular IPs, make up at least half of the year's releases. Recently, the remaining MTG sets have often been more about gimmick settings than advancing Magic's canon. What if MTG planeswalkers, but in cowboy hats? What if Chandra, but driving a race car? We're a long way from the 90s and 2000s, where lore deep dives and novelizations were commonplace.
The few major story beats we've lately been fed have been grand, MCU-style affairs. I'm thinking of 2023's Phyrexia: All Will Be One and March of the Machine, plane-hopping, Phyrexian-fighting escapades that would have suited a team like the Russo brothers.
I firmly believe we won't see an adaptation remotely similar to this vibe, however. The team in charge of the Netflix show have already confirmed that it will be animated, because trying to depict anything on as grand a scale as Magic: The Gathering would be far too expensive in live action. If the budget is already a concern, I'm not convinced that we're going to get a rich, story-driven drama that could truly capture the scale of a storyline like the recent Phyrexians arc.
So far, all we know is that the series will focus on Chandra, Ajani, and Jace. The vivid, distinct planes that they hop through are sold as a major feature of Magic: The Gathering in early descriptions of the show, so I expect we'll get a whistlestop tour of some of the TCG's most famous places.
That means one of two scenarios, in my mind. Option one: we get a self-contained but totally shallow story. The series will focus more on nostalgia-farming by presenting us with characters and places that we recognize from popular Magic cards, "I understood that reference" style. Think the recent Mario movie - commercially successful, but artistically, pretty hollow.
The alternative is a show that takes time setting up its immense fantasy setting. Magic will get the exposition and character studies it deserves, but it'll take far more than one season for the conflicts it sets up to resolve in a satisfying way. This is the sort of treatment I'd prefer - but it's also the kind of show that Netflix is infamous for cancelling after just one season.
Only time will tell how the series turns out, but my hopes aren't high. It's going to take some epic animated trailers to change my mind.
How do you feel about the MTG Netflix series, or the state of Magic's story in general? Let us know your thoughts in the Wargamer Discord.