Everything We Know About the Magic: The Gathering Movie

Magic: The Gathering Netflix Series image

A Magic: The Gathering movie has been “in the works” so many times that it’s basically a running gag by now… and not a particularly fun one. The difference this time is that the current version has a major studio partner in Legendary Entertainment, and according to several reports, the project has a director and screenwriters.

Still, don’t expect a trailer anytime soon: Although the current director has mentioned the project is “full speed ahead,” information about the film is scarce.

Let’s unpack what’s actually been officially announced, what’s been reported, and what this could realistically look like when it finally hits screens.

Is There Really a Magic: The Gathering Movie Coming Out?

Trapped in the Screen | Illustration by Michael Phillippi

According to the latest information, yes, there's indeed an MTG movie coming out. In early February 2025, Hasbro (the owners of Wizards of the Coast) and Legendary Entertainment announced a partnership to develop a live-action feature film.

In January 2026, Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater confirmed that the movie (and also a TV series, which is a different project) was moving along. “The Netflix TV show is being made as we speak,” Rosewater wrote on his blog, referring to the TV series. “We have a deal with Legendary, so things are happening there,” he added about the movie.

And as of February 2026, director Matt Johnson confirmed in an interview that Magic's movie is “very much happening” and “full speed ahead.” Two pretty big caveats, though.

First, there's very little that we know as a fact about the movie. Among the information that we don’t have yet: a title, a plot synopsis, a cast list, a release window, or a production start date. There hasn't even been an official announcement of who the director is, although according to Johnson's own words, he's in charge.

Second, there's been quite a few MTG movie projects that were later cancelled. As far as we know the current collaboration between Hasbro and Legendary Entertainment is still alive, but it wouldn't be the first time such a project gets axed.

When Will the MTG Movie Be Released?

No release date has been announced yet. In fact, the project is still in relatively early development, so there isn’t even a publicly known production schedule or filming start date as of now. There's not even a fuzzy “Summer 20XX” placeholder. And there's not even unofficial rumors about when the movie could be released.

The best we have as of now is a February 2026 interview in which director Matt Johnson said the project is moving “full speed ahead,” but that's about it.

Will the MTG Movie Be Animated or Live-Action?

According to the initial announcement (in February 2025), the movie produced by Legendary Entertainment is live-action.

There's a bit of confusion here because there's a different Magic screen project: the Netflix animated series (more on that below). Other than being Magic tie-ins, the two projects are unrelated.

Who Is Producing the Movie?

The movie is a partnership between Hasbro Entertainment (a division of the Hasbro group, the folks who own Wizards of the Coast), and Legendary Entertainment.

Hasbro reorganized its film/TV efforts under the Hasbro Entertainment banner to develop projects based on its game and toy brands. The D&D movie (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) was a pretty big success in 2023; one can only hope that the Magic movie will share the same fate.

Legendary Entertainment is a pretty big deal: They have a lot of experience with big-budget screen adaptations of third-party IPs including Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Zack Snyder's Watchmen, Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, Denis Villeneuve's Dune, and tons of others.

A big studio doesn't by itself mean the adaptation will be good… but at the very least there's a very good chance that it won't look cheap.

And this isn’t the only movie adaptation project on which Legendary and Hasbro are working together: Hasbro recently announced a licensing partnership around the upcoming Street Fighter movie (which releases in October 2026). In this case the IP is owned by Capcom, Legendary produces the movie, and Hasbro sells a line of action figures, toys, and collectibles. This is of course a very different arrangement to what's happening with a movie about one of Hasbro's IPs, but it does highlight that Legendary and Hasbro have a good working relationship.

(And it may also hint at Magic action figures, but there's zero mention about that thus far!)

Does the Movie Have a Director Yet?

Gylwain, Casting Director | Illustration by Aurore Folny

The name attached publicly right now is Matt Johnson. He was reported as the most likely director in articles from April last year, although at the time both Legendary Entertainment and Hasbro declined to comment.

A recent article from CBR, from February 2026, cites Matt Johnson directly, saying he’s actively working on the Magic movie and that the project is “full speed ahead.” An article from Nerdist (an online outlet that belongs to the same conglomerate as Legendary Entertainment) replicated Johnson's quote while announcing that the Magic movie is gaining momentum.

Matt Johnson is a Canadian director, probably best known for his BlackBerry comedy-drama about the rise and fall of the BlackBerry mobile phone, and his Nirvanna the Band the Show web series (Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie released in theaters in February 2026). In other words… not exactly a first-timer, but also not in the same league as other directors (like Nolan, del Toro, or Villeneuve) that Legendary Entertainment has put at the helm of their big-bucks blockbusters.

Who Is Writing the Script of the MTG Movie?

According to a Deadline article from June last year: “Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald have closed a deal to write the live-action Magic: The Gathering movie for Legendary Entertainment and Hasbro Entertainment.” Both Legendary Entertainment and Hasbro Entertainment declined to comment, and the article names undisclosed sources.

There doesn't seem to be any further confirmation, besides the above article, about who's writing the script, how far along it is, or what the story could be about.

Will the Movie Be on Netflix? In Theaters?

This is a great question, because Magic does have that Netflix series floating around, and it can be confusing what’s what.

Given that Legendary Entertainment's projects tend to be big-budget films, it's a pretty safe guess that the movie will be in theaters. You’ll likely watch it on the big screen rather than on Netflix (at least for its initial release).

Of course, after a theatrical run, the movie will eventually find its way to home viewing. We don’t know yet which studio will distribute it (Legendary often works with Warner Bros., Sony, or Universal for distribution deals), but it's also a very safe bet that it’ll be available on at least one streaming service.

Given that Netflix is tied to the animated Magic series, it sounds reasonable that the Magic movie will be available on Netflix too… but these are just guesses.

Are There Any Other MTG Movies?

When it comes to official, feature-length narrative movies based on Magic: The Gathering, none have been released so far. The upcoming Legendary/Hasbro film will actually be the first time MTG hits the big screen… if all goes according to plan. There have been a few projects, some of them with pretty big names attached to them, but they have all eventually entered development hell and were cancelled.

Back in 2008, Universal struck an agreement with Hasbro to produce at least four films derived from seven Hasbro games and toys, MTG among them (fun trivia: Ridley Scott, of Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator fame, was attached to direct the Monopoly movie!). The deal fizzled, and no Magic movie came out of it.

In 2014, 20th Century Fox and Hasbro announced a Magic movie, with Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past) leading the project. Wizards of the Coast put together a small team, including Mark Rosewater, to ensure the movie stood true to Magic's lore. After years of radio silence from both Century Fox and Hasbro, Rosewater confirmed the movie had been axed.

In April 2020, there were reports that Netflix was working on a live-action Magic project (which would be a different, separate project from the animated series), including reports that Angelina Jolie was considered for Liliana Vess. Thus far, nothing has come out of this.

There's a feature-length documentary about Magic called Igniting the Spark: The Story of Magic: The Gathering, which chronicles the game's history through interviews and archival footage. It premiered as part of the Gen Con Film Festival on August 2, 2025.

Are They Working on an MTG TV Series?

Yes! Hasbro and Netflix are working on an MTG animated TV Series. But it’s not the same project as the live-action movie produced by Legendary Entertainment, and as far as it's known they have nothing to do with each other except for Magic's IP.

Like the movie, the MTG series has a pretty long history of false starts (including, at some point, the Russo brothers of Avengers: Endgame fame as executive producers), but it looks to still be on track.

In September 2024, Terry Matalas (showrunner of Star Trek: Picard) was announced as the new showrunner as Netflix restarted production from scratch.

A year later, in an interview in May 2025, Matalas mentioned that all episodes are already written, but that animation takes quite long and they were only starting the casting process, so there was still no release date announced.

Compared with the movie, there's quite a bit more that's known about the Netflix's series, above all when it comes to the plot. Matalas found that the Magic universe was way too big to convey as a whole, so he instead decided to focus on a few characters. The main protagonist will be Chandra Nalaar, whose backstory Matalas fell in love with, and two other famous planeswalkers: Ajani, whose silhouette is obvious from the series' poster, and Jace.

Source

The Magic Netflix series will be directed by Patrick Osborne (who's got an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2015), with art direction by Simon Rogers, and animated by Digic Pictures in Budapest.

One important thing to remember is that the Netflix series is completely separate from the live-action movie from Legendary Entertainment. In fact, the Legendary/Hasbro film deal aims to create its own connected live-action universe, which could spin its own series that would be distinct from Netflix’s.

What Would an MTG Movie Be About?

Officially: We don’t know anything. There's not even news about casting, which is usually a good glimpse into which characters will be part of the story.

Since the Netflix series will be focused on Chandra, let’s assume that the movie will not be about her… but that still leaves gazillions of characters and planes that the story could be about. What's more: There's no guarantee that the movie will be about characters that we know of. They could very well come up with new characters for the story… and I personally believe (but I’m just guessing) that it would be the right play for a movie.

Magic has two big narrative problems for film. First, it’s gigantic: planes, timelines, dozens of fan-favorite arcs…. That's why Matalas, for the Netflix series, decided to focus on a just a few characterss, a bit like Arcane. Netflix's adaptation of League of Legends focuses on just a handful of game characters out of the 170+ characters you can play in the game and takes place in a specific city instead of the whole LoL world.

Second, Magic never really managed to create iconic characters that are recognizable to anybody who's not an MTG fan. Think Pikachu, Cloud, or a Space Marine…. Those are characters so iconic that, even if you've never played the game, there's a chance you'd recognize them. But Teferi? Liliana? Jace? There's very little chance that non-MTG players know who they are, and even a new player who just hopped into Standard thanks to Final Fantasy will have little clue about who they are. There's little to gain from trying to make a known character's story the movie's main plot.

A series has some more room and time to breathe: They can develop their story across several chapters. Movies need to pack a full story in (usually) less than two hours, so my bet is that, for the movie, they’ll choose to invent a mostly new storyline set in the MTG multiverse, rather than directly adapt a specific existing plot. This might involve new characters or a fresh planeswalker created for the film, encountering familiar elements or cameos from Magic lore. The advantage here is creative freedom: This way, the producers can craft a story that fits a 2-hour movie structure without having to wrestle years of continuity.

Plus, brand-new characters and story arcs are less prone to suffer the online wrath of disappointed fans, who sometimes can be very vocal when they believe the casting or the script doesn't match how they imagined the source material.

If the movie goes this route, we might see familiar faces used as anchors — like Chandra, Liliana, or Jace showing up in a scene or two, mostly as a nod to long-time fans — but the characters and plot would still be mostly new.

There's no indication thus far, neither for the Legendary movie nor the Netflix series, about whether they’ll be canon. It's very common for adaptations of an IP to another medium to be non-canonical when it comes to their source material. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example, isn’t canon (and TMNT is basically a multiverse anyway), and the same happens with the Hellboy movie versus the comics. It's possible that “Netflix Chandra” follows a different arc than what we've seen in Magic's story and cards, or that the movie has characters and planes that we never see in the “real” MTG multiverse.

Wrap Up

Cursed Recording | Illustration by Kim Sokol

So yes: The Magic: The Gathering movie is real, and it’s moving, although perhaps not as fast as one would hope. The strongest signs of life are the reported attachment in June 2025 of Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald as screenwriters, and more recent public comments from Matt Johnson indicating active progress. And Legendary Entertainment has a very good track record delivering IP adaptations with high production value.

On the other hand, until Hasbro and Legendary lock in (and officially confirm) the director, cast, and distributor, everything else is pretty much speculation.

The Netflix animated series is a separate project, and that one seems to be moving along just fine. Like the movie, there's still no mention of a release date; the director has been officially confirmed by Netflix, they have spoken about the project several times last year, and according to showrunner Terry Matalas all the chapters had already been written by June last year.

I hope this clears up speculation about Magic's upcoming movie and TV series, and if you have comments or questions please drop something below, or stop by the Draftsim Discord for a chat.

And good luck out there!