The Russos are teaming with Netflix for a Magic: The Gathering animated show

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Whether you’ve heard people talking about it, seen people playing the game in the cafeteria or in the back of coffee shops, or have dabbled in the Art of the Cards yourself, the “Magic: The Gathering” card game has become a huge fixture in pop culture over the years. Like “Dungeons and Dragons” before it, “Magic” has evolved from being a tabletop game to being a full-blown world with books, comics and more fleshing it out, and now Netflix is getting in the game by teaming with AVENGERS directors Joe and Anthony Russo to develop a new animated series around the magical realm.

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The directing duo will be working with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, the publishers behind both “Magic” and “D&D”, to create the new series, with Henry Gilroy (STAR WARS REBELS) and Jose Molina (THE TICK) acting as showrunners. Netflix put out a statement saying the Russos will “oversee the creation of an all-new storyline and expand on the stories” that follows the heroic Planeswalkers and the series of mystic villains that make up the “Magic” universe.

“We have been huge fans and players of Magic: The Gathering for as long as it has been around, so being able to help bring these stories to life through animation is a true passion project for us,” the Russos said in a joint statement.

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Starting back in 1993, the card game has gone on to amass tens of millions of players around the world, spawning all sorts of spinoffs from books to video games. With that level of popularity, this is not the first time there have been attempts to adapt “Magic”, with Universal developing a movie as far back as 2009, with Fox and Simon Kinberg trying to pick up the pieces a few years later, only for nothing to come of it. Now Netflix is in the “Magic” game, and John Derderian, head of Anime programming, said the directing team is the perfect creative force to bring it to the screen.

“Magic is a beloved global franchise with a massively engaged fan base that has only continued to grow over the last 25 years. There’s no one better suited to bring this story to audiences around the world than Joe and Anthony Russo, whose talent for genre storytelling is unmatched, as is demonstrated by their central role in creating some of the biggest box office hits of all time.”

“Our goal is to not only tell a compelling story leveraging Magic: The Gathering’s incredible body of work, but to also push the medium and perception of storytelling through animation,” said Isaac Krauss, CEO of Octopie Network, which will be handling animation alongside Bardel Studio. “This series will cross the genres of suspenseful thriller, horror, and drama with deeply developed characters the likes of which are not often seen in animation.”

For "Magic" fans out there an animated series may sound like a perfect way to get the series onto the small screen. A movie version of a similar property, WARCRAFT (based on the "World of Warcraft" games), came out to dismal reviews and was considered a flop domestically (despite solid numbers internationally). An animated series, though, will allow the creatives to flesh out the world across several hours, and do so while giving the fantasy elements a whole new look and style. For those not familiar with what I hear is an incredibly complex gaming system, this could be a solid intro to the series. Maybe then I will be cool enough to hang out with the folks at the back of the comic shop I go to!