We knew Alex Garland’s Elden Ring adaptation for A24 was somewhere in the pipeline. We did not know a Twitch streamer would be the one to find the set.
Twitch streamer and Elden Ring fan Throxtv posted video on YouTube this week showing a large outdoor construction in an English field that is unmistakably a recreation of one of the game’s Churches of Marika, complete with an intact statue of the Erdtree’s matriarch. Wagons, barrels, cinderblocks, and film construction equipment are visible in the footage. The cinderblocks bear the logo of Hedgehog Construction, a UK company that specializes in scenery construction for film and television. A second follow-up video showed the opposite side of the church and surrounding props before a tarp went up around the installation to block further prying eyes.
The set appears to be located near Windsor Great Park, a well-known filming location. A24 and Bandai Namco have not commented publicly, and World of Reel has reported that filming is expected to begin imminently. Garland, best known for Annihilation, Ex Machina, Civil War, and the critically acclaimed Warfare, secured the project by flying to Japan and presenting FromSoftware and Bandai Namco with a 160-page script. He’s reportedly played through Elden Ring at least seven times. Previously reported casting includes Ben Whishaw, Kit Connor, and Cailee Spaeny in unspecified roles, though nothing has been officially confirmed.
The set construction and the faithful recreation of the Church of Marika are both encouraging signs. Using a real stone build instead of a green screen stage suggests the production is taking the source material seriously. Fans speculating about story: the intact Marika statue (rather than the broken versions found throughout the DLC) has generated debate about whether this represents an earlier era in the Erdtree’s timeline.