Film studio 20th Century Fox has bought the movie rights to Wizards of the Coast's popular fantasy card game, with the intent of making it into a major movie franchise.

The Hollywood Reporter is...reporting that 20th Century Fox has bought the rights to make a series of movies based on Magic: The Gathering, which the studio hopes will be "a massive franchise on the scale of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings."

Wizards of the Coast president Greg Leeds and Hasbro's Brian Goldner and Stephen Davis will be executive producers on the project (Wizards of the Coast is a subsidiary of Hasbro). Film writer and producer Simon Kinberg is in charge of overseeing the series; Kinberg has worked as a writer and producer for Fox's X-Men films, and was a writer on Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Sherlock Holmes, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

There's no word on what kind of story a Magic: The Gathering movie might entail, or who might star in it, but if Ian McKellen doesn't show up as some kind of wizard I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]

Our Take

Magic: The Gathering has been translated into a wide range of video games, books, and graphic novels, so I guess a movie franchise isn't all that surprising, especially considering how popular fantasy movies have become. However, if I was in charge of Fox, I'd shake things up by making a 200 million dollar movie about people playing the Magic: The Gathering card game (one of whom would obviously be Ian McKellen). On a related note, it's probably a good thing that I'm not in charge of Fox...