I was just thinking (while making summer rolls) and Shards of Alara might be a good story because it introduces the idea of colors of mana (which I think would be the hardest concept to do that isn't just good/mind/evil/fire/nature) and the balance between them (or lack thereof), it allows audience to learn about planeswalking with Ajani, and it introduces a recurring villain.

The problem is that the main character would be a lion-person which seems like not something movie makers would love. Maybe they'd make the leonins have more humanoid faces rather than lion heads.

My favorite is still action cop murder mystery Ravnica starring Morgan Freeman or other suitable old man actor as Agrus Kos. Maybe Idris Elba if they want to make him younger. Make a whole show out of it (switching to tv actors).

Summer rolls? My rolls only come in Spring.

Summer rolls? Have you looked outside?

Summer rolls? I don't have anything else.

Summer rolls are another name for spring roll in different countries.

Summer rolls are a little different from spring rolls.

And winter roles go to Sebastian Stan.

That depends on which country. I have seen English people call Chinese spring rolls summer rolls. I have seen summer rolls alongside spring rolls at Thai restaurants and both are different than Cantonese fried spring rolls. and stuff.

Honestly, I expect Good/Smart/Evil/Fire/Nature. It's simple, it's easy to understand, and it helps justify the good guys mercilessly exterminating the bad guys. I expect that the movie will feature neowalkers because they're the faces of magic, and will probably feature a new story or a heavily bastardized version of an old one, because any series of books whose target audience is magic fans will probably have limited appeal.

So...yes, there are different types of roll, except there are English people who incorrectly call Chinese spring rolls "summer rolls".

I will second the Shards idea; and in passing note that I do know Naya is based off of the central american cultures (I don't care; I want to hear the sonorous tones of Curlyfried goodness issuing forth from Ajani's majestic feline lips).
Morgan Freeman should be the wise old mentor who tries to stop Jace from Jace-ing his Jacey Jace so Jacely. Or whatever they wind up having Jace do.
EDIT: They had better paint Lili in a sympathetic light; the last thing we need is a major motion picture playing up the -is-evil shtick. Even if it would be easy for them to do so.

I would argue that that isn't correct and it can be called whatever you want. Calling anything curry is usually wrong, especially if it's Indian food because they don't have curry. Pudding in England is cake, and pudding in Japan is more like flan. Everything is stuff in places.

Magic the Gathering, the Movie: Sash and Waistcoat's Bogus Journey.

My little magic: friendship is consortium.

Magic Mike 2: Not What You're Expecting

"That means you believed in the world, and so, the world kindly answered your belief."
Holland - Eureka 7 (episode 2)



I think they're most likely going to want to limit themselves to a very small handful of planes, much like Ari did in Agents of Artifice. If they have five separate planes for each color (which the Shards aren't exactly, either), they have to spend a roughly equal amount of time on each plane and explaining their relation to the central color of mana -- which would clutter up the presentation to the uninitiated.

I hope they do pre mending so we can get teferi played by Lance Reddick.

Considering your eldritch horror status I have to ask...

Was your cousin the sentient slime mold?

@Sash and Waistcoat's Bogus Journey.

Oh god no.

@Alara:

I don't know that Ajani being a Nacatl is that much of a barrier when Marvel's about to release a movie that includes a raccoon with guns as one of the main characters. Also, a tree. And I mean... apparently Avatar: The Last Furbender is suddenly going to be getting five sequels because ~~*FRANCHISEMANIA*~~ so if there ever was a time to make a movie about a dude with a lion's head, this'd be it.

I mean they could pump up the roles of Sarkhan and Elspeth if need be. And if they boosted Elspeth's role, they can capitalize on good feels from The Hunger Games and position themselves in opposition to the idiots at DC (and elsewhere, but DC most prominently, what with the whole recurring "no one wants to see a Wonder Woman movie la la la we can't hear you la la la" thing).

Anyway, the point is I think they could adapt around problems with Ajani.

Reporter who was turned into a monkey.

I'm still pissed about that considering Cameron was set to do a Battle Angel Alita movie. He bought the rights to it back in like 2003 and swore that he'd do it after he got Avatar under his belt, but then it exploded and they threw about the national deficit's worth of money at him so he cashed in on that.
Amusingly, I recall an interview about why he waited so long to do movies after Titanic and it was because (in his words) "Titanic gave me enough money to **** right off for a while and go diving as much as I wanted."

Actually, just don't explain mana and you're pretty much set. The opening monologue just needs to be something along the lines of, "Across the many planes of existence, there are special wizards, known as planeswalkers, who have the ability to step from one dimension to another at will. Their existence is a tightly guarded secret, even as their actions affect all around them..."

Then just do a cold open of Jace and What-His-Face from Agents running from a bunch of pissed off guards, loot in hand. Jace waves his hand and a wall of ice seals the corridor as they duck around the corner. There's a flash of light, a Stargate-wormhole SFX, and then they come to a rolling stop in a dark, garbage strewn alley. What's-His-Face makes a pithy comment about Jace's landing skills as he picks a banana peel or other silly bit of refuse off of Jace's head, before helping him up where they head off to a bar to meet Lilliana. Takes maybe five to ten minutes and you've show magic, planeswalking, and explained why our MC is special little boy enough for the plot to be following him.

Actually, could the same thing with Dack, which might make for a more interesting movie if they tried to adapt the comics instead of one of the novels.

Khallist wasn't a planeswalker.

It's also too much of a giveaway given that story's storyline to reveal Khallist in person beside Jace. Luckily Jace's penchant for concealing cloaks and the fact that he looks very similar to Khallist means that they can do characters swap without revealing things too soon, even in a movie format, but I don't think Agents of Artifice lends itself that well to a good starting movie, it jumps to fast between scenes and concepts for unfamiliar movie-goers, they could probably pull it off, but I think there are better options, especially for an introductory piece to the MtG setting and planeswalkers.

Shards of Alara has different issues, along with the already mentioned potential issue of Ajani being CG furry dude, reducing the movie's appeal to some people, the movie would be insanely high-budget, with all the large battlefields and CG critters and epic landscapes. Ajani himself also gets into surprisingly few direct battles, and there is a lot of perspective jumping that would lack context without different characters narrating. It's got a lot of risky factors for a first movie in a franchize due to that.

Something with Dack Fayden and/or Gideon Jura might work better. Gideon is the quintessential goodguy after the events in Chandra's book, but beforehand he wasn't so nice, and he nicely demonstrates in that the fact that White mana isn't necessarily 'good'. Dack meanwhile is someone very good for introducing movie-watchers to the concept of planeswalking, due to his abusing it to escape local magic users after stealing stuff, and his psychometry abilities could lend themselves well to flashback type scenes and a good, simple McGuffin related plot. A movie with Gideon chasing down Dack for stealing something from another plane might be interesting.

If it were up to me, I think I'd start off with a movie where Dack has stolen something, and both Jace and Gideon go after it for separate reasons, out of Ravnica. Jace is the new Guildpact, so he knows a lot of what is going on in Ravnica, while Gideon was working with Boros. Both are highly concerned about the Eldrazi on Zendikar, but neither is really aware of the other's involvement on Ravnica, or having been invovled and present on Zendikar, so they aren't working together initially, Jace doesn't know one of the guilds has a walker chasing after Dack, since the Guild itself isn't aware that Gideon is a walker. They wind up stumbling into each other on the path chasing Dack, and might initially mistake each-other for enemies, allies of Dack, or Dack himself, but after the initial conflict, mostly resolved by Jace's telepathic abilities and status as the Guildpact, allowing Gideon to recognize him by reputation and his magical traits, it would convert to a Buddy-Cop type situation, where they team up to catch Dack so that they can get back to what they were doing.

They'll reveal hints along the way about their motivations, which soon leads to revelations about both wanting to fix the situation on Zendikar, and decide to work together on that after dealing with Dack. They'd eventually find out that Dack's motives weren't entirely self-serving, and that the artifact Dack found might be useful in dealing with the Eldrazi, so by the end of the movie, when Jace has Dack captive, rather than turning over Dack and the artifact, he and Gideon are instead attempting to coerce Dack to work for them in their quest to seal the Eldrazi. The end of credits scene could then have Dack stealing an artifact or scroll or something on Zendikar, and fleeing from the plane before an Eldrazi wreaking things in the background gets close, only for the scene to then show Nissa arriving, raging about the thing being stolen, and the thief apparently being a planeswalker, and then walking out herself after him, as a teaser to upcoming movies.

Honestly, the more I think about it making the movie solely a Dack feature makes the most sense. That way you just need one, maybe two major A-list actors to fill in as Dack and the vampire he was hunting, and a few B-grade to play Sorin and the six(?) recurring roles. You can show off three planes (Ravnica, Innistrad, and Grixis. Skip the issue with the Giant, it wasn't really important.) You get the scene where Dack tries to explain Planeswalking, as well as Sorin explaining why it stays a secret, and then you can blow the rest of the budget on some decent special effects.

EDIT: I should point out that if they do decide to adapt one of the already existing storylines, that I fully expect them to chop some of the bits. For example, if they do Agents, instead of starting with Jace pretending to be Khallist you skip that bit and just have Tezzeret kill Khallist in front of Jace for whatever reason. It makes Jace slightly more likeable, Tezzeret a little more hateable.