A24's $100M Elden Ring Movie Leaked Set Photos Confirm Pre-Shattering Storyline

Filming for the Elden Ring movie has begun, and leaked set photos published by Shortlist have given the first concrete look at what the production is building. The images show a sign reading "Leyndell Streets," a prop box labeled "Stormveil," and a figure on set who appears to be Marika — details that together point toward a film covering events before The Shattering.

A24's adaptation carries a budget reported as "well over" $100 million by The Hollywood Reporter, making it the studio's largest and most ambitious project to date.

Account on X named “ jar saint ” was among the first to map the leaked images to in-game locations, identifying the Leyndell Knights armor by its shape and connecting the gallows structure to the game's opening sequence. After Shortlist published the originals, fan analysis spread quickly, with accounts flagging the prop labels and set signage as direct matches to specific in-game locations and Legacy Dungeons.

Image credit: @scadutree

Previous Elden Ring movie set leaks had already drawn attention earlier in production, but this batch offers the most specific evidence yet of which period in the game's timeline the film will address. The "Leyndell Streets" sign refers to the Royal City of Leyndell — the location where the Night of the Black Knives took place and where the chain of events leading to The Shattering began.

Marika's appearance on set carries clear narrative implications. The character has both braids in the photographed scene, which in Elden Ring's lore places her before The Shattering — before she destroyed the Elden Ring itself. A Hornsent figure appears in the same frame. Hornsent are a horned polytheistic faction that does not appear in the base game; their absence is explained by events recounted only in scattered lore, and their presence on set signals that the film intends to cover parts of the story the game itself never showed.

Image credit: @scadutree

Additional photographs show a helmeted soldier whose armor matches the silhouette worn by the Leyndell Knights and a gallows whose beam resembles the structure in the game's opening cutscene, where the Loathsome Dung Eater is hanged. The Elden Ring movie cast, announced earlier this week, includes Cailee Spaeny in a lead role alongside Ben Whishaw, Kit Connor, Tom Burke, Nick Offerman, and Peter Serafinowicz, though none of the actors have been assigned specific character names yet.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, principal photography will run around 100 days. The budget places the Elden Ring adaptation above A24's previous productions, including Civil War and the Timothée Chalamet-fronted Marty Supreme. Director Alex Garland — whose prior credits include Annihilation and Civil War — has reportedly played through Elden Ring seven times in preparation.

I think the choice to set the film before The Shattering is the most narratively sound option available: it lets Garland introduce the world to audiences who have never played while still giving longtime fans the specific mythological content — Marika whole, the Hornsent still present — that they spent hundreds of hours piecing together from item descriptions and environmental storytelling.

The "Stormveil" prop box indicates the production is constructing physical sets for more than one major location. Stormveil Castle functions as a Legacy Dungeon in the game. Elden Ring launched in 2022 and became a commercial and critical success for FromSoftware, with the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC and the multiplayer spin-off Nightreign both following.

I see a production team that did the lore work before cameras rolled, including the Hornsent, which requires specific knowledge of history that the base game only implies, and the precision of the Leyndell Knights' armor silhouette suggests a costume department working directly from FromSoftware reference material. The Elden Ring film is scheduled to open in theaters on March 3, 2028, and will be released in IMAX.