Terry Matalas, showrunner for the upcoming Magic: The Gathering animated series on Netflix, has shared updates and new details on its production in a podcast.
Matalas, speaking with Katee Sackhoff of The Sackhoff Show, revealed that all scripts for the first season are complete and that production has advanced to casting and animatics, the latter an animation stage between storyboarding and full animation. Matalas emphasized that animation was the right approach, as trying to recreate Magic’s many settings and magical effects with on-screen actors would cost “hundreds of millions of dollars” to pull off.
Matalas praised the involvement of both Netflix and Magic: The Gathering IP owner Hasbro, which he characterized as “involved” but not overbearingly so. He also noted that animation, as opposed to live-action, would allow him to achieve his vision and make refinements relatively inexpensively.
Matalas also revealed why Chandra Nalaar is the focal character of the upcoming adaptation: he “started to fall in love with” the pyromancer’s existing lore. And while Matalas’s years of work on the Magic: The Gathering series will also mean years of work in the future, it’s good to know that the series is making actual progress after many years of planned media adaptations turning into false starts.
Read more analysis of the podcast at comicbook.com.
