Back in 2019, a Netflix series for Magic: The Gathering was announced—mere months before the majorly popular Arcane series had its own announcement in the same year.
At the time, it seemed like a no-brainer. As with League of Legends, Magic: The Gathering has a wealth of lore to draw on for its own yarns—it was even headed up by the Russo brothers of Marvel acclaim. Well, at least until 2021, where they left over "creative differences". Ah, that old chestnut.
Well, it's probably been binned, like so many card pack wrappers. That's according to one of the voice actors on the project—Brandon Routh, while speaking to Collider about sci-fi horror Ick, said that the series has been dead for a while now. And despite the fact that nobody at Netflix apparently thought to tell anybody about it, it's "old news." Here's the full quote:
"I'm not sure. I did do a voice for it. As far as I understand, nobody's put out a press release about it, but apparently it's not happening. That's kind of old news. I'm not sure why it's surfacing again."
Routh was set to voice Gideon Jura, a planeswalker and lawful good paladin type with a bend towards white mana—he also uses something called a sural, which is an armguard outfitted with ill-advised, OSHA-violating steel whips. Presumably upsetting for anyone to animate, though I'm sure that's not the primary reason the project was apparently cancelled.
Speaking of reasons, given the relative and all-consuming silence around the series, there's not much else to tell—it was, as per the original announcement, meant to "cross the genres of suspenseful thriller, horror, and drama". What that actually means we'll likely never know.
Not to give a glimmer of hope where it's undue—however, Routh is just one voice actor on the project, so there's still a dangling asterisk of Damocles swinging over the whole thing. It's entirely possible that a version of the script was scrapped, which is only really a sign that the series is going through some form of creative development hell.
Given the complete radio silence—and Netflix's increasingly cancel-happy attitude towards its shows, I wouldn't hold my breath. I'm in the process of reaching out to Wizards of the Coast and Netflix for a comment, and I'll update this article if I receive a response.
