Netflix sets 2027 premiere for Magic: The Gathering adaptation
The animated adaptation, first announced in 2019 and restarted in 2024, follows pyromancer Chandra Nalaar.
Netflix said its animated Magic: The Gathering series, announced in 2019, has been named Planeswalker and is set to debut in 2027.
When the project was introduced in June 2019, Joe and Anthony Russo were attached to an anime-style adaptation. That version fell apart. In 2024, Netflix said it still planned to adapt the card game as a series, but would start the project over.
“It’s really happening. I promise. For real. It’s happening,” Roy Graham, head of story for Magic: The Gathering at Wizards of the Coast, told fans at the opening of the announcement video.
Netflix announced the title and premiere window Friday at the MagicCon: Atlanta fan convention, alongside an initial image showing the pyromancer Chandra conjuring flames under a twilight sky, TVShowsFinder reported.
A two-minute Development Diary featurette opens with Netflix Geeked’s September 2024 post naming Terry Matalas as showrunner. Fan replies surround the post, including “Stop toying with our emotions!” and “I'll believe it when I see it.”
Chandra Nalaar is at the center of the story, according to Netflix’s official synopsis, which describes her as a volatile pyromancer hunted for her gifts and haunted by her past. She joins other legendary Planeswalkers in confronting an insidious force as they try to prevent a cataclysmic war.
Netflix named Matalas, known for Star Trek: Picard and 12 Monkeys, as showrunner in September 2024. The featurette says each plane exists in a pocket universe, giving each its own design, animation and filmmaking style. Matalas called the approach “worlds-building.”
Co-showrunner Cindy Appel said the game’s thousands of cards, amassed over more than 30 years, make the franchise “tailor-made for animation.”
Netflix is making Planeswalker with Hasbro Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast, Movie Chill reported. Budapest-based DIGIC Pictures is producing the animation after Netflix named the studio at the Annecy animation festival in June 2025.
Brandon Routh recorded dialogue as Gideon Jura for the abandoned version, the site said. It was not immediately clear whether the new series would use that material or who would provide its voices.
The featurette also includes Aaron Forsythe, senior vice president of game design at Wizards of the Coast. After years of questions over when an adaptation might come together and what form it would take, he said, “Magic is finally having its moment.”
