Actor Peter Serafinowicz has revealed how a chance encounter with fellow Dark Souls superfan Alex Garland led to him landing a role in the upcoming Elden Ring movie.
Serafinowicz, who is best known as the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, for playing Pete in Shaun of the Dead, Garthan Saal in Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Sommelier in John Wick: Chapter 2, picked Dark Souls as one of his Five Brilliant Things in an interview with British comedian Russell Howard.
Serafinowicz spoke passionately of his love for Dark Souls in the interview, explaining in great detail how its infamous difficulty makes it one of the most rewarding video games ever created. “Once that clicks, it's like, oh my god, this is the game I've been waiting for my whole life,” he said. “It teaches you that no obstacle is insurmountable. And it's just the most satisfying game that I've ever played. And there's a thing about all these games, once you play them and if they click for you, you don't want to play any other game. And I just haven't.”
Serafinowicz went on to explain how he landed one of the most iconic roles in the Dark Souls series and, later, Elden Ring: the male character's dying sounds and pain grunts. He said that he basically bullied his way into a voice acting role in Dark Souls 2, having loved the first so much. FromSoftware cast him as the voice behind Mild-Mannered Pate, but he also ended up doing something far more important…
“I eventually got in touch with the software company and said, ‘Look, I hear you're making Dark Souls 2.’ And I couldn't have been more excited that they were making another one. And I said, ‘Look, I'm an actor. I'm good at voices. I'd love to be a voice in the game.’ And I kind of bullied my way into being… I played a character in the game and they don't have big, huge cutscenes and loads of dialogue blah blah blah and dialogue trees…. kind of boring, right? Just like just these little kind of bits, you know? And so I played this character in Dark Souls 2.
“But far more thrillingly for me, they asked me to provide the exertion noises for if you played as a male character, right? So all the, 'when you die,' which is often in these games. I play Elden Ring now and they've kept my sounds in all the subsequent games.
“I always forget if when I pick it up and have a little go and I die it's like me right? It's a weird way to be immortalized in this. It's one of my proudest achievements.”
At this point Serafinowicz revealed how he went from doing voices on Dark Souls and Elden Ring to starring in the Elden Ring movie. It turns out it all came from a chance encounter with writer and director Alex Garland — also a Dark Souls and Elden Ring superfan — and a friendship that followed.
“Quite a few years ago we were in the same reception area, I was going for an audition. He had some kind of meeting there. Didn't know him, but he came over and introduced himself to me and was like, ‘You're Peter Serafinowicz aren't you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you're Alex Garland.’ ‘Yeah, I'm a big fan.’ He was like, ‘You like video games, don't you?’ And I said, ‘Well, I like one video game.’ ‘It's Dark Souls, right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ because I'd talked about it a bit. And he said, ‘I'm just the biggest Dark Souls fan.’ And we were just enthusing about all these different aspects of this wonderful game, and we became friends based on this little interaction, right?
“He had to go into a meeting and I left my phone number at reception. I said, ‘Could you give this to Alex Garland when he comes out? It was like a sort of date, you know. And so we became friends. Anyway, fast forward to now, Alex is currently directing Elden Ring the movie, and I'm in it! I'm in it! I just can't believe my luck. I just can't believe that, that it's like, wow, dude. Wow, man!”
It’s a fun full circle moment for Serafinowicz, who said Dark Souls and Elden Ring fans love that he’s behind the FromSoftware death noises. “One of the other cast in it, I met him the other day when I went for a costume fitting. He also is a big fan of these games. And I told him this story and then I was doing my death noise and he was like, ‘Oh, dude. Oh my god.’”
Then, after delivering a quite wonderful FromSoftware death noise to close out the interview, Serafinowicz added: “And it says, ‘You died.’ It’s so funny, right? You died. Ha ha ha ha!”
Alex Garland’s live-action adaptation of FromSoftware’s masterful, 30-million selling video game hits theaters on March 3, 2028. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Elden Ring is A24's most ambitious project ever, with a budget "well over $100 million." That makes it a more expensive production than the likes of Marty Supreme and Alex Garland's own Civil War.
The cast is headlined by Cailee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus, Civil War, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery), Ben Whishaw (Q in James Bond films Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die, and the voice of Paddington Bear), and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation, The Last of Us).
The Elden Ring movie is created “under the guidance” of FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, and “based on a mythological story” written by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin. Last year, the New Yorker said that Garland had completed an “epic” 160-page draft, with 40 additional pages of imagery, as a script on-spec, then flew to Japan to pitch the movie himself.
That came as little surprise, given we know that Garland is an Elden Ring pro. In June last year, he told IGN he was on his seventh playthrough of Elden Ring, and revealed the boss he found the toughest to take down.
Speaking to IGN ahead of the release 28 Years Later — the zombie apocalypse film he wrote 23 years on from penning the first movie in the franchise — Garland revealed which of all of the famed foes in Elden Ring that he has settled on being the most difficult: Malenia, Blade of Miquella.
“It's Malenia who's the tough one”, Garland explained. “I'm now on my seventh playthrough of that game. I've leveled up, I've got lots of juice, and a cool sword, and stuff like that, and I just throw myself at them again, and again, and again, and again.”
“That was the technique I learned with Dark Souls," he continued. “It's not that you get better, it's more like monkeys and typewriters. You just keep doing it, and eventually, one day they're dead.”
Certainly, Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who worked on the Elden Ring video game with FromSoftware, seems excited. Martin has described Garland as a "first rate director" and production company A24 as "kickass." Martin said his mood upon hearing the project announcement was "hopeful," as he shared a YouTube video titled "Why the Elden Ring Movie WON'T SUCK."
Photo by Sam Simpson/Dave Benett/Getty Images for British Vogue.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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