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Dungeons & Dragons Is Getting a Film Franchise
New submitter IT.luddite sends word that Hasbro and Warner Bros. have announced Dungeons & Dragons will be getting its own film franchise. They already have a script, and they'll be working with production company Sweetpea Entertainment, but they haven't picked a director, yet. They'll have at least some of the people on board who worked on the D&D movie from 2000, which was a flop. The deal between Hasbro and Warner Bros. comes after a prolonged legal battle about who owned the rights to a D&D movie. They note, "All rights for future Dungeons & Dragons productions have been unified and returned to Wizards of the Coast, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hasbro."
Still waiting for a proper sequel to Mazes and Monsters! Get to it JJ!
I hope they hire a real director this time. I will be very disappointed if they make the same armature mistakes they made with that movie.
They really could have done better, but just didn't.
Bad ScreenWriting.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
A high history belongs to the Forgotten Realms setting. Ed Greenwood needs to fire up one of his old Macs and get to work here.
Now that that is solidified, it means new computer games, so DDO players can expect the servers to be forcibly closed the way Star Wars Galaxies was in preparation for The Online Republic.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A flop is simply a movie that fails to attract an audience because it isn't good, Jupiter Ascending is a flop. The 2000 D&D movie was so god awful that it alone stands out in my mind as easily as something so bad I'd rather be in a meeting than attend. My girlfriend and I laughed so hard at the unintentionally funny parts of the movie that our judgement was so impaired, we got married. The damage was so severe, we have never recovered from this bad judgement and remain married.
The movie was an unmitigated disaster, and honestly if this were my property I'd never again let someone try to make a movie based on it.
Even though the new Star Trek movies depart from the original canon, they still feed the last official bastion thereof, the MMO. And the same developer does the D&D MMO (Neverwinter), in the same engine in fact. One drives demand for the other, and the same group with disposable income is the primary target for both. Expect some pretty horrible movies aimed at the lowest common denominator amongst the 14-35 set.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As in " Hasbro and Warner Bros. have announced Dungeons & Dragons will be getting its own film franchise." ... again.
Or are we pretending now that they they didn't already drop a bunch of D&D turds?
In 2000 (saw it, amusing for what it was, but it was awful)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
IMDB lso lists this, which I haven't seen
2005 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt04... ("straight to video")
2012 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt17... ("TV movie")
And which seem to have "2" and "3" in the subtitles... suggesting they were sequels? I haven't seen them, and based on the 1st one... I'm not sure if anyone should.
Only Uwe Boll can make the 2000 D&D movie look good in relationship to a new D&D movie. Of course if they follow the 4E style, it will be a boring miniature movie.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Maybe have him play a wizard!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Hey, I wonder if they will go way back and mine the old animated TV show. Now THAT was some gritty fantasy! ;-)
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Penny Arcade gave them a plot: http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2013/02/01/we-can-help.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yea, another bad movie!
D&D was a bad game with bad writing. As the versions have progressed, the game has gotten better writing, better artwork and worse rules. They have over the course of years managed to remove all the interesting rules that made the game fun; in search of the holy grail of "Game Balance" In the process making the game worse, and the balance worse by trying to balance things that wren't that bad to begin with.
And now these visionaries orchestrating this long running crash are going to make a movie!
Whee!
So what we're going to end up with is something that looks like Beowulf, The 300, or The Hobbit/LotR meets Hawk the Slayer or Conan the Destroyer. They might even pay Larry Fucking Elmore a shit load of money to license Snarf so they can have a Jar Jar Binks like mascot in the movie!
Happy Happy! I just can't wait to for out the 20 bucks to watch it on IMAX!
If we're lucky the movie will do so bad at the box office they will put a stake in its hart and kill any sequels, including direct to video.
A movie about Drizzt Do'Urden (D&D Forgotten Realms) with a decent director, direct involvement by the writer R.A. Salvatore, and some decent actors (Game of Thrones cast?) could make it not suck. I think it should be more than possible to make a movie or tv series based on D&D that is actually good. A movie or tv series about Elder Scrolls would be pretty awesome too. But, the stars have to line up just right for these kinds of films to be good, I remain skeptical.
In 2000, New Line Cinema, a Time Warner division that merged with Warner Bros. in 2008, released a movie of the same name starring Thora Birch, Marlon Wayons and Jeremy Irons.
Thora Birch is a good actress, and Jeremy Irons is a legend, he's done great in somewhat topic-related films like Aragon. But Marlon Wayans, what the fuck were they thinking, Dungeons and Trap Houses?
Your father has a problem with a goblin-slaying monk?
I propose a Kickstarter to buy the movie and tv rights to D&D to prevent Hollywood from making any further craptacular "D&D" movies.
Note to the movie industry: Dungeons and Dragons is a rules framework upon which stories are built, not a story itself. Making a "D&D" movie is like basing a film off "Hoyle's Book of Games."
Suggestion: find a story that has relatable characters doing interesting things in circumstances that make us care about the outcome. Or better, WRITE a story that has relatable characters doing interesting things in circumstances that make us care about the outcome. If you do either of these things you will likely have a popular, profitable film. If you take a collection of one dimensional cardboard cutouts and have them progress through a series of tropes in a totally predicable and intellectually insulting manner and expect it to be successful because of the D&D branding, you will have a commercial flop and be ripped by gamers for soiling The Hobby.
We're gamers. Telling stories is what we DO. D&D is how we do it. Want a good D&D movie? Go to GenCon and ask people their gaming stories. Or better yet, buy the books, roll some dice, and live some of your own. Your script is waiting for you. Go play it.
Prince of Persia meets Assassin's Creed
"They'll have at least some of the people on board who worked on the D&D movie from 2000," - it can't suck any less!
Thinking about a film franchise of D&D somehow always reminds me of the anime "Record of Lodoss War." That was well done and had obvious D&D mechanics (including "called shot on the dragon's eye"), well thought out characters, and an interesting plot which could have been taken out of a D&D campaign. In fact I vaguely recall that it was actually a narrative account of a real D&D (or similar RPG) campaign...
I'm sure it's more hard than this, but why not just get a good D&D group to play through a real campaign, and then turn it into a movie?
Actually I'm wondering somehow if they could have the premise be people like Dame Judy Dench, Vin Diesel, and several other real-life actors to play an (actual) game, and turn slipstream it into the actual characters doing things, maybe with voice-overs of their respective characters. I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly as good as I'm imagining, but it sounds really epic in theory.
DND is active entertainment; movies are passive entertainment.
This new venture will end the same as the last one did: Disaster.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
The Dungeons & Dragons movies were cringe worthy, but they are absolute masterpieces when compared to Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight was a direct to video with combined 3D and 2D animation. It has a rating of 1/10 on IMDB. No Rotten Tomatoes score, but they list 20% of people liking it and a 2.6/5
From Wikipedia
Reaction to the film was predominantly negative. Dan Heaton describes it as a "disaster" and "tiresome." David Cornelius says it is "genre cheese and sloppy filmmaking." Michael Stailey declares "It's been a long time since I've come across a film this bad."
Jason Heller, of The A.V. Club, commented that this film "went direct to video, and for good reason. It's terrible. Not even the voice-acting talents of Kiefer Sutherland and Lucy Lawless can save its shoddy, out-of-date animation and flat storytelling, which isn't much of a step above the '80s D&D cartoon. And a lot less sweet."
Personally I think the shot at the '80s cartoon is unwarranted. They were mostly fluff, but there were 2 really well written episodes. Dragonlance on the other hand desperately needs a Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000 treatment, but I'm not even sure if that could make this watchable.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
As long as they remember to put in a cute redhead girl with an invisibility cape, we're good. Oh, and Danny DeVito as a hard-drinking Dungeon Master. Maybe cut the kid with the unicorn.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
As I remember playing D&D as a kid it always started as "you're naked in the woods and it's getting dark". Now, admittedly the movies really have sucked to this point but I believe if hollyweird cast, say, Penelope Cruz and followed my advise?
... but rather on a novel or something based on the game.
I don't trust hollywood to write something about a game or fandom with any competence unless they do it for years... fucking up repeatedly along the way and only after going through that do they finally figure out the rules.
Comic book movies are starting to get decent... how many years of comic book movies did we have to go through before we got the Chis Nolan batman movies etc?
I just don't trust most producers/directors to do it correctly.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The Dungeons and Dragons cartoon from the 1980's was actually pretty damn good considering how bad everything else at the time was.
There's an episode I can't quite recall, except to say that they go up against a bad guy that Venger called "Master", and this thing was essentially a walking, talking nuclear explosion -- even Dungeon Master couldn't handle this thing.
That's how you have to do it; make it epic, break the rules and be imaginative. Unfortunately, even the most neophyte DM probably has more imagination than all of Hollywood combined.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
D&D movies are never going to live up to players' expectations. Everyone takes something different from sitting down and playing the game. There's no way to reproduce that experience on the screen and appease a majority. I've played with several different established groups of players over my three decades and I cringe to think some of these combinations coming together at the same table. There would be bloodshed.
And once you get the "by the book" types in the mix? Fucking forget it. The nitpicking will never end.
In theory...
I mean, so many worlds to choose from. Way more than Marvel and DC combined.
Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft....
Each with several (in some cases dozens) of big recognizable series...
Man, I would love to see Soth, knight of the black rose (with an Opeth sound track) or the dark elf saga or the legend of huma... the list goes on!
If they could be done well, this could generate tons of interest in my age bracket (2nd edition!)
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
The reason they're doing this is pretty clear - for the first time, there's another tabletop RPG competing with D&D for the title of dominant brand in the fantasy tabletop RPG field, that being Pathfinder. I don't think the exact numbers have been released, but at Gencon this year it looked like Pathfinder was on pretty much equal footing with D&D in terms of people playing it (not to mention that Pathfinder got the entire Sagamore Ballroom this year when I've heard in previous years they only got half).
Honestly, it sort of surprises me they're trying to solidify the D&D brand given the stranglehold they have on the TCG market - Magic is easily bigger than most of the other top 5 TCGs (owned by companies that aren't Hasbro/Wizards) combined, and their godawful My Little Pony TCG is consistently the top seller at physical retailers (Target, Wal-Mart, etc).
Vin Disel for lead--Duh
Christopher Walken for villain--Duh
Lockwood for art design.
Peter Jackson for director--Because he's already made 6 D&D movies.
You want darker Sean Bean as lead and Brom for art design.
You want lighter Kristanna Lokken as lead and Larry Elmore for art design.
Neil Gaiman for Writer Duh.
(The reason to not use an existing franchise is too much baggage, but give the writer access to all the IP! )
While I love playing D&D, the idea of yet another animated (or spaghetti monster forbid) life action movie just makes me cringe.
Frankly, the last fantasy movie that worked for me was probably the original Conan, and even that had it's patently cheasy moments. The Harry Potter franchise was a resounding success as well, but I was simply too old at that point to really appreciate it, and it simply wasn't gritty enough.
Lord of the Rings was good, The Hobbit was a disaster. And both suffered from the director changing the script away from the book.
You want to impress me with a D&D franchise? Then bloody well set the story in Gygax's Greyhawk and lets see Bigby disobey Mordenkainen the Archmage, leader of the Circle of Eight, and go fight Iuz the Old to prevent a war that would cover Oerik in darkness.
...how great the last D&D movie was, right?
What’s striking to me is how unimportant it is for a film to be part of a D&D franchise. Virtually every element of D&D that would impact a movie is already in the public domain. Anyone can make a film of dungeons, dragons, dungeons with dragons in them, a party of adventures trying to kill dragons in the dungeons, etc. That is, unless they film people standing around and saying “I use my +3 vorpal sword on that chaotic Beholder.”
The only thing of potential value is the loose trademark association of “Dungeons and Dragons” with a particular kind of high-fantasy. I suppose there’s a slight change more geeks would see a film if it has a “D&D” logo on it, but not much.
I'm not going to pay for a ticket so I can see Hollywood shit all over my favorite pastime. I'm going to keep my money and pretend this film never exists, just like I've done with all the previous D&D atrocities to hit the silver screen.
If Marvel does it, it will be done well. Otherwise, it's going to be crap.
I've played since Greyhawk was in 3rd edition (1977ish). It's a great game, but it has a lot of artificiality to it because of the Vance material.
They need good characters. It would be better to tell the story of Drizzt or some other character with a lot of storyline than to make a "dnd" movie.
Speaking as a DND fan who still runs for 12 players in the level 20 range.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Paul Giamatti: The DM
Marc Meron: Cunnilingun, the Elven BladeSinger
Melissa McCarthy: Dervich, the Dwarf War Priest
Adam Sandler: Sneechy, the Human Rogue
Forrest Whitaker: Sardonicus, Elf Wizard
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
[Cartman and friends are pretending to be Lord of the Rings characters; they walk by a group of kids playing in a yard]
Kyle Broflovski: What are you guys doing?
Town Kid: We're playing Harry Potter!
Eric Cartman: Ha! Fags!
they fucked up WOTC, which fucked up M:TG and all the other games they had going at the time. I mean, whose fucking bright idea was it to introduce those utterly useless giant modifier cards?? Like it's not frickin' obvious you're playing one of those in a match...!
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Might not be bad as a kids film.
That entire series had recurring villains too so you have a little bit to work with.
I just can't see anything compelling for adults.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This could potentially explain why WotC was absent at Gen Con 2015. They didn't have a booth in the exhibitor hall, and they didn't have a presence in the gaming hall. Baldman Games was left to run all of the D&D events, and they had to do it in Hall D. Paizo kicked WotC right out of the Sagamore Ballroom. It was a pretty terrible gaming experience, really, and that makes me a sad panda. It was loud and crowded. I had six games and all but one were with seven players. We were hearing from a lot of people that WotC didn't put any money into Gen Con this year, but I don't have any first-hand knowledge of that myself.
It's kind of crazy. A gaming convention that started in Lake Geneva by the guy who created D&D, and really built much of its success on D&D, had D&D's IP owner walk away from it.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Make it happen!
Not unless it turns out to be the Goblin King. I'll tell you what: You Bash the Balrog and I'll climb the tree!
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"Hollywood is again rolling its 12-sided dice and taking a chance on translating the popular “Dungeons & Dragons” role-playing game into a movie."
I couldn't get past the first sentence. It's a 20-sided, and it's die, not dice. If you're going to talk to us nerds about gaming culture, and something as important as D&D, at least make SOME effort. Reporting these days sucks... seriously.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
The movie was an unmitigated disaster, and honestly if this were my property I'd never again let someone try to make a movie based on it.
It was, but the solution isn't shoving it in a drawer, it's turning it over to a better team. The TNG movies were not particularly good (the last one was ridiculous), but the new Trek movies are good. (They have the problem of running too far away from the science and thought-problems, but they are fun to watch). The rotoscoped LOTR was generally hated by all, but the Peter Jackson (although having lots of problems) was a great production to have made.
Joss Whedon could do a fun D&D movie, for example. Thinking about who else might, I am really curious as to what Aaron Sorkin would do with it... "The Tea Party Ogre..."
Hopefully it'll enjoy the same success as the 70's era cartoon of the same name. Anyone remember that thing? That memory is tucked away in the same mental filing cabinet as the Wookie Life-Day Christmas Special.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... that they never made any sequels to the Matrix.
Now that would have been weird.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
The Amazing Wizard of Paws
It is called 'Game of Thrones'
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Lets have a movie based on Oger/GEV!
It would be perfect for Michael Bay.
It has to be dark.
It has to be gritty.
It has to be R rated or better.
It has to be written for an adult audience.
George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay are not allowed to even be in the same country where it is filmed.
Follow these rules and it has a slim chance of success.
Do you remember the paperbacks written for D&D?
They sucked, too.
The problem is the D&D universe is meant to be explored and played with. It places little emphasis on character development (as in personality), and even less on storylines. This has carried through to every attempt ever made to turn them into movies, whether for the big screen or for TV.
The biggest problem they face is that there are no "standard" characters that people are waiting to see, because there are so many characters from the various game packs, not one of which had a memorable personality to make them famous. So where something like "Lord of the Rings" had memorable characters like Gandalf that people were waiting to see brought to life, D&D has no such strengths.
I predict another 1-star flop.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Adapting DragonLance ?
Emphasis on character development (as in personality) - Check
Storyline - Check
Characters that people are waiting to see - Check, check and check.
That shows me they are far more likely to throw a fumble - 1 , and make it damn impossible to throw a critical :p.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Work on the damn script, or else.. ..you probably end up with a shallow and silly kids fantasy movie, not at all some kind of Game of thrones "experience". :)
If the Powers That Be are smart, they'd do the Dragonlance universe following the Chronicles book series. I know, I know, they did an animated version back a few years but it was crap even though they had some names of mention doing some of the voice acting. There are so many unique characters in the Dragonlance universe... I'd love to see Lord Soth or Raistlin's Lair of the Live Ones (uncensored of course) on the big screen.
What is a movie, or a book? It's *story* - drama, comedy, tragedy, what have you. It's not the legal right to use the term "beholder" or "owlbear". This announcement should be greeted with the same anticipation as Hugh Jackman selling a high end pen(Montblanc), there's nothing inherently awful about it, but why would you assume it's tidings of anything particularly good? All D&D means is a certain guarantee of bums in seats on opening weekend, nothing more. The bean counters are squirming in their seats, nothing more.
I was holding out for Bunnies & Burrows, anyway.
Are you shitting me? Those books were such two-dimensional, hack-written tripe it's disgusting.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Dragonlance Legends!!! :P
The twins series was the first real fantasy I ever read and would make a fantastic movie.
A teacher told me to stop reading that DnD trash and to read a real fantasy book and gave me those three....I read all 3 over the weekend and hardly slept, she just kept the books coming after that
And these are published by Wizards of the Coast aswell, idiots.
Unless I see Monte Cook or someone similar with a lofty title like "Chief Script Consultant" or somesuch, I can't believe that they are making a sincere effort to make a good movie. It is no secret who the luminaries are in the genre, but they never seem to be involved. Why would they not get R.A. Salvatore (who, I hear, can write some stories) or somebody, throw some money at them, and say "You have one job: Make sure the story doesn't suck." I've never seen that, so I assume that the product will be more Hasbro bullshit.
They keep trying to make "Dungeons and Dragons" movies, when they should really be trying to make a "good" movie. They sacrifice good story in order to pack in more heavy handed references to certain character classes and rules. Right off the bat that makes the characters seem like ridiculous caricatures. Just make a good movie. Just make a good movie and let the references fall where they may. But for god's sake, please don't give me a party with a Paladin, a rouge, a pure caster, and a priest just because you feel you had to.
Despite the OP's attempt to make this seem like the first of its kind in 40 years, there have been numerous (tragic) attempts at making D&D into an entertainment franchise.
That said, none of them were terribly successful, nor could they ever be. The longest-lived adaptation (IIRC) was the Saturday Morning animated version; aired 1983-1985. It wasn't terribly good at depicting the game, or even the genre, but instead simply became another podium for tales of morality in the 1980's TV nannyscape. Remember, D&D was just the framework, the universe in which stories took place. There were hundreds of different stories, but none of them were actually called "Dungeons & Dragons"; they had their own titles, y'know. (e.g., Ravenloft and The Keep on the Borderlands, et al)
Since WotC took over the IP, I've had high hopes that they would curate it with more responsibility. To wit, bringing some of the more popular dungeon tales to life, and portraying each under their own chosen title (vs. relying on D&D brand recognition) thereby doing honor to the authors of those stories. I have yet to see any adaptation that truly does justice to Gygax's true genius for writing adventures.
In that light, let me say that I hope to never see another movie, game or program titled "Dungeons & Dragons", but rather, an interesting title, bourne from the story itself, followed with the tagline: a Dungeons & Dragons adventure tale.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
DragonLance Chronicles
Make each book into it's own movie and you've also got follow-on films in the can with the Twins trilogy. And then there's the companions books that could each be made into a prequel.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
They've long had it. i've seen D & D movies!