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."

Comments

Games and Movies feeding one another

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:The one from 2000 was really terrible.

[Stormwatch]

Read this interview. Courtney Solomon didn't want to direct that D&D movie, just produce it. He brought James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Renny Harlin - and the idiot boss at TSR rejected them all. Eventually, Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, and the next idiot in charge promptly sued Solomon. They settle, but part of the settlement is that the movie has to begin production real quick - ruining their shot at finding investors for a bigger budget - and use the same script TSR had approved years before - even though they had a much better one ready.

To sum it up, the idiots who owned the D&D brand forced the movie to fail.