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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!
Bad ScreenWriting.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
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.
Maybe we'll get lucky and Uwe Boll will be free.
Uwe Boll gave up on video game movies because fans don't appreciate the brilliant genius that he brings to the big screen.
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 ^_^
Maybe we'll get lucky and Uwe Boll will be free.
No, we're lucky he expects to get paid, or they'd let him make every movie
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your father has a problem with a goblin-slaying monk?
When The Gamers and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising made on a shoestring budget with amateur actors are better than anything from Uwe Boll, maybe it's time for him to just stop...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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.
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.
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
"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..."
I will be very disappointed if they make the same armature mistakes they made with that movie.
Armature mistakes? I think you want the DC vs. AC thread, not the D&D thread...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
... that they never made any sequels to the Matrix.
Now that would have been weird.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
You're welcome.
If you like, I can also recommend some pretty brutal dommes, since that seems to be your thing. ;)
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.