D&D Movie/TV D&D Movie Hit or Flop?

[bedir than]

A few weeks in, and the response on the AO3 scale is still pretty mediocre. We're up to 114 now, with the Edgin/Xenk theme continuing. This puts the film in the same bracket as Dark City, Withnail and I, and the live-action version of Cats. Hardly the stuff that shapes the popular culture zeitgeist.

There is however a surprising amount of these 114 that are written in Chinese (I can't tell whether it's Cantonese or Mandarin, sorry, and I strongly suspect that these were not written in China, because holy crap AO3 would surely be blocked over there so fast that Speedy Gonzalez would take impressed note).

While i know very little about financial success metrics for films, and I'm not going to get involved in that conversation, I think at this point we can rule out the 'hit' option of the question in the post title.

Wouldn't people tell D&D stories using a different tool than AO3?

 

[humble minion]

Wouldn't people tell D&D stories using a different tool than AO3?

People who want to tell D&D stories would use D&D, but people who want to tell Edgin, Holga, Doric, and Simon stories would use AO3. To be a successful film, DADHAT needs to attract a lot of viewers in the latter bracket.

 

[Zardnaar]

I can understand the movie will arrive later, because now everybody is waching Mario Bros, the new star in the party, but we shouldn't think it was a flop. Paramount couldn't pay all the youtuber critics to say it was fun. For a little short of time it was the number 1st.

The movie was fun. A different thing is about if the promotion was enough.

And I can't believe the last titles of UCM still make more money when everybody is saying they are being a flop.

Good movies still flop at the box office. No ones suggesting Paramount paid youtubers off. Reviews have been positives the negative stuff has been along the lines of "not my thing" vs "claw my eyes out".

 

[CommodoreKong]

Sure, to be clear, I'm inclined to agree that there likely are comparisons that may have similar quantitative and qualitative characteristics as the D&D movie.

I just do not think Detective Pikachu is that movie, and the qualitative characteristics differ enough that using it to predict the future for a D&D franchise seems unwise.

I would also agree that a live action Pokemon movie based on traditional Pokemon content could do really well barring a complete trainwreck.

I would say it's not a perfect comparison but I believe there are enough similarities to find it useful in the discussion about if D&D is considered a success. Do you have another film that you think would be a better comparison?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Compared to the first movie, this one is a big financial success. Low bar, I know... These are the #s for the 2000 movie:

 

[Gammadoodler]

I would say it's not a perfect comparison but I believe there are enough similarities to find it useful in the discussion about if D&D is considered a success. Do you have another film that you think would be a better comparison?

From a quantitative perspective, would likely involve more research than I'm willing to do. But qualitatively, it's a vanilla genre movie with a longstanding somewhat niche IP. Maybe something like Ender's Game?

Edit: though even that is a bit limited since Ender's Game as a series has specific stories to tell where D&D is more 'fantasy tropes, the tabletop roleplaying game'

Edit 2: In general I wasn't really talking about the success of the movie as much as the forecasting of likely future projects based solely on quantitative characteristics without consideration for qualitatively differences, which, to my mind, are equally if not more important.

You say 'Detective Pikachu' made xyz$ and doesn't have a sequel yet; if D&D doesn't make at least that much, it won't get a sequel either.

I say, there are a lot of reasons movies don't get made, and past financial performance is only one of them. A Detective Pikachu sequel, to me, seems a lot more difficult to put together than a D&D sequel. You couldn't confidently give Michael Bay a Detective Pikachu movie series, where I think you probably could give him D&D. (Not that I'd want this for D&D movies, but it just isn't that complicated an IP or set of concepts to work with).

 

[bedir than]

I read a story that said there are more movies coming out this spring than came out in 2019's spring. That will remain true for summer and fall. The absolute glut in the backlog will cause a lot of headaches for the executives regarding midling performers (like Honor Among Thieves) -- do they think the middle ground was because of oversaturation and so there is space for sequels?

 

[bedir than]

People who want to tell D&D stories would use D&D, but people who want to tell Edgin, Holga, Doric, and Simon stories would use AO3. To be a successful film, DADHAT needs to attract a lot of viewers in the latter bracket.

A very large goal of this movie is to convince people to tell stories using D&D. D&D sales and interest is as important to judging the movie as its box office.

While there are reasons to not use Google Trends as a sole number, the trends are very clearly in D&D's favor

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&tz=420&geo=US&hl=en&q=/m/026q9&sni=3

 

[bedir than]

A very large goal of this movie is to convince people to tell stories using D&D. D&D sales and interest is as important to judging the movie as its box office.

While there are reasons to not use Google Trends as a sole number, the trends are very clearly in D&D's favor

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&tz=420&geo=US&hl=en&q=/m/026q9&sni=3

View attachment 281952

I stretched this out for the life of google and the past two months have a larger spike than any time in Google's 19-year history. The movie is creating more search than the launch of 5e, by a lot, more search than Stranger Things, more search than Critical Role.

I'm now betting that a sequel is announced when Honor Among Thieves moves from theaters to streaming.

 

[OB1]

I stretched this out for the life of google and the past two months have a larger spike than any time in Google's 19-year history. The movie is creating more search than the launch of 5e, by a lot, more search than Stranger Things, more search than Critical Role.

I'm now betting that a sequel is announced when Honor Among Thieves moves from theaters to streaming.

Wow! I'd say Hasbro is getting their money's worth from the film then (even if it's not directly from BO receipts)

And an sequel announcement at streaming launch would make a lot of sense, especially if it's over $100M domestic and $200M worldwide by that point.

Hasbro is not messing around with increasing the visibility of the brand ahead of the 2024 edition.