Dragonlance Joe Manganelio is Writing the D&D Movie? And Is it DRAGONLANCE?

Actor Joe Manganelio (from True Blood, Magic Mike, and more) appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, and reported that he is co-writing a movie script. While he doesn't namecheck D&D, his description sounds a lot like it, and he did recently meet up with WotC. "Last year with a playwright I went to Carnegie Mellon with, I actually made a draft of a film, and now we're talking to all the right parties. I had a two-day creative summit with the Wizards of the Coast...we had like a two-day summit about where the movie could go or TV series, products, synergy, the whole deal… Obviously, there's a spectacle. There's dragons breathing fire and lightning. But what makes a great superhero or fantasy movie is the human aspect. It's got to be about something. We root for those characters in Game of Thrones. Fellowship of the Ring was about friendship, this undying love for your friends. That's something everyone can identify with. When a movie is about something human and real emotionally people are going to want to see. Then you get some dragons breathing fire, and hey, I'm in." And to add fuel to the fire, he even tweets a photo of a DRAGONLANCE script! (thanks to darjr for the scoop)

The D&D movie is being directed by Rob Letterman (Goosebumps, Monsters vs. Aliens, Shark Tale), produced by Rob Lee (The Lego Movie, How To Train Your Dragon) and was/maybe still is being penned by David Leslie Johnson (Wrath of the Titans). Previous reports indicated that "This new Dungeons & Dragons will be a Guardians of the Galaxy-tone movie in a Tolkien-like universe. Because when you think of all the Hobbit movies and The Lord of the Rings, they have an earnestness to them, and to see something fun, a Raiders romp inside that world, I feel is something the audience has not seen before." and that "producers are eyeing a Vin Diesel-type for the film’s lead characters".

Of course, we also know that Vin Diesel plays D&D, as does Joe Manganiello.

So is he co-writing the D&D movie or is that something else? To add to the rumour pile, he tweeted an image of a DRAGONLANCE script (shown below). Of course, he could be playing with us. But maybe there is something in it? His name isn't that script, nor is David Leslie Johnson's. Let the speculation begin!

Manganelio at WotC in February

Manganelio tweeted this image



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[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[tardigrade]

Mechatarrasque the Great has looked into the future:

D&D 8 would have been in Dark Sun, but the accountants remembered that John Carter didn't make any money, so it will be in Eberron (featuring music as close to Raiders of the Lost Arc as possible without getting sued over)

I realise this was firmly tongue-in-cheek but I could see a Dark Sun movie working: start with Borys and the Cleansing Wars, then fade to "Tyr, 2,000 years later". Even GRRM doesn't start with the extinction of multiple sentient races during the opening credits.

Game of Thrones meets Mad Max: Fury Road, with bonus cannibal hobbits. Who wouldn't watch that?

 

[Reynard]

Maybe WotC should go the Marvel route and make their own movies until Disney buys them.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using EN World mobile app

 

[Lanliss]

I realise this was firmly tongue-in-cheek but I could see a Dark Sun movie working: start with Borys and the Cleansing Wars, then fade to "Tyr, 2,000 years later". Even GRRM doesn't start with the extinction of multiple sentient races during the opening credits.

Game of Thrones meets Mad Max: Fury Road, with bonus cannibal hobbits. Who wouldn't watch that?

So, Borderlands with swords?

 

[Valetudo]

Honestly I think a tv series with a budget on netflix would be sweet. Can a single movie tell enough of a story? They really need for it to be a hit to continue as a line. Look what happened to warcraft. It made alot of money worldwide, but still didnt make a profit.

 

[Dausuul]

I wish they'd stop using Tolkien-esque worlds.

So do I, but that ship sailed forty years ago. Not all D&D worlds are Tolkienesque, but the core of the property is, and has been since the earliest days of the game.

If the movie is Dragonlance instead of Drizzt, that's about the best we can hope for, setting-wise. Not that that will matter unless they get a halfway decent writer on board. Is there any indication that this guy can write?

 

[Charles Rampant]

I'm informed my response was somehow against some rule or other.

So, let me instead say this; Your point of view here is narrow, and over simplistic, and it's inclusion in this thread serves no useful purpose, even in the limited context of a thread about speculation on future DnD related conversions in visual media.

This has nothing to do with you, as a person, of course, and in fact I generally respect your opinion. It's simply that in this instance, I think you've spoken without any serious consideration of the subject matter, or having only cosidered one aspect/factor of the subject matter, and as a result, your post was not as additive to the thread as your posts normally are.

On the contrary, I found @Mirtek's post to have merit, and agreed with it, even as someone who likes Eberron. Your post seemed a way to patronise another poster by suggesting that they have made a valueless comment, and yet your post also tries to sound like you're very respectful, quite an odd mixture. Maybe if you had engaged with the comment, rather than just decry it as irrelevant?

Forgotten Realms has - to my knowledge - always been the big dog, and its mixture of hyper detail and a Tolkienesque tone (though in practice quite a different world) must surely be seen as parts of that. Eberron is a fun setting, and has a lot to offer, but even in the rarified world of D&D settings it is niche. I cannot see why anyone would look at historic D&D sales - books, novels, etc - and conclude that any setting other than Forgotten Realms was worth focusing on.

The exception would be Dragonlance, but mostly because the actual novels are worth adapting - simple, popular, short, iconic. I wouldn't imagine that the setting itself was all that important in the grand scheme of things, though.

 

[Abstruse]

Okay, here's a breakdown of the complex matter of the Dungeons & Dragons Movie Rights:

* Sweetpea Entertainment (the company that put out the first three D&D movies, yes there were three of them) currently has the rights to a "Dungeons & Dragons" movie. Due to a court settlement, they also have the rights to use Forgotten Realms intellectual property but NOT full rights (they can make a movie set in the Realms, but they can't make an Elminster or Drizzt movie).

* The rights to all other properties (Dragonlance, Ebberon, Ravenloft, Planescape, etc.) are still with Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. They can make a Dragonlance movie, but they can NOT call it "Dungeons & Dragons". This is why the direct-to-DVD animated film for Dragonlance doesn't have D&D anywhere on it.

* The rights are "use it or lose it", meaning that a film must be produced or the rights will revert back to Hasbro. This is why there have been three D&D movies as two of them were low-budget affairs made pretty much solely so that Sweetpea Entertainment could keep the rights. This is the same reason we're going to see another Fantastic Four movie reboot even though the other three films failed spectacularly, and the same reason we get an X-Men movie every other year.

* Sweetpea Entertainment had, as of fall 2015, a distribution and development deal with Warner Bros. to produce a Dungeons & Dragons movie with an estimated budget of about $120 million. This deal may or may not still be in place, but when people talking about the "new D&D movie", this is what they're talking about. And they have to get production started on this movie soon or they're going to lose the rights.

Here's where things get interesting...Warner Bros. may not be involved still because Hasbro holds all the merchandising rights. So IF they back this big D&D movie and IF it's a success, they're going to miss one of the largest revenue streams for the IP, which is the t-shirts and toys. Meanwhile, Universal has a first-look deal with Hasbro on all their properties (this is the same deal that gave us the cinematic classics Transformers, GI Joe, Battleship, and the forthcoming Monopoly movie) and pretty much the moment that WotC gets the D&D movie rights back, they're going to greenlight a D&D movie of their own (which was announced also back in 2013 until the lawsuit happened).

 

[ProtoClone]

Dragonlance is a good choice. Instead of trying to write a whole movie from scrap, this just needs to be adapted. It also benefits from being a novel and easy to grasp.

 

[Abstruse]

Dragonlance is a good choice. Instead of trying to write a whole movie from scrap, this just needs to be adapted. It also benefits from being a novel and easy to grasp.

I agree with using an established setting...however, I don't think adapting a novel is the way to go, especially one as beloved as Weis and Hickman's original Dragonlance novels. For one, they'll have to make changes adapting to a new medium and that'll piss off the fans. Meanwhile, Dragonlance has a TON of characters to introduce and a two hour movie just isn't going to cut it to establish Tanis, Raistlin, Tasslehoff, Sturm, and Goldmoon alone (more or less the main characters), not counting Flint, Caramon, Kitiara, Riverwind, Fizban, Tika...plus the world itself, the antagonists, etc. IF they want to adapt that, they should go with a limited run TV series (10-13 episode series like Game of Thrones or various Netflix shows).