D&D Movie/TV Joe Manganiello: Dragonlance TV Show No Longer In Development

Actor Joe Manganiello has confirmed that the anticipated Dragonlance TV show that he had been working on is no longer being developed. In an interview with ComicBook.com. According to Manganiello, following poor sales of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and the Warriors of Krynn board game last year, "Dragonlance is not a property [WotC] are interested in developing further currently". This decision was also prompted by Hasbro's sale of its media studio, eOne.

In March last year, Manganiello confirmed during an official D&D video update that he was working on a TV show for WotC, and a D&D live action series was greenly by Paramount in January. It's not clear if these are the same property.

Manganiello also talked about his approach to the property, and the new designs he had for the world, the dragons, and even the casting. "I want to make [the show] because I want to see it and I just want to feel that excited and electric about something. The characters...like the casting, I have a look book with over 1,000 pages, but it's not what you expect. The design concepts I had for the world, for the armor, for the swords....I had a fresh take on what the dragons were going to look like, it was going to be nothing like anyone has ever seen."

He has been working on a script for years, and was told by TV executives that his pilot was one of the best fantasy scripts they had ever read. He even offered to buy Dragonlance from WotC.

You can watch the whole interview at the link above.

 

[Shardstone]

Honestly, I don’t think any of those are issues because they’d likely never be noticeable (seriously, the take on good and evil?) or would be substantially modified in development. No, what Dragonlance has to offer is a conspiracy of evil dragons opposed by a rag-tag group of adventurers. And Legend of Vox Machina is already covering it for seasons 2 and 3.

My above post is a good response that, but just to reitterate, the part that I bolded would be great; however, neither WotC nor the Weiss' in their latest novels really succeeds at presenting this information in an interesting way. The Campaign Book, actually, is close to it, but like you said, Vox Machina essentially does it better.

A conspiracy of evil dragons is, IMO, a timeless concept. But to do it in 2024 requires coming at it with a fresh set of eyes and a strong vision, because otherwise it's just more of the same. It's been done in WoW, it's been done in League of Legends, it's been done in soooo much Fantasy, and doing it again the way Dragonlance originally did it is boring.

Now, WotC's concept art had some fresh ideas. Treating dragons like jet planes and having them strafe battlefields and get into dog fights is interesting. But that was really all in the concept art. The actual adventure itself has very little of that. If the new Dragonlance materials had went the more Great War angle with trenches and dragons and knights, it could have poached some of the Game of Thrones ideas and then stood out on its own. But again, we didn't get that.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Dragonlance, IMO, was never a setting that would capture the imagine of post 2000s (and especially post 2010s) Fantasy youth OR adults who are just now coming into the Fantasy genre. In fact, most of the settings from AD&D fall into this category, IMO, with few exceptions.

Overall, what is Dragonlance offering?

+ A strange, almost alien take on Good vs Evil that attempts to mimic Law vs Chaos but falls woefully short

+ Uninspired races, such as the gully dwarves

+ The white savior trope in full effect (the "barbarian tribes" give birth to a white skinned, blue-eyed, blonde haired woman with Mormon-esque platinum discs that contain the true belief)

+ Literal decades of lore and stories that prevent new characters from joining the setting

It's not like each of those issues isn't very easily fixable without disrupting the plot in any way.

 

[Shardstone]

A live-action dragonlance done to modern sensibilities would certainly require change but would be far from impossible. If could have had enough landmines to make risk-averse Hasbro execs nervous though.

I wonder if they just saw a BG3 adaptation as a safer and more zeitgeisty option.

Which is wild because BG3 is filled with sex, dark characters, morally ambigious decisions, body horror, and more. It's clear that darker ideas are popular (and have been virtually forever IMO), but Dragonlance is just not exciting right now. What, in typical Dragonlance, can be done that FR can't do? And this doesn't mean that Dragonlance couldn't evolve or focus more on its unique ideas, but when only one person (Joe) has a vision and doesn't work on the flagship projects (the Campaign and Board Game), we end up getting the same can of bland meat we've already feasted on for 40+ years.

 

[jerryrice4949]

I don't disagree that the elements you bring up could be polished and made the centerpiece of an interesting Dragonlance universe. But I think Dragonlance, as is, presents itself as an antiquated idea where the gods decide to kill the world because "Good is too powerful." Though it seems like a minor nitpick, the language used for these things matters a lot. Law vs Chaos or Order vs Chaos works because Law and Chaos aren't inherently Good or Evil. But when you try to tell me "Being too good means becoming rigid" you're now clashing with the current generational AND personal definitions of good out there. These terms are too defined and too heavily influenced by virtually all of human experience to be presented in the way Dragonlance presents them; telling me that the Cataclysm had to happen because one Priest wanted to be come a god and because Evil is needed to balance out Good just isn't going to cut it presented as is.

Now, it is possible that someone with a strong vision could use these same terms and really ram home what Dragonlance is truly getting at in a creative and fantastical way that I could not imagine. In fact, it seems Joe is someone who could've done that. But having read some of the earlier books, all the earlier setting lore and stuff, I just don't see a future for the setting in today's current Fantasy ecosystem.

I agree with some of your points. What DL offers better than the FR is a more linear and defined setting and plot to base a movie or show on. I think there are a lot of advantages to that. Some of the over simplified good vs evil elements in DL are not all that different from Harry Potter. In the right hands it could be quite successful. But back to my original post, I am not saying that DL is a slam dunk property perfect for tv or movie success just the idea that the success of the adventure was any indicator how a DL tv or movie would do is ridiculous.

 

[Shardstone]

It's not like each of those issues isn't very easily fixable without disrupting the plot in any way.

I've responded to this same sentiment across my last like 5 posts.

 

[Divine2021]

lol my son loves the dragon lance books, but he’s a stupid kid, what does he know

 

[mamba]

Overall, what is Dragonlance offering?

the D&D version of Lord of the Rings...

 

[Shardstone]

the D&D version of Lord of the Rings...

If I wanted to play Lord of the RIngs, I'd play Lord of the Rings. If I wanted to play generic Fantasy, I'd play Forgotten Realms. And there isn't much in Dragonlance that speaks to Lord of the Rings' appeal imo.

lol my son loves the dragon lance books, but he’s a stupid kid, what does he know

I'll be honest, no one is talking about your son in this thread and no one cares about your son either. It's great that he likes the Dragonlance books. Seriously, I mean that. But let's not pretend what I'm saying is some slight against your son. He has not and never will matter to me or the points I'm making.

 

[mamba]

think Dragonlance, as is, presents itself as an antiquated idea where the gods decide to kill the world because "Good is too powerful."

if you think that priest and his followers are good, you have a very twisted definition of good. Enslaving entire species is not exactly considered good by most people, a police state where you can be arrested for thought-crimes does not rank all that highly either...

 

[Deset Gled]

The problem with this logic is for a tv show to be successful it has to attract a broad audience so using the sales of the DL adventure as a gauge has no value. The true power of the story is probably better reflected in orginal 3 books that sold millions of copies world wide. That is the story that would be best adapted and sold to audience across the country not anything related to the 5E adventure. To me it would be the equivalent of HBO not doing GoT because a Westeros coloring book sold poorly.

The problem is that you're going up against actual, recent sales data. You could be right, you could be wrong. But the best data available doesn't support it. From a business standpoint, it doesn't matter how many holes you can try and poke in the current data until you have new data that actually supports doing something different. The sales data you're talking about with the books is decades old.

Also, you can be sure suits at Hasbro are paying at least some attention to ticket sales for The Book Of Mormon. How they interpret that data in relation to Dragonlance is a bit more complicated.