The Return of Sword & Sorcery Cinema?

[Desdichado]

Well my guess would be that Eragon is one movie.

My guess would be that people other than D&D geeks know what Eragon is. I mean, really--Ranger REG; you weren't asking that seriously, were you?

To the Original Poster; don't forget that Fire & Ice finally got it's DVD release within the last year too! And heck; I'm just glad that you know the difference between Sword & Sorcery and Lord of the Rings.

In other entertainment media, it looks like S&S is on the up too. That new Hyborian Age computer game set in the Conan setting looks huge, and it was apparently a big deal at E3.

 

[Desdichado]

Your doubts are unfounded.

In fact, the last four Weis & Hickman Dragonlance novels - Dragons of Summer Flame, Dragons of a Fallen Sun, Dragons of a Lost Star, and Dragons of a Vanished Moon - all hit the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists. The latter debuted at #10 on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists, and #8 on the Wall Street Journal list.

The originals were a pretty major phenomenon; there's a reason Wizards of the Coast still publishes them, and supports Dragonlance in D&D with a core setting book, when the other dead settings are, well, dead: and that reason is spelled "novel sales".

You haven't addressed how long they stayed on the charts though, or demographic buying habits. There's enough D&D or former D&D nerds to get numbers like that without Dragonlance being "a household name".

And, given the association of Dragonlance with D&D and the piss poor financial performance of the D&D movie, I think Hollywood is quite justified in being skeptical of how "hot" a property Dragonlance would be. And to be nitpicky; WotC does not support D&D EDIT: Wow, that was a bizarre typo Dragonlance; it's still dead to them. They have licensed setting co-creator Margaret Weiss' company to produce DL material, but I doubt that there's anything to that other than 1) hey, a license. That's revenue, and 2) soft spot for Margaret Weiss.

It's actually the Planescape license that WotC seems to be the most possessive of. I think that's the one that they think has some real value, although they haven't yet figured out how to tap it yet.

 

[jester47]

I think the D&D liscense has its own career...

 

[James Heard]

It's a prestige class, with 5 ranks in "doomed to fail" as a prereq I'm afraid.

 

[Hypersmurf]

To the Original Poster; don't forget that Fire & Ice finally got it's DVD release within the last year too!

I've owned Fire and Ice on DVD for some years now.

-Hyp.

 

[Ciaran]

I guess my point was that the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser movie has already been made and that it was called "Conan the Barbarian." The story does not do a very good job of depicting Conan, but it does do a great job of depicting Leiber's characters. Looking at the characters and plot I would believe it if they took a mediocre Fafhrd and Grey Mouser script and got rights to the Conan properties and then changed the names of the characters.

?!??

I can only think that either you haven't actually read Leiber, or you dislike his work so much that you can't see it clearly. Cuz, y'know, the main characters in Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon both have more in common with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser than the characters in Conan the Barbarian.

 

[nikolai]

Sonja's IMDB page is up (though all the details are hidden behind IMDbPro subscription).

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0800175/

 

[Ranger REG]

And, given the association of Dragonlance with D&D and the piss poor financial performance of the D&D movie, I think Hollywood is quite justified in being skeptical of how "hot" a property Dragonlance would be.

Well, that majorly sucks, that in order to make such a movie made, we have to rely in the one unholy place that misrepresent and mistreat our favorite genre simply because fantasy won't win them the prestige of the Oscar.

No wonder a Kiwi outside of Hollywood can do LOTR better.

And to be nitpicky; WotC does not support D&D EDIT: Wow, that was a bizarre typo Dragonlance; it's still dead to them. They have licensed setting co-creator Margaret Weiss' company to produce DL material, but I doubt that there's anything to that other than 1) hey, a license. That's revenue, and 2) soft spot for Margaret Weiss.

Gee, you make it sound like granting the RPG license to Margaret Weis is a big business mistake, and that WotC, no matter how small the employee roster at R&D is now, should be the one to maintain the line -- including editing it -- to show somebody like you their gesture of support.

:\

 

[Urizen]

I for one would love to see a Dragonlance movie, though I do worry about them mangling the characters.

I seem to recall a petition running around the net some place calling for a movie (or multiple movies) based on the series.

I think if anyone could direct that series, it would be PJ and WETA.

Given his work on LOTR, I believe he would do a really good job with it.

 

[Klaus]

Yeah, but LotR is precisely the reason PJ wouldn't do *another* fantasy trilogy.

After reading the two Eberron novels by Keith Baker, Id really like to see an Eberron trilogy (and the first novel, City of Towers, is self-contained enough to serve as a testing of the waters). Just slap Nathan Fillion, Dina Meyer, Michael Rosenbaum and Michael Dorn onto the roles of Daine, Lei, Jode and Pierce and you're set to go!