UPDATE: Hasbro files lawsuit - Warner Bros. to make a D&D Movie. AICN

[Umbran]

It was for Chainmail, but they've now acquired the rights to D&D and are therefore retooling to the bigger property.

Ah, sorry. The rights history wasn't entirely clear in the articles i had seen

For the same reason he directed the first movie and was producer on the second and third - he still holds the rights. WB almost certainly got the rights only by allowing him involvement in the project.

That kind of follows. We can hope, though, that WB went, "Dude, we want the rights, but clearly from your last attempts, you kinda stink at this. We'll give you a producer credit. You get paid. Your resume will look great. But you will stand aside and let our people do the work." That would be nice.

 

[Nytmare]

To be fair, it has been more than a decade since the first film. That is a significant chunk of time to learn things.

Has anyone watched any of his more recent films?

 

[Umbran]

Has anyone watched any of his more recent films?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0813309/

Given that list of titles to his name, we should have confidence that this guy knows how to make a good movie?

 

[Nytmare]

There's always a chance. Just cause it's a low budget, indie film doesn't mean that it's a complete waste. Two Universal Soldier sequels? That doubles the chances of one of them being another Slumdog, right?

 

[Quickleaf]

I just read an interesting interview with Courtney Solomon about the first D&D movie over here: http://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/courtney_solomo.html.

Perhaps the most salient quote from the article is:

Basically it took two years of negotiating with them and sending them proposals and convincing them that we would take care of them and listen to what they had to say, which was sort of a blessing and not a blessing at the same time. Sometimes it's hard dealing with right's holders who have opinions about what should be in the movie and don't really know anything about making movies.

While that's certainly true, you'd better make a damn fine movie after saying something like that. Which none of the D&D movies have been.

Here's an idea...

Let's challenge Courtney Solomon, Roy Lee, and David Leslie Johnson to appear on Tabletop with Will Wheaton for a session of D&D

 

[Manbearcat]

- Our intrepid heroes meet at a tavern and get together for reasons that make no sense at all (to each other or the audience).
- A mysterious pedlar sells them a cursed magic item for tons of gold that turns the male dwarf into a female when he puts it on (eliciting bad jokes from his mates for the rest of the movie about not being able to tell the difference).
- Our brave heroes avoid every fight possible, pilfering gold and observing how odd it is that they're getting better at their job all the while.
- Bob the overeager, dumb fighter gets eaten by an animated chest, the group slays it, mournful music is queued while everyone sheds a tear trying futily to remember anything interesting about poor Bob in a pathetic eulogy, the music quickly screeches to a halt and everyone fights over his stuff.
- 10 ft poles don't save the group from Acerak's Spheres of Annihilation and ridiculous traps.
- Last man standing is so weighed down by all of his mates' gear that he dies in a high speed chase with a Gelatinous Cube moving 50 feet per minute.
- Rocks fall. Audience dies.
- Curtain drops to Benny Hill Theme.

 

[Derren]

I'm expecting lots of showy flashy bang-bang, and exactly none of the things that make D&D great. Namely, unearthly worlds, imaginative stories, character interaction, character development, atmosphere, surprise twists, unexpected results to unlikely actions, and the sheer suspense of the unknown.

Since when were any of that ever a priority in D&D? All of them were secondary to combat, no matter the edition, especially Chainmail. And combat would translate to "showy flashy bang-bang" in screen.

 

[darjr]

Since when were any of that ever a priority in D&D? All of them were secondary to combat, no matter the edition, especially Chainmail. And combat would translate to "showy flashy bang-bang" in screen.

this does not speak for me. I want all that non-combat greatness... and combat.

 

[Stormonu]

The best chance for a D&D movie was, in my opinion, putting Dragonlance to screen. Unfortunately, they muffed that one with that piece of animated gak that went straight to video (and instead should have went straight to landfill). It'll be 20 years or more before anyone in Hollywood will touch it now. I mean, I see it kind of like the animated Lord of the Rings film. It was 31 years before some redid it as a blockbuster.

I just don't get the sense that outside the RPG, the folks administrating D&D have much of a clue how to promote the game - and I think that translates into poor handling of the movie rights. I mean, as for D&D computer games, it didn't release the first gold box game until 1986, whereas the likes of Ultima was already in its 5th incarnation. Same thing for the MMO scene. Again, late to the party with the choose-your-own adventure book craze (and vastly inferior to the Lone Wolf books). Crash and burn card game knockoffs Spellfire and Blood Wars, too late and crummy games in themselves. While I personally liked the LBJ toys from the 80's, why in the heck haven't they had Hasbro put out a new line of D&D toys? They've had what - ten years to figure that one out? About the only thing they didn't hang themselves with was the cartoon series, and it only ended up lasting a single season. And I'm not sure I'd want to hold that up as "good entertainment".

And finally, we are talking about a franchise that has based itself stealing ideas from B movies, other folk's pulp fiction novels and whatever pop culture could be copied and have it's serial numbers filed off. For default D&D, we're not talking about a lot of original creativity here.

In short, I wouldn't hold my breath that we're ever going to see a half-way decent D&D movie. I just don't.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I can't think of any D&D campaign I've ever been involved with that wouldn't be better suited to a youtube series.

Still, I hope WB makes a good go of it--odds are good that the movie profits will have more impact than anything else on the overall future of the D&D IP.