Yeesh. You could stand to lighten up. Firefly injected a lot of humor into its stories and interactions (Jayne Cobb is as much comic relief as he is a serious character) - that's what Hussar's talking about, not parodying any source material. Game of Thrones can be oh so serious and straight (and yet still incorporate humor every once in a while - like Podrick's discussion with Tyrion after visiting the brothel), but D&D could easily shoot for a lighter tone.
As far as previous properties, I agree with other posters that they might do better to stay away from a particular story line or set of characters except as supporting characters rather than protagonists. And they should stay well away from the landmine that is Drizzt Do'urden. They want a movie that give them fame, not notoriety for racial insensitivity.
This is mostly what i'm talking about. Anything Joss Whedon isn't terribly playing it straight. It might not be 4th wall breaking, but, Buffy is comedy. Again, I'll ask, would you expect a D&D movie to be like a Christopher Nolan movie - dark and pretty darn grim, or would you expect Sam Raimi - pretty light hearted and bright?
I think people are drastically overestimating the cultural insensitivity of Drizz't Do'urden. Remember, he's
the good guy. Sure, there's these black skinned bad guys too, but, they're black. As in actually black, not a colour you find in nature. Banking on the popularity of the character, I think you could likely get away with a lot. Heck, if you can have Conan movies, which are based on a HELL of a lot more insensitive material than Drizz't novels, I think we can get over having black colored characters.
Me, I'm hoping for a rollicking adventure, fun and funny. Like the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. I don't want D&D to go the way of DC movies and TV where everything is done is blacks and browns and every movie is this portentious, pretentious film that takes the matter way too seriously. I want the D&D movies to be in the vein of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, heck, Transformers and, as someone mentioned, Fast and Furious. High adventure, lots of explosions and monsters. Spectacle.