D&D Movie/TV D&D Movie Moves Forward With Deal With Former Marvel Exec Jeremy Latcham

[Mistwell]

We could spend days listing movies better than the D&D movie (Dragonslayer, Hobbit - Rankin Bass version, Conan, etc.). But the big problem is that no one at Hollywood cares enough about the property to do a heart-felt, non-money grab version. There's no one with foresight to lead and follow this project through.

This "money-grab" claim...it's nonsense. Movies cost tens of millions to make or more, and require massive fundraising efforts just to get off the ground (that's all the Executive Producer credits you see). They're ALL money-grabs! Every movie you mentioned was in fact a money-grab and anyone spinning it otherwise is lying to you. Yes, of course, a company risking tens of millions of dollars, their ability to raise funds for future movies from investors if they fail, and tremendous time and resources to making a movie is wanting to make money from it. This holds true in Hollywood and outside Hollywood.

Making a heart-felt movie is not mutually exclusive with a "money-grab" movie. Name a big movie you thought was heart-felt and I am willing to bet it can also be fairly described as a "money-grab".

 

[Parmandur]

I'm curious if the D&D movie will go the route of being essentially a general fantasy movie with some D&D names and set decorations and tropes, or if it will do something that brings in the actual tabletop game into the movie as something to be directly commented on and portrayed.

The former seems to be the one most people are expecting, and what they did with the last batch of D&D movies. Nothing wrong with it, really, although in some ways I think that inventing a new fantasy world and making a movie about it is no more D&D than just making a brand new fantasy IP entirely, other than the name on the poster. Of course if they chose to adapt a storyline from FR or Dragonlance or something that would be a different story, but then it would be less a general D&D movie and more an adaptation of some specific novels or something.

Going the latter route (having the game of D&D actually feature in the film somehow in addition to all the fantasy stuff) sounds kind of goofy, and could certainly be, but my point of comparison wouldn't be the animated D&D series (which did the whole D&D players sucked into their own campaign) but something more like the LEGO movie, which somehow managed the balancing act of making a movie about a beloved childhood toy where the fact that it was a toy was a vital in-universe fact that touched on nostalgia, while still telling a satisfying story in its own right.

All that said, I won't be very surprised at all if the movie ends up just being a random fantasy adventure rollick, plus one of the weapons is called a Holy Avenger, they fight a Mindflayer in the second act as a random mook, and the main character's quirky mentor is named Bigby. I'm still a sucker for random fun adventure movies, so I could still enjoy it.

Also, best D&D movie is Princess Bride.

It could go either way, really. If something like the Lego movie, or the new Jumanji movies, happened that would work for me...but I don't think that's the brand they are looking to build.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah something playful like that could work! I know it would be an incredibly difficult balancing act, and that most people's first reaction on hearing about it would be skepticism, but honestly what makes D&D uniquely itself and not just any generic fantasy has so much to do with table dynamics and the alchemy of a bunch of silly nerds coming together and building that fantasy tale together, with all the fighting and rules lawyering and Monty Python references that implies.

I don't know, I'm not a professional writer, but if you could pull off making a good fantasy and making a good movie about the game of D&D in one go, it would be something truly special.

The Gamer's Dorkness Rising did a good job of mixing those two elements I thought, and the Lego movie is incredible.

The issue with a movie like that is that you have to do one of two things.

Either, you go the route of the Lego Movie and hint heavily that the two different worlds aren't 100% connected (the MC of the movie and the little boy are not the same character, even as they follow similar arcs). To do this would kind of ruin the experience of DnD, because it would show the characters as being seperated from the players, which isn't true.

Or, you go the route of 100% connection, where the Character's are just the sock puppets of the Players of the game, which leads us to the other part. I haven't seen it, but I think the movie "Welcome to Marwen" took this approach. Which hints at my next point.

Either way you go, you end up making the movie about something other than the action in the fantasy world. In the case of the Lego movie, the action in the Lego world isn't the main thematic point of the movie, it is the framing device for the story of a father and son reconnecting over these toys. Welcome to Marwen is about a person using their artistic world to deal with trauma.

You would have to do that if you went this route with the DnD movie, and you completely could. There is easily a movie about a DnD group who takes in a new member who is dealing with X and then the game helps them come to terms with it. But, I don't know if that is really the movie we want to relaunch the DnD movie franchise.

 

[Parmandur]

The Gamer's Dorkness Rising did a good job of mixing those two elements I thought, and the Lego movie is incredible.

The issue with a movie like that is that you have to do one of two things.

Either, you go the route of the Lego Movie and hint heavily that the two different worlds aren't 100% connected (the MC of the movie and the little boy are not the same character, even as they follow similar arcs). To do this would kind of ruin the experience of DnD, because it would show the characters as being seperated from the players, which isn't true.

Or, you go the route of 100% connection, where the Character's are just the sock puppets of the Players of the game, which leads us to the other part. I haven't seen it, but I think the movie "Welcome to Marwen" took this approach. Which hints at my next point.

Either way you go, you end up making the movie about something other than the action in the fantasy world. In the case of the Lego movie, the action in the Lego world isn't the main thematic point of the movie, it is the framing device for the story of a father and son reconnecting over these toys. Welcome to Marwen is about a person using their artistic world to deal with trauma.

You would have to do that if you went this route with the DnD movie, and you completely could. There is easily a movie about a DnD group who takes in a new member who is dealing with X and then the game helps them come to terms with it. But, I don't know if that is really the movie we want to relaunch the DnD movie franchise.

The Lego Movie was, weirdly, one of the most perfect representations of the Socratic tradition in the history of film, up there with Tron.

I think both of those paths could make excellent films in their own right, but I agree that the brand that WotC has developed in past fiction is where they will go for any film project: more Dragonlance or Crystal Shard, less Quag Keep.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

You have to remember this is not going to be a movie for the D&D but for a public who knows nothing about D&D, because the goal is use it as hook to get new fans. Even the level of violence should be softer to allow be watched by +7 children.

A famous IPs is not enough. Conan the barbarian is a very famous character, but the 2011 movie with Jason Momoa had got a bad box office.

 

[Bohandas]

This "money-grab" claim...it's nonsense. Movies cost tens of millions to make or more, and require massive fundraising efforts just to get off the ground (that's all the Executive Producer credits you see). They're ALL money-grabs! Every movie you mentioned was in fact a money-grab and anyone spinning it otherwise is lying to you. Yes, of course, a company risking tens of millions of dollars, their ability to raise funds for future movies from investors if they fail, and tremendous time and resources to making a movie is wanting to make money from it. This holds true in Hollywood and outside Hollywood.

I never understood why movies cost so much, like, even the ones that don/t have a lot of effects or outlandish sets cost multiple millions of dollars, that doesn't seem right.

 

[Mistwell]

I never understood why movies cost so much, like, even the ones that don/t have a lot of effects or outlandish sets cost multiple millions of dollars, that doesn't seem right.

It's just such a monumental effort by so many people. When I see what goes into literally 30 second commercials, the mind boggles at the number of people working to make just those 30 seconds happen.

 

[Bohandas]

That's the kinda thing I'm hoping for. Like it seems like a fairly normal fantasy movie (what a weird phrase) but early on it cuts out or something and we hear the players having a rules argument or something. Basically pull a Princess Bride with it.

It would be better to do something like that but replace the human players with in-world deities (in the manner of the Rincewind-centric Discworld novels, where the action sometimes zooms out to the gods Fate and Lady Luck literally playing games with Rincewind's destiny)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Lego Movie was, weirdly, one of the most perfect representations of the Socratic tradition in the history of film, up there with Tron.

I think both of those paths could make excellent films in their own right, but I agree that the brand that WotC has developed in past fiction is where they will go for any film project: more Dragonlance or Crystal Shard, less Quag Keep.

I expect what they would like is to kick off a fantasy cinematic universe. So it won't be meta.

 

[Bohandas]

It's just such a monumental effort by so many people. When I see what goes into literally 30 second commercials, the mind boggles at the number of people working to make just those 30 seconds happen.

What's the budget on a Youtube video. I get the impression that a lot of those are on a very shoestring budget. And while they're generally not up to the quality of a feature film a lot of them are up to the quality of a commercial or a b-movie