D&D Movie/TV Dungeons & Dragons Adventures is a 24-Hour Streaming Channel Launching in Summer

This summer, a new free streaming channel will be launched by eOne, the entertainment company owned by Hasbro. It will be ad-supported and available on multiple (as yet unspecified) platforms and feature a mix of animation, third party influencers, and actual play shows.

The old 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon will be available, along with shows like:

• Encounter Party is based on an existing podcast and set in the Forgotten Realms.
• Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! is a comedy game stream in each episode of which a party of 1st level characters march to their deaths against deadly monsters.
• Heroes's Feast is a cooking/talk show.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Did they say where they would be showing the Manganiello documentary?

This seems like a last resort place to air it, since they could presumably get Amazon or Netflix (or Paramount+, I guess) to throw them some bucks for exclusive rights to stream it for a set period.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If they get the 2000 D&D movie for streaming, will we start to see "In Praise of the Original D&D Movie" op eds?

Millennials have been writing "the Star Wars prequels were great, actually" opinion pieces for a few years now, so I'd expect so.

(Narrator: The Star Wars prequels were not great.)

 

[Parmandur]

Copyright strikes if you use protected names, show art, maybe even game streams, etc. Again, we've seen GW and Nintendo do this.
Imagine if I were to stream my group playing "Curse of Strahd." They could block that for giving out spoilers, or saying that viewers could take the story from what I ran and not have to buy the adventure.
Or what if someone shows some problematic art to criticize a new publication? Would WotC copyright strike that? They could.

I mean, sure, they could, but they won't for the same reason they haven't: all that chatter, positive or negative, adds to their bottom line.

 

[Abstruse]

Millennials have been writing "the Star Wars prequels were great, actually" opinion pieces for a few years now, so I'd expect so.

(Narrator: The Star Wars prequels were not great.)

The difference is people grew up on the Star Wars prequels as it's their nostalgia. It was the movie they watched as kids because everyone else watched them. The 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie...is not that. It wasn't a cultural touchstone the same way Star Wars is. There weren't massive marketing tie-ins with fast food and breakfast cereal and whatnot, there wasn't a huge toy line with multiple waves of figures, there wasn't a slew of video game tie-ins. Even Wizards of the Coast relegated their tie-in supplement and adventure to the pages of Dragon Magazine because they knew it would never sell if they published it on its own. Hell, you can still tell people there was a sequel to the movie and most people will be surprised because they never knew it existed. Tell them there was a third one and they'll look at you like you have two heads. "Wait, you mean Honor Among Thieves is the third film?" No, that's the fourth. Book of Vile Darkness was the third.

So no, there's not going to be a redemption for the 2000s Dungeons & Dragons movie because there's no childhood nostalgia wanting it to be as good as they remember it being as kids and seeking out any positives to justify liking it. The most you'll see is a "so bad it's good" opinion which, yeah, Jeremy Irons chewing every atom of scenery makes the film at least enjoyable to mock. But no "It's good actually" narrative for that movie.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The difference is people grew up on the Star Wars prequels as it's their nostalgia. It was the movie they watched as kids because everyone else watched them. The 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie...is not that. It wasn't a cultural touchstone the same way Star Wars is. There weren't massive marketing tie-ins with fast food and breakfast cereal and whatnot, there wasn't a huge toy line with multiple waves of figures, there wasn't a slew of video game tie-ins. Even Wizards of the Coast relegated their tie-in supplement and adventure to the pages of Dragon Magazine because they knew it would never sell if they published it on its own. Hell, you can still tell people there was a sequel to the movie and most people will be surprised because they never knew it existed. Tell them there was a third one and they'll look at you like you have two heads. "Wait, you mean Honor Among Thieves is the third film?" No, that's the fourth. Book of Vile Darkness was the third.

So no, there's not going to be a redemption for the 2000s Dungeons & Dragons movie because there's no childhood nostalgia wanting it to be as good as they remember it being as kids and seeking out any positives to justify liking it. The most you'll see is a "so bad it's good" opinion which, yeah, Jeremy Irons chewing every atom of scenery makes the film at least enjoyable to mock. But no "It's good actually" narrative for that movie.

I disagree with your premise.

If it connects to people, there will be some people who try to justify their warm feelings for it by attempting to redeem it.

If there are enough of them, it becomes a noticeable groundswell, rather than a random weirdo just saying "you know, Sword & the Sorcerer was pretty great and Gary Gygax liked it, too!" on social media.

I don't think merch or other tie-ins have anything to do with it. For instance, I have plenty of nostalgia for the Rankin-Bass Hobbit cartoon which, if it had any merch, I never came across it or owned any.

 

[Abstruse]

I disagree with your premise.

If it connects to people, there will be some people who try to justify their warm feelings for it by attempting to redeem it.

If there are enough of them, it becomes a noticeable groundswell, rather than a random weirdo just saying "you know, Sword & the Sorcerer was pretty great and Gary Gygax liked it, too!" on social media.

I don't think merch or other tie-ins have anything to do with it. For instance, I have plenty of nostalgia for the Rankin-Bass Hobbit cartoon which, if it had any merch, I never came across it or owned any.

The Sword and the Sorcerer picked up a cult following long before the era of Online Discourse specifically because it's cheesy and it had a long run on the second-run grindhouse circuit plus came out just in time for the peak of the home video boom. The Rankin-Bass Hobbit cartoon was shoved in my face constantly as a kid in the 80s with ads for the home video release ("Available now on VHS and Beta-Max!") Also, it's Rankin-Bass who has a huge cultural impact via their holiday specials.

Cult classics require a very specific yet elusive formula to hit. It needs the right balance between availability and redeeming qualities. Availability is its biggest issue because it came out long after the home video boom had been crushed by Blockbuster, long after the multiplexes replaced the dollar cinemas desperate for anything to show, and for whatever reason didn't get picked up in the "shown 15 times a week on Starz/Cinemax/USA/SyFy/etc" circuit of film licensing. The movie isn't good enough to have any hidden gem moments and, despite the best efforts of Jeremy Irons, isn't cheesy-bad enough to be ironically fun to watch. Maybe if MST3K had gotten hold of it, but their peak was long since over as well and the relaunch doesn't seem interested in it either.

 

[mamba]

The leaked early draft of the OGL sought to forbid D&D content on video - including "pantomimes" (aka TikTok). This is their opportunity to enforce that.

so WotC having their own video channel on which they also show 3pps is somehow forbidding D&D videos? That is an interesting interpretation of what 'forbidding' means

I don't know if I've clearly stated on here what I think of Critical Role's announcement regarding their new game releases, but I've certainly told my group and friends what I think.

I'll guess we will see, but I very much do not expect what you do

 

[mamba]

Those people are still in control, and it's doubtful they have simply "changed their mind" about what the goals for their corporation are. Which is, you know, to make increased money for shareholders after unprecedent years of growth in situations that no longer exist. Anything less for C-level executives is a failure.

if you define the goal as 'make more money', then sure, that will never change, anywhere. It's how to accomplish that goal that changed, and they cannot go back on that now due to the CC license

 

[mamba]

Agreed. But will they allow content that is critical of their products on other platforms? Will they allow streamers to put their content on the platform they choose? This is stuff I need to know before I can celebrate this announcement with the rest of you.

I don't care about the announcement much, I am not watching streamers now and I do not expect this to change anytime soon, regardless of platform.

As to the rest, WotC cannot force anyone on their platform or prohibit anyone from being on other platforms. All they can do is make a better offer so streamers want to be on their platform. And unless their platform becomes dominant, there is no downside, allowing them to control 3pps.

 

[Hussar]

A side note to all this: I don't understand how streaming channels that are not on-demand succeed. And what benefit does it give the vendor to stream a 24-hour channel rather than on-demand? I guess there is more overhead in on-demand streaming infrastructure and software? But then there are things like Tubi, which does both for some reason? For example, I wanted to watch the last half of season one of The Nevers, which HBO licensed to Tubi. But it was on their live channel and not on-demand, and it was only a handful of times, which I could not watch (nor DVR). I was able to catch them in their (AFAICT) last run on Tubi. Maybe it's a licensing thing? If you show it a set number of times, you only pay the licensor a known amount. If you open it up to on-demand streaming, it could be viewed a greater number of times, costing more? I mean, I'm sure it's about the money. The bottom line is always the bottom line. I just don't see how this makes anyone more money than on-demand. Also, the last half of The Nevers fails to live up to the first half, IMO.

Between VCRs/DVRs and on-demand streaming, I thought the days of "appointment TV" were over (except for live events like the news, sports, the Oscars, etc.). Why is this a thing?

Twitch has entered the channel