D&D Movie/TV Should the D&D Movie Been Serious or Not Called D&D?

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, making sure the movie based on a game wasn't fun would have been a brilliant idea.

Look at the ten movie Battleship franchise.

HAT made even less money than Battleship in absolute terms, adjusted for inflation and proportional to its budget.

 

[MGibster]

As a player and a DM, I sometimes find it hard to take D&D seriously myself. So I think the movie had the right tone to it. It was something pretty much the whole family could enjoy.

 

[Corinnguard]

When I saw this D&D movie, I had a fun time seeing and identifying the various PC races, monsters and spells in it.

 

[Seramus]

Wait. It says it cost 150 million including ad expenses, and gained 208 million. Where did the losses come from?

 

[Storyteller Hero]

Wait. It says it cost 150 million including ad expenses, and gained 208 million. Where did the losses come from?

A rough rule of thumb when calculating the net income from box office earnings is to cut the total in half, because the theater chains and the movie studios are not owned by the same companies. Marketing budget is also not counted as part of the production budget but added on top of it, so if the movie cost $150 million to make (as Honor Among Thieves is reported as costing), then a conservative estimate for marketing would be 25% to 50% added after the $150 million.

As such, if going by the common (but at times inaccurate) method, the DnD movie falls short by a lot, but only from box office proceeds alone.

 

[Vaalingrade]

HAT made even less money than Battleship in absolute terms, adjusted for inflation and proportional to its budget.

That is a lot of qualifiers to ignore the fact that Battleship was boring and bad.

 

[Stormonu]

Would I have liked the D&D movie to be more serious? Sure. Change the name? Nah, don't think that would have done any good. As a movie, it was fine and I think it'll become a cult classic in a few years as more people eventually get around to watching it and judging it on its own merits.

But I don't think they could have done much to have a better release at this time. It's a fine movie on its own, but it doesn't seem word of mouth was there to carry it. Coming off that the last D&D movie sucked (reeeeally bad), had a B list cast, anger over the OGL and when it dropped I think just combined to kill it at the theater.

I think if they could ever get a Dragonlance War of the Lance series with all the seriousness and spectacle of Lord of the Rings, I think that might be able to cement it as a movie franchise that'd make money. It's getting it there and getting it into the minds of people that's the trick.

Don't forget that Marvel had dozens of movies before they finally hit gold with the MCU. It's going to take some time to build up D&D as a viable movie franchise and now that they've got past that first 20-year-old stumble, they've just got to keep putting it forward until it clicks.

 

[delericho]

As the title says. The D&D movie flopped at the box office. One reason speculated is the D&D name in the title being a turn off outside of the dedicated fan base.

Eg Honor Amoung Thieves: A D&D story. Or just HAT.

I'm sorry, but that's the same as the old "4e shouldn't have been called D&D" argument. Firstly, if it hadn't, there is no way it would have done anywhere near as well. Secondly, more importantly, if it hadn't been called D&D it wouldn't have been made.

The other thing was did they get the tone wrong? GotG fantasy knock off vs more serious tone like LotR or Game of Thrones.

I disagree. The cinema seems replete with po-faced oh so serious fantasy garbage - let's watch relatively weak actors emote badly about how the world is in peril and only we can save it! (Oh, and if you can work in some comment like "this isn't a game! This is REAL LIFE!!!!1!!!", all the better.) Hell, that's even been done three times before in D&D movies.

I didn't actually think HAT was terribly good. But at least it was amusing. Shoot for serious, and it wouldn't have had even that.

 

[Zardnaar]

That is a lot of qualifiers to ignore the fact that Battleship was boring and bad.

Not commenting on its quality or D&Ds.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wait. It says it cost 150 million including ad expenses, and gained 208 million. Where did the losses come from?

What the poster above said. They only get a % of the box office. Most in domestic, less overseas and least in China. Also varies by time early in the movies run the studio gets more latter theatres get a larger %.

HAT had superbowl ads apparently so wasn't done on the cheap but probably cost 50-100 million.

So
Cost of production 150 million (151 iirc)
Marketing 50-100 million. Total

Income
210 million approx
Theatres cut (approx) 105 million
105 million to the studio.

200-250 million total cost 105 million at the box office.

Another approximation (if marketing budget is unknown) is multiply the production cost by 2.5 for a movie to be a hit. That covers the theatres cut. Then it's assumed the back end covers the marketing budget.

If the movie overperforms a lot domestically the 2.5 can be lowered to X2, if it overperforms by a lot internationally X3.

If the marketing budget is known its production costs+marketing X2 for approximate amount.

It's an approximation and doesn't work on low budget movies and isn't that accurate but if a movie doesn't even come close to X2 it's budget at the BO it's generally reported as a flop.

If it doesn't make its budget it's often a bomb.

HAT didn't get close to 300 million with various estimates I've seen for its break even point being around 375 million and up.