D&D Movie/TV Joe Manganiello: Dragonlance TV Show No Longer In Development

Actor Joe Manganiello has confirmed that the anticipated Dragonlance TV show that he had been working on is no longer being developed. In an interview with ComicBook.com. According to Manganiello, following poor sales of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and the Warriors of Krynn board game last year, "Dragonlance is not a property [WotC] are interested in developing further currently". This decision was also prompted by Hasbro's sale of its media studio, eOne.

In March last year, Manganiello confirmed during an official D&D video update that he was working on a TV show for WotC, and a D&D live action series was greenly by Paramount in January. It's not clear if these are the same property.

Manganiello also talked about his approach to the property, and the new designs he had for the world, the dragons, and even the casting. "I want to make [the show] because I want to see it and I just want to feel that excited and electric about something. The characters...like the casting, I have a look book with over 1,000 pages, but it's not what you expect. The design concepts I had for the world, for the armor, for the swords....I had a fresh take on what the dragons were going to look like, it was going to be nothing like anyone has ever seen."

He has been working on a script for years, and was told by TV executives that his pilot was one of the best fantasy scripts they had ever read. He even offered to buy Dragonlance from WotC.

You can watch the whole interview at the link above.

 

[jerryrice4949]

That is extremely bad management, the actual product was the problem, not the setting or War of the Lance.

Once again the fandom pays the price for WotC putting out naughty word products for too often. Something needs to change at the D&D studio. IMHO the "setting book" was very poor as well, it needed a proper setting book, not an adventure.

But they should have looked to the DL novels sales instead of products that were rules dependant, stead of Setting/Story dependant.

WotC needs better

Not to derail but I agree. Most of the recent releases just feel incomplete and generic. Kind of soulless if a book could be described that way. Also I am not sure why anyone would invest in the Dragon Lance book or Eberron for that matter when they know full well there will be little to no future support for those settings.

 

[humble minion]

I go over this a lot in my last few posts in this thread but to be abundantly clear, I think that Dragonlance would need a massive facelift to be attractive to a large audience in our contemporary day and age.

I heartily agree, but I don’t think the difficulty of doing that is the major barrier to it being made. The risk-averse nature of the money people who look at the source and think ‘oh crap, x and y and z will get us panned’ is certainly a bigger one, admittedly.

I mean, LotR made a bunch of changes for the movies, and they were in many cases very well received (Arwen’s increased role in Fellowship, for instance), and the films of course are beloved.

Gully dwarves are the hardest, but retconning cataclysm lore, and making the plains people less Native American ripoffs, and putting the women a bit more front and centre in non-romantic contexts - I can think of a large number of ways to do that off the top of my head.

Would anyone complain hugely if Goldmoon took Elistan’s role as chief prophet after Autumn Twilight, for instance, or if Laurana’s quest for the Dragon Orb in Icewall and her generalship in the Vingaard campaign were front and centre rather than largely in the background? Goldmoon’s always been illustrated as fair-skinned, but there’s no reason she shouldn’t be played by a darker-skinned actress with a wig or dye job, like Halle Berry’s Storm was. Some smart costuming choices would do a lot towards scraping the Native American baggage out of the plainsfolk, perhaps some mongol or central Asian influence? And as for the Cataclysm and Paladine’s involvement - as far as the story goes all that matters is that it happened and the gods left afterwards - I could think of many ways to retcon it.

 

[Parmandur]

Also I am not sure why anyone would invest in the Dragon Lance book or Eberron for that matter when they know full well there will be little to no future support for those settings.

Shy would they need to have continuing support, the books basically have everything needed...?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I am not saying the Cataclysm was good, I am saying the Kingpriest was evil... I guess the people in DL did not see the Cataclysm as good either, since they abandoned their gods after it - something the worshippers of the 'real-world equivalent' somehow have not done

Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC it was the Gods of Dragonlance that abandoned the people, not the other way around. From my memory, the people continued to pray to the gods after the Cataclysm. It was just that after a long time of praying and getting no response and divine magic ceasing to function that they eventually stopped praying.

 

[humble minion]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC it was the Gods of Dragonlance that abandoned the people, not the other way around. From my memory, the people continued to pray to the gods after the Cataclysm. It was just that after a long time of praying and getting no response and divine magic ceasing to function that they eventually stopped praying.

That's a bit of a chicken-egg question.

The gods departed Krynn (and took all their spellcasting clerics with them) a considerable time before the Cataclysm. It was I believe meant to be a sign of godly disapproval and a warning to Istar to change their ways, but didn't get read that way (Istar was all 'Paladine is weary, we must go EVEN HARDER to stamp out Evil to help him out' and just went on Inquisition-ing along just as they had before). The good gods of course, largely argue that Krynn abandoned them first by embracing the teachings of the Kingpriest and doing all sorts of evil in the name of the Good. And even before the Kingpriest showed up, clerics were getting very rare. The last Kingpriest, Beldinas (the guy who actually ended up getting himself Cataclysmed), was actually a monk from a remote mountain fastness chosen by wild acclamation when he proved he could actually cast cleric spells, which was a very big deal at the time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I am not saying the Cataclysm was good, I am saying the Kingpriest was evil... I guess the people in DL did not see the Cataclysm as good either, since they abandoned their gods after it - something the worshippers of the 'real-world equivalent' somehow have not done

One of the weird dynamics in DL is that the common people are supposed to have largely abandoned religion, but everyone gets all excited when the gods come back! And, honestly, the gods mostly deserve to be abandoned!

Though I don't think that's the issue that would break it for a TV show. For the War of the Lance, you don't need to get into it too deep. There's a lot of kind of aesthetic changes you could make and it would be viable (if a bit of a throwback). DL has a lot of dumb, offensive elements out of the box, but I think you could change most of those and people would be OK with it.

Weirdly, I think that DL probably makes a better TV or movie experience than it does a gaming one, though I've been in some pretty good DL games (I think mostly in spite of the setting rather than because of it).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's hardly surprising, I imagine they sat down and worked out how much it would cost. The thing with D&D is it's not GoT or WoT or RoP, it's much more high fantasy than any of those. And high fantasy has far more expensive FX shots, as well as more opportunities to look bad if they don't work (HAT had a bit of this). Consider those draconians. They are on screen a lot in Dragonlance. If they aren't going to look like rubber-suited Doctor Who rejects they either need very elaborate animatronics or be fully CGI. By with point it's probably easier just to make the whole show animated.

The only way to do a live action D&D TV show would be to work out what FX you can do with the available budget, and write the story around that.

 

[mamba]

One of the weird dynamics in DL is that the common people are supposed to have largely abandoned religion, but everyone gets all excited when the gods come back!

they have not really abandoned religion, they parted ways with their old gods and looked for / made up new ones after the old ones stopped answering prayers.

Religion is alive and well around the starting town in DL, there just are no miracles because those gods do not actually exist…

The big deal is having a cleric again that can perform miracles / cast spells after centuries

And, honestly, the gods mostly deserve to be abandoned!

I think they are very much fashioned after our gods, not that different in temperament from say the greek gods, and the Cataclysm hits even closer to home

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'll be honest, no one is talking about your son in this thread and no one cares about your son either. It's great that he likes the Dragonlance books. Seriously, I mean that. But let's not pretend what I'm saying is some slight against your son. He has not and never will matter to me or the points I'm making.

Mod Note:

If that poster’s son doesn’t matter to you, why take the time to tell us? Not every opinion needs voicing, even with all the caveats. Especially when the caveats are aimed at smoothing over potentially confrontational comments.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The problem with this logic is for a tv show to be successful it has to attract a broad audience so using the sales of the DL adventure as a gauge has no value. The true power of the story is probably better reflected in orginal 3 books that sold millions of copies world wide. That is the story that would be best adapted and sold to audience across the country not anything related to the 5E adventure. To me it would be the equivalent of HBO not doing GoT because a Westeros coloring book sold poorly.

Too much of WoTC is driven by ideas like Crawford's "to me Dragonlance is the 1E modules."

No, just no. The novels were far more successful and had multitude more readers than the adventure modules ever did. Dragonlance is the Weis/Hickman novels. Full stop. It doesn't matter whether you wish otherwise: It's just the fact of the matter.

But since the end of their in-house novel line, Hasbro and WotC seem to treat fiction works based on their properties like a vampire looking at a crucifix.