D&D Movie/TV Paramount+ Will Not Proceed with Dungeons & Dragons Live-Action TV Show

Deadline reports that the live-action Dungeons & Dragons television series will not continue at Paramount+. The show was originally announced in January 2023 as Paramount+ placed an eight episode straight-to-series order. Normally that’s the best you can hope for in terms of a guarantee of the show happening as the show would produce the entire first season instead of needing to make a pilot to be approved.

Two big corporate changes happened since then, however. First, Hasbro sold the show’s co-producer Entertainment One to Lionsgate in December 2023 and shifted the production to Hasbro Entertainment. Currently, Paramount is searching for a buyer for the company with the current front runner according to reports being Sony Pictures, who have partnered with private equity firms to place a rumored $26 billion offer for the studio.

Little was announced about the plot other than it would be character-focused and involve the Underdark. These tidbits plus the fact that the character of Xenk from the 2023 film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was originally intended to be Drizzt Do'Urden but changed during pre-production led to speculation that the series would be an adaptation of the Drizzt novels, particularly the origin story novel Homeland.

Creator Rawson Marshall Thurber (Red Notice, Easy A, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) and showrunner Drew Crevello (The Grudge 2, WeCrashed) are still attached to the project. Hasbro will repackage and update the pitch for the show and stop it around to other distributors.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I really liked Hugh Grant. Actually all of them did a good job. Hugh Grant would be the one of the main four that I would want to switch out last. Page and Pine kinda go hand and hand to me. They played off each other very well.

I’m not saying they were bad. Just that cheeper actors would have been equally good for less money than the two most expensive stars. There are other ways it could have been brought in more cheaply, or with more money left for music and vfx too - much of the location shooting was unneeded, and could have been accomplished on the Belfast sound stage.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sci fi, fantasy, and IPs like D&D are seen as silly kids stuff. This is why all D&D media content is made for kids.

This is completely false - it might have been true at one time, but these days most of the writers are D&D players themselves. You see D&Disms all the time in mainstream TV and movies.

But you don’t seem to know much about children. They tend to take fantasy seriously. It’s adults who like humor. This is an actual plot point in The Princess Bride.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Do you remember "Hercules: the legendary journeys" played by Kevin Sorbo? But the spin-off "Xena: the warrior princess" is more popular, and it is the same universe and production team.

If they knew what worked better, then they would pushing the same keys time after time.

Forgoten Realms is the blue-eyed boy of D&D franchise, but don't put all the eggs in one basket only.

Hasbro could collab with some anime studio.

If "Fallout" action-live worked in Amazon, why not an animated production of "Gamma World"?

 

[Hussar]

If "Fallout" action-live worked in Amazon, why not an animated production of "Gamma World"?

Because Fallout has a following that absolutely dwarfs Gamma World? Outside of us nerds, no one has ever heard of Gamma World. And, frankly, why would we want a Gamma World TV show when we already have Fallout? It's not like post-apocalyptic TV hasn't been done pretty much to death over the past twenty years.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Because Fallout has a following that absolutely dwarfs Gamma World? Outside of us nerds, no one has ever heard of Gamma World. And, frankly, why would we want a Gamma World TV show when we already have Fallout? It's not like post-apocalyptic TV hasn't been done pretty much to death over the past twenty years.

That brings us back to the labelling. The only difference between a Fallout TV show and a Gamna World TV show is the branding. And branding costs money, so you better make sure it’s a popular one!

Of course, the show still has to be good, but it’s the branding that attracts the initial interest. If, in an alternative timeline, the original Fallout game had carried the Gamma World brand, Hasbro would be laughing all the way to the bank now!

 

[Aldarc]

If you didn’t see it you missed out. It was a good movie. Also it was fun, not dumb, it’s tone was about the same as an actual D&D session.

I watched it with my partner on streaming. My partner has played a few sessions of D&D and other TTRPGs. It was their idea to watch the movie. They enjoyed the fat dragon and the graveyard scene, but not much else. They found the acting to be flat, the pacing to be inconsistent, and overall not that memorable. The movie kind of meanders from one scene to the next. In their words, "that movie just kind of was." We have not watched it since, and I'm not sure if there is much desire to rewatch it.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I watched it with my partner on streaming. My partner has played a few sessions of D&D and other TTRPGs. It was their idea to watch the movie. They enjoyed the fat dragon and the graveyard scene, but not much else. They found the acting to be flat, the pacing to be inconsistent, and overall not that memorable. The movie kind of meanders from one scene to the next. In their words, "that movie just kind of was." We have not watched it since, and I'm not sure if there is much desire to rewatch it.

Well I can't dictate your taste.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

They made Godzilla minus one for less then 15 million dollars and its special effects look sick, hire the director of that movie and give him double for budget for a D&D movie, no big name stars that cost millions, but give them points on profits.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Gamma World needs a lot of redesign because decades after the sci-fi gets old very poor. The current generations will miss in the old sci-fi titles technology to be real now, for example the mobiles and the 3D-printers, or new materials as the graphene.

D&D is an old franchise, but relatively unknown for the most of audience.

We can show our own point of view as audience and fandom community, but the Hollywood producers have got a different one, and it's nobody fault.

If it was so easy, then others would be producing their own epic-fantasy cinematographic franchises, but let's remember the sequel of Disney's Willow was only one season.

And now we are in dark years for Hollywood industry, because audience is not happy with lots of productions from the last years.

A simple cartoon for children, my little poney, enjoyed more popularity with the remake than the original version. There aren't bad franchises but bad productions.

Maybe Hasbro should write good stories to be published as novels, and later the best books to be adapted to cinematographic productions.

* What was wrong with the comic of Dark Sun?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Gamma World needs a lot of redesign because decades after the sci-fi gets old very poor. The current generations will miss in the old sci-fi titles technology to be real now, for example the mobiles and the 3D-printers, or new materials as the graphene.

Fallout makes a virtue of its retrofuturism. It’s not a problem. Gamma World’s issue is that it’s a neglected IP that was never very popular in the first place. In all other respects it’s identical to Fallout, down to the cynical jet black humour.