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.

 

[Parmandur]

You don’t speak for adults or general audiences.

Apropos of nothing, has everyone here heard the good word of the ignore function on the forum? It is an amazing feature.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Like here is my experience with the viewership of the D&D movie.

Every adult that I know who watched the movie enjoyed it. Only about a quarter of them knew anything about D&D as well.

 

[mamba]

It has everything to do with the fact that most shows and films aimed at adults aim for TV-14/PG-13. R and MA are the exception, not the rule.

I am not disagreeing with that. Most shows can tell their story well without having to get an R rating

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now Paramount is too busy because the possible merger with Skydance. Then Hasbro didn't want surprises.

How would be HBO producing an adaptation of "Birthright" or "Stryxhaven", or Disney with Dragonlance (No, I wasn't not imagining Fizban and Tas singing)?

And you can't forget the international market, where the rules of censorship may be harder.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Except there's not money for TV/streaming series there unless it is specifically related to Game of Thrones on HBO.
Apple hasn't done it. Showtime hasn't done it for Paramount. Netflix hasn't done it. Hulu hasn't done it. Peacock hasn't done it. WBD hasn't done it. HBO hasn't done it unless GRRM is involved.
Shudder does it only because they specifically target adult horror fans, but they're also super niche, not one of the 10 most watched streaming services.

There's an immense amount of data available.
One merely has to ignore all of it to see what works.

That's a lot of data about what the TV companies think makes money, but not a whole lot of data about what can make money.

 

[Hussar]

Now Paramount is too busy because the possible merger with Skydance. Then Hasbro didn't want surprises.

How would be HBO producing an adaptation of "Birthright" or "Stryxhaven", or Disney with Dragonlance (No, I wasn't not imagining Fizban and Tas singing)?

And you can't forget the international market, where the rules of censorship may be harder.

Again, it would help if you were a bit more specific. The US censorship rules are among the tightest of any Western market. Far more restrictive, and far quicker to bump a rating higher than pretty much anyone. Things that are routinely R in the States get a PG-13 in Canada, for example.

We'll get a live action D&D at some point. It will almost assuredly be PG -13 or straight up PG. Just like D&D has always been since day 1.

 

[Aldarc]

FFS, JAWS was PG. Not even PG 13.

Minor historical point here. There was no PG-13 rating at that time. The PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984, partially as a result, ironically enough, of Spielberg's other movies: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. However the first cut of Jaws was rated R by MPAA. It was only downgraded to PG after Spielberg made some additional cuts and persuaded the MPAA to get it bumped down. There were nevertheless complaints by some at the time that it was rated PG and not R. Would Jaws be PG today? Probably not.

 

[Hussar]

Minor historical point here. There was no PG-13 rating at that time. The PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984, partially as a result, ironically enough, of Spielberg's other movies: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. However the first cut of Jaws was rated R by MPAA. It was only downgraded to PG after Spielberg made some additional cuts and persuaded the MPAA to get it bumped down. There were nevertheless complaints by some at the time that it was rated PG and not R. Would Jaws be PG today? Probably not.

True. Probably PG-13. Certainly not R though. Not even close to R.

 

[GrimCo]

Well, Witcher is TV-MA, for all it's worth. And best Marvel tv show, The Punisher, is also R rated (but to be fair, Punisher needs R rated show to shine in it's full gore packed violence).

Can you make good adult movie without it getting R rating? Sure. Lot's of good drama movies are very adult oriented, with it's themes and plots, yet they don't contain anything visually explicit to get them R rating. On the other hand, some stories work best with R rated content. I guess you could make Clockwork Orange into pg-13 movie, but it's not the same story. It needs it's graphical depictions to convey it's message.

GoT, when you remove dragons and white walkers, mostly resembles shows like The Tudors (TV-MA) and The Borgias (TV-MA) (both shows with high imdb ratings).

While Xena and Hercules were fun shows, combat there was done in very kid like fashion (little to no blood).

But, shows made for tv era and shows for streaming era are two different beasts. In tv era, there were time slots in programing. And anything with mature rating was forced into late program, and then you loose viewership, plus commercial value is lower, which leads to- less money. In streaming era, you don't have that kind of restriction.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My suggestion is like a miniserie of one-shot stories, these working as pilot episodes. (This also could be done with webcomics, or webnovels).

* What is the difference of violence level between +10 and +13?

* The cartoon "once upon a time the man" showed some violent scene. "Exo-squad" didn't showed blood, but comparing with other western cartoons there was a lot of killed people.

* Could Gainax studio to be hired for a D&D anime?