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

Mannahnin · Feb 8, 2024

Retreater said:
WotC/Hasbro sold eOne. They seem to be getting out of all video production. This might not be so much a comment on the viability of Dragonlance or the vision behind the series as it is just not putting resources into making any video.
In a much smaller scale, my job requires the handling of budgets. Every so often I have to adjust our resources and have to make tough decisions about not renewing subscriptions that aren't widely used, cut spending on CD audiobooks and redirect budget to downloads. It's not that I hate CDs, I just know that the patrons are getting more use from the downloads.

Yep. Excellent points. Shifting budget priorities and focus may be as much responsible for this as any feeling that Dragonlance isn't an appealing project or that the sales of Dragonlance tabletop products are indicative that the audience isn't there.

humble minion said:
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.

Yeah, I think you have to ditch Gully Dwarves or HUGELY overhaul them, but most of the rest of these tweaks are very doable

Paul Farquhar said:
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.

This is a pretty good point. SFX have gotten cheaper and better than they were. LotR really wasn't possible at any point prior to when it was done, and Weta Digital still had to create a new SFX engine for the mass battles, right? But this is still a major budget item. Disney has gotten a lot of flack lately for not budgeting enough time or money for the more recent Marvel projects. The technology has advanced a ton, and I think it's at the level where CGI Draconians are totally doable, but it's a lot of money to make them look GOOD.

bedir than said:
I have to chuckle that he built a 1000 page lore bible for something with that many books already produced

No, he built a Look Book. A visual guide for the show. Totally different.

How to Make a Lookbook in Film (w/ Examples)

A lookbook is a collection of movie stills, photographs, or any other visuals that are compiled to illustrate a filmmaker’s vision for a film.

www.studiobinder.com

How to Make a Lookbook for Your Film or TV Project (with Examples)

Impress your audience before you've even set up your camera.

nofilmschool.com

Remathilis · Feb 8, 2024

AnotherGuy said:
@Hussar mentioned this some time ago in some thread, (paraphrasing) that games like SW and DL are complete/done. The iconic stories have been written for those settings...what you do at the game table will almost always be less than.

That's been my problem in a lot of media based RPGs. You either play the heroes, replace the heroes, or are sidestory to the main event.

Kaodi · Feb 8, 2024

Retreater said:
We had a lengthy discussion about LotR. "How can this be considered a great fantasy story?" she asked. "There's no important women in the story. No one other than white men. Great fantasy should be able to be anybody's fantasy."

Perhaps one way to consider the greatness of Tolkien's writing is that the ways in which he was deficient matters . It would not matter if he were mid.

But to go further the idea that all great works of art must be modernly cosmopolitan can, in fact, be limiting to diversity. I just finished reading yesterday the second book in a series set on a fantasy version of the Indian subcontinent. Everyone is "South Asian" . I rather think that was the selling point rather than a flaw. The same would go for a fantasy story set in the pre-Contact Americas, or in pre-colonization sub-Saharan Africa, or in literally any historical fiction. Tolkien is parochial in much the same way as any of these would be.

humble minion · Feb 8, 2024

Remathilis said:
That's been my problem in a lot of media based RPGs. You either play the heroes, replace the heroes, or are sidestory to the main event.

Yeah, that's a needle I'm trying to thread myself at the moment. Running an epic Dragonlance campaign, set in the War of the Lance, in which the PCs play a crucial role but which largely leaves the events of the novels alone. It ain't exactly easy, and I have no idea how well it's going to work out..

But it DOES make DL more appropriate for filming (going back to the topic of the thread...) because while memorable and ubiquitous canon characters make for a difficult DMing experience, they are what makes tv/movies work.

Kaodi · Feb 8, 2024

Rogue One was a masterclass in making room for people other than the "main characters" to matter.

Athiev · Feb 8, 2024

Henadic Theologian said:
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

Presumably, the relevant information would be recent sales for the novels, rather than sales figures from many decades ago. Today, the first Dragonlance novel ranks 1,163,278 among books on Amazon. This is in comparison with the Fellowship of the Rings, which looks like it ranks 2,538. At this time, there's probably an intense but relatively small audience for Dragonlance --- which is a challenging starting place for a media production.

Dragonlance seems to trail behind even some other fairly niche fantasy titles in current sales. For example, the first part of OS Card's deeply targeted Joseph Smith alternative history Alvin Maker series ranks 152,334. It's very hard to imagine a successful adaptation of that series, and the evidence suggests that Dragonlance currently has an even smaller audience.

Of course, there were people who bought the books back in the day. An open question is how much enthusiasm those people generally retain for the series? Would they watch a movie? Stick with a TV show? Or would it be less successful than a bigger-name series like the Shannara Chronicles show from 8 or so years ago?

Remathilis · Feb 8, 2024

Kaodi said:
Rogue One was a masterclass in making room for people other than the "main characters" to matter.

And it only works because nobody is left alive. All six heroes and the main villain dies, and the only characters who do live are the ones who were in A New Hope anyway.

I agree it's a great movie, but running a RPG campaign where you know your character destined to be a footnote isn't appealing for some. (Again, this is a subjective taste measure, not universal doctrine).

Retreater · Feb 8, 2024

Kaodi said:
Perhaps one way to consider the greatness of Tolkien's writing is that the ways in which he was deficient matters . It would not matter if he were mid.

But to go further the idea that all great works of art must be modernly cosmopolitan can, in fact, be limiting to diversity. I just finished reading yesterday the second book in a series set on a fantasy version of the Indian subcontinent. Everyone is "South Asian" . I rather think that was the selling point rather than a flaw. The same would go for a fantasy story set in the pre-Contact Americas, or in pre-colonization sub-Saharan Africa, or in literally any historical fiction. Tolkien is parochial in much the same way as any of these would be.

Of course. And I discussed with her the view that LotR is sort of an English mythology.
However, when I attempted to justify to her the race of the characters as a European (English) fantasy, that got me some looks. I suppose "white fantasy" has a different tone these days than saying something is Indian, African, etc.

Parmandur · Feb 8, 2024

Burnside said:
They showed up in clearance stores because people didn’t buy them. That’s what he meant when he said they “performed poorly.”

Yes, exactly: hence why ended up at Ollie's. Stuff that sells well is not dumped in Clearance shops.

Burnside · Feb 8, 2024

Parmandur said:
Yes, exactly: hence why ended up at Ollie's. Stuff that sells well is not dumped in Clearance shops.

Sorry; I misunderstood the phrasing of your earlier post.

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

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