D&D Movie/TV ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Live-Action Series Not Going Forward At Paramount+, Will Be Revamped & Shopped By Hasbro

[Wolfpack48]

Part of the issue is D&D's identity is intentionally vague becasue the players are deciding on the characters, plot, and setting. Sure, there is some published adventures and novels, but they dont penetrate outside the fanbase (and even leave a lot of the fanbase behind.) I know settings are all the rage, but with every new published setting, D&D gets harder and harder to identify. From a game perspective, thats a good variety thing (though I question even that looking at PF) from a film/series perspective its really bad.

Yeah it’s important to pick a setting and stick with it for a show. you’d also have to decide whether to play up an established traditional storyline or play up the collaborative nature and story as you go, which is much harder, even unique for prime time. for that, you might be forced to show players making decisions about story direction, which would a complex new form of storytelling on TV.

 

[payn]

Yeah it’s important to pick a setting and stick with it for a show. you’d also have to decide whether to play up an established traditional storyline or play up the collaborative nature and story as you go, which is much harder, even unique for prime time. for that, you might be forced to show players making decisions about story direction, which would a complex new form of storytelling on TV.

I think you could make a great anthology series with each season a new setting, but that comes after establishing a brand and fanbase. Right now its a thousand ideas in the wind around a generic sword, magic, and monster package.

 

[payn]

I don't think Paramount Plus will survive, and I should be cancelling my subscription soon now that Star Trek: Discovery is over, and renewing it whenever Star Trek: Lower Decks comes back before cancelling again.

The one streaming service I won't cancel is Netflix because it's the most ubiquitous one.

Netflix was on the cancel button, but lately they have been pulling in a lot of syndication which has them back on the keep point for me.

P+ I just do the Amazon Black Friday deal every year where I get 2 months for 4 bucks and thats all the time I need with it.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Netflix was on the cancel button, but lately they have been pulling in a lot of syndication which has them back on the keep point for me.

P+ I just do the Amazon Black Friday deal every year where I get 2 months for 4 bucks and thats all the time I need with it.

Paramount+ is so desperate to keep their subscriber numbers up. A few months ago I went to cancel, and they offered me two more months at a quarter of the normal price. Then, I went to cancel after that discount was up, and they offered another two months ... for free.

 

[Parmandur]

But why sell right before the movie release, and as all these other deals were freshly in place? Only thing I can imagine is if they got the sense that the overall push wasn't going to work.

The sale didn't seem to have much to do with D&D specifically, eOne had a lot of other stuff going on. The gist seems to be that Hasbro wanted control over film projects of their IP, but after trying that for a few years decided they didn't like the risk of actually fronting production money, so decided to retreat back to taking other people's money for their IP as a business model. And, importantly they long term will still gain from the acquisition because they kept eOne's IP like Peppa Pig when they sold off the production stuff.

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder if D&D:HAT would have been a hit had it dropped half a decade ago.

I think this hits the nail on the head: in the golden ahe of blockbusters, with more people going to theaters to see fewer big movies coming out...HAT would have had all the boxes tied. But nowadays even the MCU isn't working in theaters anymore.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah their release window certainly did them no favors though last year we saw tons of movies that I'm sure studios felt like were safe bets do poorly or bomb. There were a few exceptions (Barbie, Oppenheimer, Mario, Guardians 3, etc) but so many big budget films did poorly.

I do think in general audiences have been moving away from theaters for a variety of reasons. The high costs not only of a ticket (where a single ticket can cost about the same as a month of a streaming service) & concessions, audiences having access to higher quality 4K HDR TV screens in their homes that are good enough for most people, the speed that films come to paid VOD and streaming services and the sheer amount of entertainment options people now have all play a role.

I know personally I don't see that many films in theaters anymore. I prefer to watch movies on my 4K TV at home. I have a popcorn maker and can make popcorn at a tiny fraction of the cost of buying it at the theater. I can start the movie and pause it whenever I want. And while the visual and audio quality of streaming certainly isn't anywhere near a film it's honestly good enough for me.

I haven't gone to the theater since 2019, and if neither D&D, Mario, nor Guardians of the Galaxy could bring me back in I cannot see ever going again.

 

[Parmandur]

That actually sounds even worse to me.

WotC, on both the D&D and Maguc side, have been very firm for years that they want to play their IP straight, so new cutesy Meta player stuff will happen.

 

[payn]

WotC, on both the D&D and Maguc side, have been very firm for years that they want to play their IP straight, so new cutesy Meta player stuff will happen.

I mean, I could see this in a sitcom style. Something like big bang theory centered on D&D play. I wouldn't watch it, but I could see it being really popular. Though, a serious take of people sitting around playing D&D with occasional cut scene seems like a recipe for disaster.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean, I could see this in a sitcom style. Something like big bang theory centered on D&D play. I wouldn't watch it, but I could see it being really popular. Though, a serious take of people sitting around playing D&D with occasional cut scene seems like a recipe for disaster.

Artistically, I think it could be done. Bit WotC has been very, very consistently down on the idea for their IP: official Magic and D&D stuff is going to be straight about the Settings, period.