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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6299707" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think there are two responses to this.The first is    [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]'s comment, that D&D is about the same thing as stories, namely, conflict - and it brings with it certain particular tropes for the framing of that conflict (eg underground settings - and the shadows make CG effects easier!; clerics with maces, fighters, wizards with spellbooks and staves, thieves in leather armour; thieves and assassins guilds; druids and monks with ritual combat as part of their practices for establishing hierarchies; etc).The second is that D&D has bucketloads of stories in its modules, its novels, etc. The GDQ series is a story. Night's Dark Terror is a story. Heck, even Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan can be turned into a story if you edit it down to some highlights and use it as an Indiana Jones-style intro piece.Whether those stories can be turned into successful movies luckily isn't my problem. But to me they're not inherently worse than the Avengers, which in my view have always been pretty second-tier comics-wise. (I love the X-Men, especially Claremont X-Men, but there's a lot in there that's not all that brilliant in its original form. I think the first X-Men movie is a better version of a Magneto story than any single Magneto story in the comics, for instance, with the possible exception of #150.)Yes and no. In one sense, everyone who's ever heard a European fairy tale or come across a kids book on knights and castles knows the general themes of LotR: it is good vs bad fantasy, predicated on romantic conceptions of the importance of individual honour, the divine right (and righteousness) of kings, and an ultimate faith in providentially-ordained outcomes that comport with the requirements of justice.But I find it hard to believe that every group of friends who went to see LotR had at least one reader in it. My evidence for that is, admittedly, little more than conjecture (in my case many of those I went with had read the books, because I went with RPG friends - but my friend who bought them all on DVD, both theatrical and directors' versions, hadn't read the books and didn't see them at the theatre with anyone who had as far as I know - he just fell in love with Liv Tyler's ears). But for what it's worth here it is: heaps of people at my work have seen LotR. Few of them have read LotR. And most of those who haven't I expect move in family/friendship circles where the others haven't either.People go to see LotR because it is highly promoted, by a well-regarded if somewhat minor director, it involves a well-recognised title, and when you see the trailer it looks beautiful and spectacular.I would be gobsmacked (but very happy) if any D&D movie compared to LotR. But it seems feasible that it could compare to Dragonheart, or even Ladyhawke.Iron Man means different things to different people, too - to most people it means either nothing, or (say in the case of my partner) it means Robert Downey Jr in a funny rocket-powered suit. I don't think D&D is in any worse place than Transformers or Iron Man in terms of market recognition.You don't make an Iron Man film with the idea of existing Iron Man fans as your core audience (there aren't enough of them). Likewise for a D&D film.I also don't know what you mean by "WotC lacking clear ownership of any world or character". They own bucketloads of them, starting with Driz'zt and FR, Dragonlance and all its protagonists and antagonists, then heaps of lesser-tier worlds after those one. (The Black Eagle Barony was mentioned upthread.) The D-Series - with its memorable characters including the giant rulers, Obmi, Eclavdra and Lolth is another example, rooted in the game itself rather than spinoff fiction. The Slavers, with memorable characters including Markess, the blind fighter in the eyeless helmet, and Stalman Klim leading the Slave Lords, is another example along those lines.I'm not a marketing person, and so some of this "brand" stuff is a bit opaque to me. But wouldn't making "Forgotten Realms" or "Driz'zt" or (perhaps most plausibly) "Dragonlance" into successful brands count, from WotC's point of view, as a growing of the D&D brand? I don't see in what practical sense the novel line is its own product and brand. For instance, it's not as if someone else owns the rights and hence derives the revenue (is it?).And even if the recognition on these D&D novels is not as big as LotR (but perhaps is as big as Iron Man?), they are still stories that could in principle be cinematised and thereby monetised more broadly.This makes perfect sense to me. 1,000,000 books (or action figures, or pairs of socks, or whatever) sold is 1,000,000 things sold, whatever the logo or the precise mental state of the purchasers. Why would WotC not consider that a success?All fantasy movies are in some sense "generic fantasy movies". Just like Iron Man is a generic superhero movie ("wealthy playboy has morality-inducing experience that leads him to use his wealth to fight wrongdoers in a visually dramatic if bizarrely inefficient manner").Why do people invest in Marvel's Iron Man movie rather than invent their own generic superhero? Not for the prospect of attracting Iron Man fans to the theatre, I don't think - there aren't enough of them. Presumably it is seen as easier to start with a character and story that is, to some extent at least, already developed. The same considerations, presumably, would make investing in a D&D movie attractive. There are already-developed stories and story elements. Obviously it's not an auto-win, but it doesn't strike me as absurd.Battleship has no characters. The closest it has to a "story" is the firing of blind salvos within a defined target area in an attempt to sink enemy vessels. No one (or, at least, no one in serious numbers) goes to see the Battleship movie out of a profound love of the game. At best, they remember playing Battleship as a kid (or with their kids) and that puts the movie on their radar. Yet Hasbro got a movie out of Battleship. Why couldn't D&D (or FR, or Dragonlance, or . . .) do the same?Unless I'm mistaken, WotC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hasbro, and D&D is wholly owned by WotC. That makes Hasbro, for all practical purposes, the direct owner and controller of D&D (the brand - not the game, which is outside of their control via the OGL).So relying on Hasbro to fill in gaps doesn't really make sense - Hasbro doesn't rely on itself, it just does the stuff it thinks it needs to do.I also think the idea that D&Dnext would reach the level of Blade might be unrealistic. Here is what Wikipedia says about Blade box office:The film was produced on a budget of $45 million. . . Blade went to number one in both Spain and Australia for their opening weekends. With 200 theatres showing the film, Spain's cinema goers earned the film $1.5 million (US) in three days, whilst Australia earned $1 million from 132 cinemas showing the film. In the Flemish Region of Belgium, the film earned $323,000 from 20 cinemas, and the Netherlands earned the film $246,000 from 44 cinemas. France made $1.9 million in five days from 241 cinemas, but the film was less successful in Hong Kong (with $182,000 from 22 cinemas) and South Africa ($159,000 from 64 cinemas). The United Kingdom was more successful, taking in $5.7 million over 10 days, as was Brazil, making $855,000 in four days from 133 cinemas.That's over $11 million, or one quarter of budget, in less than two weeks. Maybe I'm wildly out of touch with the RPG market, but I really wouldn't expect D&Dnext to do anything like that in either absolute or relative terms.As I understand the WotC/Hasbro strategy, the inability of an RPG to perform at that sort of level is why they want to take D&D in a multimedia direction.Who is justifying the multimedia thing being successful? At least for my part, I'm saying that it's not irrational, and there's no inherent reason why it couldn't work.</blockquote>

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