D&D Movie/TV DADHAT becomes Netflix Global Hit

[Zardnaar]

Fun movie thumbs up. CGI was a bit wonky but i don't care to much about great CGI if the story is meh.

Very basic plotine executed well that's perfectly fine.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Unless the show is a total disaster, they should give them one more season after it is decided that the show is cancelled, so that the showrunners can give it a decent ending. As these shows remain on streaming services, knowing that the show didn't end abruptly and stupidly makes it much more likely that people who didn't see it when it was first released will be interested in watching it, so it benefits the streaming service too.

You need to write taking into account what they do do, not what they should do.

 

[Cergorach]

I've stopped watching on Netflix after 5min. I'll probably watch it when I'm in the mood for that kind of campy silliness. But I'm told we exactly replicated the Speak with Dead scene today...

But those that did watch it in my group were very enthusiastic as they found the campy silliness to perfectly represent D&D in their mind. And they hope for a sequel. As far as I understand it, it's way, way better then every other D&D movie ever made. So I don't really think that it's bad performance in the movie theaters is due to any release window or some sort of OGL debacle of which 90% of D&D players never heard of. It's just the bad reputation of D&D movies in general. That it did as well as it did is already indicative that it's way better then any D&D movie that came before it.

And that it's doing as well as it did on Netflix/TV is because for many it's their default 'TV' watching subscription and effectively now they're watching for 'free' (part of a far larger subscription). Instead of paying premium movie ticket prices...

Maybe the sequel is a Netflix movie?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I have got an idea. A teleserie about a group of people who need money and then they produce their own actual-play show, and there is a within plot with the campaign they are playing.

Hasbro worries more about selling merchandising.

I doubt seriously Netflix produced the sequel of HaT but it was a coproduction with Paramount, but we know that can't happen easily.

 

[Remathilis]

HoT is going to be a cult classic movie, but I don't expect even with its long tail that we will ever get a sequel. Keep in mind D&D had a previous failed movie 20 years ago, and a collection of Sci-Fi straight to video failures. HoT was built on the idea of "lets do this one right" and they did everything right and it still wasn't enough. The audience wasn't there. Too many D&D fans sat home (some because they expected another bad movie, some as punishment to WotC) and not enough non-D&D fans saw anything other than another Marvel movie in a genre and setting they don't know or understand.

Paramount lost on that gamble. The TV show they considered is dead. D&D has proven itself to not be the draw at the box office people thought it could be. If there is another movie (big if) we're back to the realm of low-budget TV/Streaming level shlock. Maybe in another two decades, there will be enough memory holing and nostalgia that we will get Requel (ala Beetlejuice or Ghostbusters).

Unless someone can convince the execs to make a Baldur's Gate 3 based movie. Maybe they can sell Baldur's Gate: a D&D Movie.

 

[Parmandur]

HoT is going to be a cult classic movie, but I don't expect even with its long tail that we will ever get a sequel. Keep in mind D&D had a previous failed movie 20 years ago, and a collection of Sci-Fi straight to video failures. HoT was built on the idea of "lets do this one right" and they did everything right and it still wasn't enough. The audience wasn't there. Too many D&D fans sat home (some because they expected another bad movie, some as punishment to WotC) and not enough non-D&D fans saw anything other than another Marvel movie in a genre and setting they don't know or understand.

Paramount lost on that gamble. The TV show they considered is dead. D&D has proven itself to not be the draw at the box office people thought it could be. If there is another movie (big if) we're back to the realm of low-budget TV/Streaming level shlock. Maybe in another two decades, there will be enough memory holing and nostalgia that we will get Requel (ala Beetlejuice or Ghostbusters).

Unless someone can convince the execs to make a Baldur's Gate 3 based movie. Maybe they can sell Baldur's Gate: a D&D Movie.

I don't think a direct sequel is likely. But D&D will get something more, sooner or later. Netflix might find an angle thst works for their streaming needs, using their advanced metrics.

 

[MarkB]

It's an old property now, but I'd love someone to do an adaptation of Larry Niven's Dream Park. The premise is of organised LARPing tournament games but in a closed-off park using actors and holographic projections to make it super-realistic, and there are two levels to the narrative - the in-game one of the competitors trying to figure out the plot and win, and also an actual murder-mystery in which a park staff member was killed and the circumstances make the players the chief pool of suspects, so the park's security chief is entered into the game as a player to investigate them.

 

[Mistwell]

I've now heard from two people who might be in a position to know (they are in the Industry for sure) that the movie moved into the Black, financially speaking. It cannot be classified that way officially by the studio because they took a write-off and streaming revenue and licensing revenue is sort of shared out over multiple properties in a different category.

And I do not know what the "licensing" revenue is they mentioned. Both mentioned it though. Popcorn containers? Were there other licensed product sales associated specifically with the movie which were not Hasbro revenue?

Anyway these two people, in different ways, were looking at revenue post-theatrical and counting it with internal numbers. One claimed the marketing was not as high as people think, as a large chunk of production budget was Covid stoppages and not part of the calculation for marketing (he was implying nearly a 30% hit but that seems high?) I guess Marketing Budget is a percentage of planned production budget at the early stage, and is not calculated against unplanned expenditures.

I cannot say for sure if any of this is accurate. I didn't see any numbers myself, and I'm not sure I'd be able to parse them even if I had seen them. While both of these people do know quite a bit about some insider stuff, this was a very casual conversation. They also could have been BS'ing with me? They knew I was a D&D player that liked the movie.

 

[Parmandur]

I've now heard from two people who might be in a position to know (they are in the Industry for sure) that the movie moved into the Black, financially speaking. It cannot be classified that way officially by the studio because they took a write-off and streaming revenue and licensing revenue is sort of shared out over multiple properties in a different category.

And I do not know what the "licensing" revenue is they mentioned. Both mentioned it though. Popcorn containers? Were there other licensed product sales associated specifically with the movie which were not Hasbro revenue?

Anyway these two people, in different ways, were looking at revenue post-theatrical and counting it with internal numbers. One claimed the marketing was not as high as people think, as a large chunk of production budget was Covid stoppages and not part of the calculation for marketing (he was implying nearly a 30% hit but that seems high?) I guess Marketing Budget is a percentage of planned production budget at the early stage, and is not calculated against unplanned expenditures.

I cannot say for sure if any of this is accurate. I didn't see any numbers myself, and I'm not sure I'd be able to parse them even if I had seen them. While both of these people do know quite a bit about some insider stuff, this was a very casual conversation. They also could have been BS'ing with me? They knew I was a D&D player that liked the movie.

I think that sounds right: it wasn't a big giant hit, but I doubt any heads are rolling over it.

Often box office disappointments are PK in the long run: Waterworld was a boondoggle, but it was in the black by the end. I'm a year of embarrassing disasters, HAT was a middle performer.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't think a direct sequel is likely. But D&D will get something more, sooner or later. Netflix might find an angle thst works for their streaming needs, using their advanced metrics.

I'm sure D&D will get something eventually. But its not going to involve the people who made HoT a success. Which is basically square one again. We're not going to get anything as good as HoT again, and I doubt we'll get anything on par with Rings of Power or Game of Thrones level budgets because the property hasn't shown enough ROI.

I think the next tell will be how well Netflix's Magic: The Gathering project does. If its a success for Netflix, I could see them try the same trick with D&D. But if it fails to do the numbers Netflix wants, I imagine WotC is going to struggle to convince either property is a draw.