D&D Movie/TV Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves sequel script finished, looking for studio

On an appearance on the Discourse Podcast from Playlist, writer/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein stated they have finished he script to a sequel to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

“I think Hasbro is a big believer in it, and if they can figure out a studio partner to make it work, they’ll want to proceed,” Goldstein said.

The pair also addressed the underperformance of the film, which made $208 million global box office against a $150 million budget.

“It was very much a product of not-so-great timing when the first movie came out. It came out four days before the Super Mario movie, which broke records,” Daley said. “It came out a month after Wizards of the Coast changed the official gaming license, prompting many D&D fans to boycott the game, and I don’t think the marketing did enough to tell people who weren’t already fans that this movie might be for them. Yeah, so it was a perfect storm of all of those elements, and we’ll see.

“I mean, look, it’s something that is near and dear to our hearts in that we loved making the first one. We fell in love with the characters, and there’s so much potential in a sequel because the first act isn’t filled with exposition or introduction to this family that we’ve already become accustomed to. So you can kind of launch right into the story, which is really nice.”

As we all know, there always seems to be some mitigating situation making it difficult to get together for a second session.

This comes following news of a Ravenloft television series from Netflix earlier this week.

 

[Mark Craddock]

Thats just never going to happen, not without some kind of pivot to a full on lifestyle brand with merch and licensing but I dont think D&D is even close to that level of broad appeal.

Magic still makes silly money.

They tried the lifestyle brand for D&D and it didn't work. I company smarter than Hasbro would treat both brand's communities as strengths and listen to what each wants.

 

[Mark Craddock]

Yeah. There was no direct tie-in product back then because the D&D studio didn't really talk to the entertainment offices on product coordination.

Hopefully the new franchise format means that there is merch and actual game stuff for whatever D&D media happens in the future.

Which is weird because Hasbro bought eOne for that reason and then announced they were shuttering as D&D was hitting theaters and a few months before Transformers Rise of the Beasts released. Hasbro does this constantly, they start an initiative that is a major paradigm shift and then shut it down around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way done.

 

[Scribe]

They tried the lifestyle brand for D&D and it didn't work. I company smarter than Hasbro would treat both brand's communities as strengths and listen to what each wants.

Sure, but as I think I mentioned, I can play D&D, for a lifetime, with various editions, SRD, or I can buy Shadowdark and be set for life.

Heck, I've been working the last few weeks on my own game that will mean I could never buy another system again.

So what does listening to the community (fractured, diverse, and at odds) even look like?

Hasbro wants as much money as possible, looking for that in books, hasn't really proven workable, for Hasbro opinion on success.