D&D Movie/TV Hasbro Getting Out Of The Movie Business

While Hasbro is forging ahead with its own Dungeons & Dragons video game, following the massive success of Baldur's Gate 3, the future of its film involvement is less rosy. In an article with Bloomberg featuring Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, it was revealed that the company won't be co-financing future movies following the underperformance of Honor Among Thieves and Transformers One.

The focus is moving towards video games. Cocks said to Bloomberg, "We want to reach fans where they want to play, and increasingly that is through digital expressions of their favorite brands".

Sony and Lions Gate will continue to make movies based on Hasbro properties, but Hasbro won't be involved in the financing.

Hasbro Confirms New Unannounced Dungeons & Dragons Video Game in Development

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks has confirmed that an in-house studio is developing an unannounced Dungeons & Dragons video game. In a feature posted today on Bloomberg News, Cocks stated that Hasbro was actively developing a Dungeons & Dragons video game via one of its in-house studios. No further...

www.enworld.org

 

[Distracted DM]

Yup digital sales and rentals only bring in a fraction of the cash old VHS/DVDs used to.

Yup.

 

[tetrasodium]

As per this Bloomberg article Hasbro has decided to get out of co-financing movies after their recent films underperformed:

Hasbro’s Gamer CEO Refocuses on Play After Selling Film Business

Hasbro Inc. Chief Executive Officer Chris Cocks couldn’t hide his disappointment when he opened two packs of his company’s Magic: The Gathering playing cards at a board-game cafė in New York.

www.bloomberg.com

This means that if Paramount wants to make a sequel to Honor Among Thieves they’ll need to find all of the financing themselves instead of just half of it. Given the box office performance of the film this likely doesn’t bode well for a potential sequel. Truly unfortunate news as I would really love a sequel but given HoA’s underperforming I haven’t been holding my breath for a sequel.

I suspect that it also means that such a sequel would have significantly less focus on box checking scenes and plot threads too.

You wouldn't have time wanted on

• Tabaxi are popular so include a creepy scene rescuing one from a fish
• Show that wild magic sorc can fit well with the party so devote a bizarrely significant chunk of the movie to shoehorn in a main character of the story level focus on one overcoming that
• AL were then still trying to force these bizarre bolt on factions into every adventure so devote a bunch to those too
• Oh there needs to be a whole scene for attunement... Also insert this character Im guessing showed up in some fr novel or something into it.
• Oh we want to make a big deal about the cartoon character so there needs to be a scene where it's painfully obvious that it's those kids interacting with the movie characters
• Etc

 

[payn]

I suspect that it also means that such a sequel would have significantly less focus on box checking scenes and plot threads too.

You wouldn't have time wanted on

• Tabaxi are popular so include a creepy scene rescuing one from a fish
• Show that wild magic sorc can fit well with the party so devote a bizarrely significant chunk of the movie to shoehorn in a main character of the story level focus on one overcoming that
• AL were then still trying to force these bizarre bolt on factions into every adventure so devote a bunch to those too
• Oh there needs to be a whole scene for attunement... Also insert this character Im guessing showed up in some fr novel or something into it.
• Oh we want to make a big deal about the cartoon character so there needs to be a scene where it's painfully obvious that it's those kids interacting with the movie characters
• Etc

Thats time well wanted.

 

[Ghost2020]

Ah nuts. I would have liked a sequel. There might still be some way someone will snag it and do one, likely without Chris Pine.

I did pick up the DVD at Wal Mart for $5. Nice to have a physical copy when it leaves streaming.

 

[sevenbastard]

The last two movies I saw in the theater were DADHAT and Furiosa. Both good movies that underperformed.

Clearly the folks who go to movies alot want something diffrent than me.

 

[Koloth]

Sad for chances of a decent sequel. But makes sense from a business point. Sequels often perform less well then the first movie. Honor didn't do as well as hoped. Why spend a bunch of money financing #2 when at the same time Hasbro is going to try to internally develop one or more games? Unlike true movie companies, Hasbro has to adhere to more standard accounting practices, i.e. no Hollywood accounting.

 

[Parmandur]

The last two movies I saw in the theater were DADHAT and Furiosa. Both good movies that underperformed.

Clearly the folks who go to movies alot want something diffrent than me.

The issue is that "folks who go to the movies alot" just don't exist anymore.

 

[tetrasodium]

Thats time well wanted.

Maybe in a full on tv series that could devote tens of minutes to developing some of those plot threads. In a 2 hour movie they were just some of the awkward scenes that served as an awkward hot springs episode level of fan service taking the place of scenes that could have directly developed & advanced the greater plot of the movie itself.

Back when I watched it my immediate thoughts after the credits were pretty much, "Yea that was ok & I don't feel like I need to burn those two hours out of my brain... but wow it could have been great if not for all the bizarre & obvious product line inserts that were awkwardly forced into the script that could have been plot relevant".

 

[payn]

Maybe in a full on tv series that could devote tens of minutes to developing some of those plot threads. In a 2 hour movie they were just some of the awkward scenes that served as an awkward hot springs episode level of fan service taking the place of scenes that could have directly developed & advanced the greater plot of the movie itself.

Back when I watched it my immediate thoughts after the credits were pretty much, "Yea that was ok & I don't feel like I need to burn those two hours out of my brain... but wow it could have been great if not for all the bizarre & obvious product line inserts that were awkwardly forced into the script that could have been plot relevant".

Not sure exactly what else they could have done with the 3 seconds of screen time given to the cartoon character easter egg, but I suppose. I wasnt floored by the movie either, but I did find it rather enjoyable and appreciated the effort to make it D&Dish.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This means that if Paramount wants to make a sequel to Honor Among Thieves they’ll need to find all of the financing themselves instead of just half of it. Given the box office performance of the film this likely doesn’t bode well for a potential sequel. Truly unfortunate news as I would really love a sequel but given HoA’s underperforming I haven’t been holding my breath for a sequel.

I'm not sure it's quite as negative for a sequel or other D&D movies as you suggest. WotC not financing it also means WotC not getting a share of the revenue, and likely means significantly less WotC interference in the movie being made. I genuinely think it might be easier to make a D&D movie without WotC, who are penny pinchers, capricious and have a lot of weird ideas.

As an aside, where are you getting that WotC/Hasbro were putting in 50% of the funding? I'm not saying they weren't, but I can't find any sources suggesting that they were, and it would be somewhat unusually neat and precise for an arrangement like that to be exactly a 50/50 split.

Same here. Not to sound like a bitter old man, but I relish the movie theatre experience of my youth. Today, my local chain cinema is expensive, dirty, noisy, stinks of nachos, and appears to want to randomly blow my ear drums out of my skull, depending on the film.

I mean, that absolutely sounds like many* cinemas in the 1980s and 1990s, so I don't know when your youth was that that wasn't the case (the 2000s maybe?). In London, which is admittedly a pretty huge city, I basically can pick two of "cheap, comfortable, and clean" (deafening or not remains a roll of the dice - though if it's an arthouse-oriented cinema you almost always escape that).

* = Not nachos in the UK until more recently, but something equally insalubrious.