Dragonlance Joe Manganelio is Writing the D&D Movie? And Is it DRAGONLANCE?

Actor Joe Manganelio (from True Blood, Magic Mike, and more) appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, and reported that he is co-writing a movie script. While he doesn't namecheck D&D, his description sounds a lot like it, and he did recently meet up with WotC. "Last year with a playwright I went to Carnegie Mellon with, I actually made a draft of a film, and now we're talking to all the right parties. I had a two-day creative summit with the Wizards of the Coast...we had like a two-day summit about where the movie could go or TV series, products, synergy, the whole deal… Obviously, there's a spectacle. There's dragons breathing fire and lightning. But what makes a great superhero or fantasy movie is the human aspect. It's got to be about something. We root for those characters in Game of Thrones. Fellowship of the Ring was about friendship, this undying love for your friends. That's something everyone can identify with. When a movie is about something human and real emotionally people are going to want to see. Then you get some dragons breathing fire, and hey, I'm in." And to add fuel to the fire, he even tweets a photo of a DRAGONLANCE script! (thanks to darjr for the scoop)

The D&D movie is being directed by Rob Letterman (Goosebumps, Monsters vs. Aliens, Shark Tale), produced by Rob Lee (The Lego Movie, How To Train Your Dragon) and was/maybe still is being penned by David Leslie Johnson (Wrath of the Titans). Previous reports indicated that "This new Dungeons & Dragons will be a Guardians of the Galaxy-tone movie in a Tolkien-like universe. Because when you think of all the Hobbit movies and The Lord of the Rings, they have an earnestness to them, and to see something fun, a Raiders romp inside that world, I feel is something the audience has not seen before." and that "producers are eyeing a Vin Diesel-type for the film’s lead characters".

Of course, we also know that Vin Diesel plays D&D, as does Joe Manganiello.

So is he co-writing the D&D movie or is that something else? To add to the rumour pile, he tweeted an image of a DRAGONLANCE script (shown below). Of course, he could be playing with us. But maybe there is something in it? His name isn't that script, nor is David Leslie Johnson's. Let the speculation begin!

Manganelio at WotC in February

Manganelio tweeted this image



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[Corwin]

My heart is broken, I wanted a sequel to Pee-Wee's big holiday.

Joe playing himself in that movie was so great!

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Oh, the fanboy in me would be very disappointed. But, think about it this way - LotR clocks in at 450 000 (ish) words. So does Dragonlance. And they did trim rather a lot from the LotR books to fit it into 9 hours. And that's for one of the most beloved fantasy series of all time.

Dragonlance, as popular as it it, has nowhere near that level of interest. The odds that you're going to convince people that you need 9 hours to tell this story is pretty slim, IMO. Sure, I'd love it if they could, but, honestly, I think you're going to be lucky to get a 2.5 hour movie at all. Which means we're probably going to get an "inspired by" movie, rather than a straight up retelling.

I concur. While the Hobbit movies might not have killed the 3 hour movie, they probably left it in a coma for the near future. Old foggies like me make up a good chunk of the prospective audience for a D&D movie, and an intermission is pretty much a requirement for anything over 130 minutes.

 

[Dausuul]

While I understand why people look at Dragonlance and think, "Yup, three books, three movies", there's an awful lot of things you can cut out of the storyline and still tell a Dragonlance movie. As a fan? Sure, I want 6-9 hours of Dragonlance. But, being realistic, I think we'll be lucky to get one movie. Cut out most of the second book and tell most of the first book in the first twenty minutes of the movie.

There's one crucial flaw in this line of thinking: The assumption that if a studio makes "Dragons of Autumn Twilight," it has locked itself into making "Winter Night" and "Spring Dawning." That's not true at all. If "Autumn Twilight" flops, the studio can just decline to film the other two. Why not? If the movie flops, then by definition there isn't a big audience to get upset about the lack of sequels.

And that means the existence of a trilogy (in fact, multiple trilogies) is a selling point for Dragonlance, not a drawback. There's a reason we see so many remakes and sequels and prequels in the movie industry: They're safe. You've got a known audience, you know what they want, all you have to do is give it to them and take their money. If "Autumn Twilight" is a hit, the studio can ride that gravy train all the way through "Chronicles" and "Legends," six full movies' worth of steady profit. And if it fails, they can dump it and move on.

Obviously, it won't be possible to do what New Line and Peter Jackson did with "Lord of the Rings" and film all three movies at once, which means losing out on some economies of scale; but that was the exception in movie-making, not the rule. (And they could do that with Legends, if Chronicles does well.)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh, the fanboy in me would be very disappointed. But, think about it this way - LotR clocks in at 450 000 (ish) words. So does Dragonlance. And they did trim rather a lot from the LotR books to fit it into 9 hours. And that's for one of the most beloved fantasy series of all time.

Dragonlance, as popular as it it, has nowhere near that level of interest. The odds that you're going to convince people that you need 9 hours to tell this story is pretty slim, IMO. Sure, I'd love it if they could, but, honestly, I think you're going to be lucky to get a 2.5 hour movie at all. Which means we're probably going to get an "inspired by" movie, rather than a straight up retelling.

I think you may be underestimating DL, especially if WOTC put out a module set there, and made a big thing of reprinting the novels, during the lead up. Hell, Weiss is dying to publish a revised Chronicles.

Just the current DnD audience, by itself, is enough to drive such a thing into the wider public conciousness, discounting the people who read the books but didn't play DnD, and the people who did neither but are always looking for new fantasy worlds to fall in love with.

But beyond that, the idea that getting a 2 1/2 hour movie would be hard seems overly pessimistic, to me. I that with someone like Joe involved, and if they get Vin Deisel and any other huge nerds in Hollywood involved, selling execs on going big won't be hard.

People will go see 2 1/2 hours of Vin talking about life, man.

The main point of worry is whether it does well enough and the right contracts are drawn up with the actors to make a second and third, but Hollywood loves sequels. They will literally make a sequel they know will barely make profit, over a new deal that they see as a risk. They also are hungry for franchises.

Books I've never bloody heard of have gotten big budget full length productions.

And like I said, some cutting will be necessary. But nowhere near what you propose. Not even in the same ballpark. I guarantee that script is mostly just the first book, with revisions for pacing and time, and maybe cutting out a few extra things like gully dwarves, and likely working with the ending to make sure it's a solid film on its own.

Because it's much more likely that they will want to make a movie that can be left alone if it flops, be understood on its own, AND be the first of three films if it does well.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

My heart is broken, I wanted a sequel to Pee-Wee's big holiday.

My 8- and 6-year-old daughters' go-to on Netflix is Pee-Wee's Playhouse. It makes me so happy!

 

[wicked cool]

Studios seem to want to lock into the 3 film format so if they cast a big name expect that big name to get locked into a 3 movie deal.Of course the movie has to perform well. The tasselhoff/flint plus the gully dwarvesroutine would give them the comedy element they want to copy from guardians of galaxy etc. the gully dwarf buppa (spelling) would rope in audiences if done by a good actress
If done correctly the movie would do well as you have pc deaths, betrayal. List of monsters would be simple as its dragons, humans, draconians and goblins/hobgoblins

However I have no faith that this will work. Much safer to go with ravenoft or something based on giants

 

[fjw70]

There's one crucial flaw in this line of thinking: The assumption that if a studio makes "Dragons of Autumn Twilight," it has locked itself into making "Winter Night" and "Spring Dawning." That's not true at all. If "Autumn Twilight" flops, the studio can just decline to film the other two. Why not? If the movie flops, then by definition there isn't a big audience to get upset about the lack of sequels.

And that means the existence of a trilogy (in fact, multiple trilogies) is a selling point for Dragonlance, not a drawback. There's a reason we see so many remakes and sequels and prequels in the movie industry: They're safe. You've got a known audience, you know what they want, all you have to do is give it to them and take their money. If "Autumn Twilight" is a hit, the studio can ride that gravy train all the way through "Chronicles" and "Legends," six full movies' worth of steady profit. And if it fails, they can dump it and move on.

Obviously, it won't be possible to do what New Line and Peter Jackson did with "Lord of the Rings" and film all three movies at once, which means losing out on some economies of scale; but that was the exception in movie-making, not the rule. (And they could do that with Legends, if Chronicles does well.)

Agreed. A first DL movie could focus on the defeat of Verminard and an escape from his army. That story is pretty self-contained and would work fine as a stand alone if the others don't get made while still setting up future movies. Very much like the original Star Wars movie.

 

[Hussar]

Studios seem to want to lock into the 3 film format so if they cast a big name expect that big name to get locked into a 3 movie deal.Of course the movie has to perform well. The tasselhoff/flint plus the gully dwarvesroutine would give them the comedy element they want to copy from guardians of galaxy etc. the gully dwarf buppa (spelling) would rope in audiences if done by a good actress
If done correctly the movie would do well as you have pc deaths, betrayal. List of monsters would be simple as its dragons, humans, draconians and goblins/hobgoblins

However I have no faith that this will work. Much safer to go with ravenoft or something based on giants

See, but, there's the thing. Bupo could be entirely cut. She appears in only a small part of the first novel and never again. Just some random Gully Dwarf that Raistlin hits with a Charm Person. Now, it's a pretty touching scene and all that, but, this is a character that would have, at most, ten minutes of screen time. You're not going to get a good actress for that.

And, that's the thing. There's a LOT of the novels that can be axed without too much issue. The whole Kitiara storyline, really, doesn't matter in the long run. Has nothing to do with the actual main plot of stopping the Dragonarmies. You could cut everything about Kitiara, which also means Sturm doesn't really matter anymore either, so, cut him out too and no one would even notice.

Well, WE'D notice, but, I'm talking about non-novel fans, which is probably the majority of people, if this movie is going to be successful.

Look, again, as a fan, I'd LOVE to see a 9 hour Dragonlance epic. But, I just really don't see it happening. There's no way that a production company is going to front this idea. Especially when you have flops like John Carter and Warcraft sitting there.

"Hey, we'd like to have several hundred million dollars to make a movie about dragons ..."

Good luck with that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

it's a pretty touching scene and all that, but, this is a character that would have, at most, ten minutes of screen time. You're not going to get a good actress for that.

You could get an excellent character actress, just not a big name.

"Hey, we'd like to have several hundred million dollars to make a movie about dragons ..."

Good luck with that.

'Dragons' sounds like an easier sell than I'd've expected "9' tall blue feline humanoids with USB hair" to have been.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Studios seem to want to lock into the 3 film format so if they cast a big name expect that big name to get locked into a 3 movie deal.Of course the movie has to perform well. The tasselhoff/flint plus the gully dwarvesroutine would give them the comedy element they want to copy from guardians of galaxy etc. the gully dwarf buppa (spelling) would rope in audiences if done by a good actress
If done correctly the movie would do well as you have pc deaths, betrayal. List of monsters would be simple as its dragons, humans, draconians and goblins/hobgoblins

However I have no faith that this will work. Much safer to go with ravenoft or something based on giants

IMO Ravenloft or some vague giant thing are much bigger risks. Giants are harder to do well, than Dragons, IMO, or at least seem to be bc they are almost never done well.