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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7713161" data-attributes="member: 6778044">I enjoyed most of the books well enough. There's a wide range of opinion on the quality of them, of course. Then again, compared to the other D&D books at the time...On the other hand, the quality of the source material isn't really the driving factor, it's the sales of the source material that makes more of a difference since it tends to indicate a built-in audience.The biggest challenge that's always existed with making a D&D movie is what is it going to be about? It really is about creating characters and a story that will resonate with people. Instead of the idea that a D&D movie is "about a fighter, cleric, rogue, and wizard" with "a human, an elf, a dwarf, and a halfling" fighting dragons and villains. I think a TV series would have a better chance of success, in the way Game of Thrones has, since it can cover far more ground than a 2-1/2 hour movie can. They might have the intention of a sequel, trilogy, or more. But that's all dependent on the first one doing well.The Marvel movies do well in part because of the well known characters. You still have to write a (mostly) decent movie to go with it. But the widely known universe gives them plenty to work with. Dragonlance and Drizzt are the two most well known characters/stories simply because of the number of novels sold. Dragonlance is epic in scope, but would be harder to turn into a universe to allow other movies. But there are a lot of novels and stories already written to keep options open for a while.Forgotten Realms would theoretically be easy to turn into a universe for multiple movies, but it's characters tend to be in isolated storylines. Greenwood's work covers the most ground, with a lot of characters that come and go, but many of them ramp up the power level too high. I think that the Drizzt novel could work in that regard. The character is well known to a built-in audience. But ultimately, I don't think he would draw in much in the way of an outside audience.I hope they avoid the epic approach, and go for a more loosely related episodic stories. The Indiana Jones movies and the National Treasure movies I think point to a sort of framework that would work well. Personally, something along those lines with a younger Mirt and Durnan, with the addition of the Knights of Myth Drannor set largely in the Dalelands would be a good starting point. The villains should be the Zhentarim. If they go back to earlier days, that could include Manshoon and Fzoul, who could be foiled by not destroyed. And I don't care if the name is Dungeons & Dragons - the movie doesn't have to center around, or even include, a dragon.To get the widest audience, I think it should focus primarily on human heroes and villains, although there will obviously be elves and other races. To have the longest life it really needs to transcend the core audience and be a movie that stands on its own, that happens to be called Dungeons & Dragons.</blockquote>

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