D&D Movie/TV Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith Join D&D Movie

From Comic Book Movies -- "Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar) and Justice Smith (Detective Pikachu) have joined Wonder Woman 1984's Chris Pine in Paramount and eOne's upcoming big-budget board game adaptation, Dungeons & Dragons..."

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Michelle Rodriguez And Justice Smith Join Chris Pine In Fantasy Adaptation

Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar) and Justice Smith (Detective Pikachu) have joined Wonder Woman 1984's Chris Pine in Paramount and eOne's upcoming big-budget board game adaptation, Dungeons & Dragons...

www.comicbookmovie.com

We learned in December about Chris Pine's involvement, along with directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

D&D Movie/TV - Chris Pine To Star In D&D Movie

The long, slow process towards a modern take on D&D movies took a large step forward with the announcement of a huge star signed to the project. Considering that filming is set to start soon a cascade of announcements should be revealed in initiative order imminently. Filming begins in Q1 2021...

www.enworld.org

 

[Morrus]

They've heard if it maybe. But it's a lot smaller franchise.

It's not a franchise. The idea is to start to build a franchise. Star Wars wasn't a franchise in 1978.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's not a franchise. The idea is to start to build a franchise. Star Wars wasn't a franchise in 1978.

Dunno what the rest of those semi-sentence fragments meant.

I'm pointing out that it's very difficult to establish a franchise.

I don't think the general public cares about D&D as much as people on the boards think.

Box office number is objective as is a movies budget.

If D&D us so great in terms of movie franchise potential put a number on it.

It makes money if it doubles it's budget at the box office.

Fairly simple. I've looked into how movies are made and have a reasonable understanding how they make money.

It's a very simple question how much money do you think a movie can make?

 

[Morrus]

I'm pointing out that it's very difficult to establish a franchise.

Sure. But nevertheless, Hollywood does it all the time.

I don't think the general public cares about D&D as much as people on the boards think.

OK, third time lucky. You're either ignoring me or deliberately misunderstanding me.

So, here goes:

It doesn't matter whether the general public cares about D&D.

In 1978 nobody had heard of Star Wars. In 2000 nobody had heard of The Fast & The Furious. In 2007, few people knew of Iron Man. In 1961, nobody knew who James Bond was. The list goes on and on and on and on.

More people have heard of D&D than had heard of any of those franchises at the time. D&D is starting a franchise, which is always a risk, but is in a better position than any of those properties were when they started.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sure. But nevertheless, Hollywood does it all the time.



OK, third time lucky. You're either ignoring me or deliberately misunderstanding me.

So, here goes:

It doesn't matter whether the general public cares about D&D.

In 1978 nobody had heard of Star Wars. In 2000 nobody had heard of The Fast & The Furious. In 2007, few people knew of Iron Man. In 1961, nobody knew who James Bond was. The list goes on and on and on and on.

More people have heard of D&D than had heard of any of those franchises at the time. D&D is starting a franchise, which is always a risk, but is in a better position than any of those properties were when they started.

You've got your opinion I've got mine.
. Box office will validate that.

It's good faith I don't care what number you put on it.

It's not pseudo scientific there's a box office number.

Star Wars made $400 million + in 1977.

I'm happy to put a number in my guess. That number could be completely wrong and I'm happy to admit it once the movie is released.

What's bad faith about that it's a very simple process. If the movie flops odds are it's gonna be a while before we get another one.

 

[Older Beholder]

What if instead of novels, hypothetically they adapted a module?
It's not going to happen, I think there's more chance that the movie wont even be fantasy, but a modern day movie about people playing D&D than it would be an adaption of a module.

But if it was... What module would make a good movie?

 

[Zardnaar]

What if instead of novels, hypothetically they adapted a module?
It's not going to happen, I think there's more chance that the movie wont even be fantasy, but a modern day movie about people playing D&D than it would be an adaption of a module.

But if it was... What module would make a good movie?

X1 isle of Dread.

They could recycle a module name but would have to inject a story/metaplot into a lot of them.

 

[Older Beholder]

It wouldn't work for a number of reasons but I felt 'Faction War' from Planescape had a cinematic vibe to it.
I feel like you might need a different movie first just to set it up.

 

[Dire Bare]

None of this makes any sense, on any level.

To you.

I love Eberron's magic trains . . . . I don't think they belong in an introductory film for D&D. Eberron is pure awesome, but it stretches what D&D is into new genre territory. After a successful series of "basic" D&D films, then I hope the franchise has enough interest to get us an Eberron movie or 10, plus perhaps some Dark Sun, Planescape, maybe even Spelljammer cinematic goodness.

 

[Scribe]

To you.

I love Eberron's magic trains . . . . I don't think they belong in an introductory film for D&D. Eberron is pure awesome, but it stretches what D&D is into new genre territory. After a successful series of "basic" D&D films, then I hope the franchise has enough interest to get us an Eberron movie or 10, plus perhaps some Dark Sun, Planescape, maybe even Spelljammer cinematic goodness.

Planescape would be so fun. I want a modern setting book for Planescape so so bad.

 

[Zardnaar]

Planescape would be so fun. I want a modern setting book for Planescape so so bad.

Sigil could kind of duplicate the Asgard world in MCU.

 

[Azzy]

To you.

I love Eberron's magic trains . . . . I don't think they belong in an introductory film for D&D. Eberron is pure awesome, but it stretches what D&D is into new genre territory. After a successful series of "basic" D&D films, then I hope the franchise has enough interest to get us an Eberron movie or 10, plus perhaps some Dark Sun, Planescape, maybe even Spelljammer cinematic goodness.

Personally, I disagree with all of this. Magic trains is as much D&D as crashed spaceships, dinosaur infested islands, a six-shooting hero-diety, airships, a giant robot, not-so-giant-robots, Rube Goldberg machines made by mad gnomes, nuclear reactors, Wonderland rip-off demiplanes, and so on. Magic trains are pretty mundane campared to the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o, Alphatian airships, tinker gnome creations, etc. Eberron is just a more modern (well mostly, it was all done before by the time it came out almost 20 years ago) take on fantasy than LotR and Conan.

While I fully realize that the D&D movie won't be set in Eberron (I'm not that lucky), an Eberron-based movie would be perfectly D&D without feeling like a LotR-wannabe and more internally consistent than most of the other vanilla settings.

 

[Zardnaar]

Personally, I disagree with all of this. Magic trains is as much D&D as crashed spaceships, dinosaur infested islands, a six-shooting hero-diety, airships, a giant robot, not-so-giant-robots, Rube Goldberg machines made by mad gnomes, nuclear reactors, Wonderland rip-off demiplanes, and so on. Magic trains are pretty mundane campared to the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o, Alphatian airships, tinker gnome creations, etc. Eberron is just a more modern (well mostly, it was all done before by the time it came out almost 20 years ago) take on fantasy than LotR and Conan.

While I fully realize that the D&D movie won't be set in Eberron (I'm not that lucky), an Eberron-based movie would be perfectly D&D without feeling like a LotR-wannabe and more internally consistent than most of the other vanilla settings.

Mostly all in modules eg niche.

You don't like Depeche Mode?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

To you.

I love Eberron's magic trains . . . . I don't think they belong in an introductory film for D&D. Eberron is pure awesome, but it stretches what D&D is into new genre territory. After a successful series of "basic" D&D films, then I hope the franchise has enough interest to get us an Eberron movie or 10, plus perhaps some Dark Sun, Planescape, maybe even Spelljammer cinematic goodness.

No, the post I replied to simply made no sense. It was incoherent, beginning nowhere and using no reasoning to arrive at nothing.

What you describe is extremely far-fetched, and doesn’t even follow. There is no basic D&D , nor any need for a first movie to be basic anything (and indeed aiming for basic will hobble the movie), nor does the notion that any sort of “simplest form of D&D needs to be established in order to then add other parts of D&D” hold any water.

Eberron is not a weird setting, to a modern audience. It’s just fantasy. Very very very D&D fantasy.

 

[Azzy]

Mostly all in modules eg niche.

By many, you mean three. Still, that's irrelevant.

 

[Zardnaar]

By many, you mean three. Still, that's irrelevant.

Such things exist here and there. They're not really defining aspects of D&D.

 

[Don Durito]

I feel like fantasy with a modern take hasn't historically done very well in Hollywood.

Having traumatic memories of the recent Robin Hood movie and Wild Wild West.

 

[CubicsRube]

I'd be happy with recasting the plot of Baldur's gate 1.

 

[Nytmare]

He'd be pressed to explain that DC and Marvel are separate - I think he knows Superman is not in the same universe as Spider-Man, that's about it.

My mother-in-law continues to operate under the assumption that Chris Pine's character in Wonder Woman was Captain America.

 

[Nytmare]

I am hopelessly optimistic, but "hope for the best, plan for the worst" is my personal and professional mantra. I think that this project has a lot of things going against it, but there are two key elements that are huge red flags from my vantage point.

The biggest one is that finding the sweet spot between what D&D players want, and what general audiences are going to spend money on is a Sisyphean task. Hell, try to find the sweet spot of the D&D players on the last 15 pages of this thread and see what you end up with. My fear is that with the studios trying to appeal to everyone to maximize their profits, we'll end up with the typical art-by-committee-and-test-group slop that everyone will pay to see, but that no one will like.

The second is the phrase "D&D, but subversive." That makes me imagine a movie of gamer stereotypes and nerd jokes.

My assumption (and I think mostly fear) for a while has been that the magic bullet they were going to attempt would be a mashup of the old 80's cartoon, the tried and true "normal people who discover a magic world" trope, and a liberal dash of West World/Ready Player One/Tron/Dream Park. Someone makes a super popular D&D augmented reality game and it's the new football. Jocks dominate, but when the AI takes over/becomes self aware/attempts to turn the world into paperclips, the nerds are the ones who have to step up and save the day because they're the only ones who have the DMG and MM memorized.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'd be happy with recasting the plot of Baldur's gate 1.

Given that the plot of BG1 is ripped from Star Wars that could work...