D&D Movie/TV Paramount+ Will Not Proceed with Dungeons & Dragons Live-Action TV Show

Deadline reports that the live-action Dungeons & Dragons television series will not continue at Paramount+. The show was originally announced in January 2023 as Paramount+ placed an eight episode straight-to-series order. Normally that’s the best you can hope for in terms of a guarantee of the show happening as the show would produce the entire first season instead of needing to make a pilot to be approved.

Two big corporate changes happened since then, however. First, Hasbro sold the show’s co-producer Entertainment One to Lionsgate in December 2023 and shifted the production to Hasbro Entertainment. Currently, Paramount is searching for a buyer for the company with the current front runner according to reports being Sony Pictures, who have partnered with private equity firms to place a rumored $26 billion offer for the studio.

Little was announced about the plot other than it would be character-focused and involve the Underdark. These tidbits plus the fact that the character of Xenk from the 2023 film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was originally intended to be Drizzt Do'Urden but changed during pre-production led to speculation that the series would be an adaptation of the Drizzt novels, particularly the origin story novel Homeland.

Creator Rawson Marshall Thurber (Red Notice, Easy A, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) and showrunner Drew Crevello (The Grudge 2, WeCrashed) are still attached to the project. Hasbro will repackage and update the pitch for the show and stop it around to other distributors.

 

[Stormonu]

You woukld need to film it in NZ. And it's already seen as a knock off of LotR.

Yeah, and game of thrones is just a knock off of Tolkien too.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, and game of thrones is just a knock off of Tolkien too.

Not really as it follows completely different style.

Group of heroes lead by elven blod wander off on quest involving a McGuffin. There's a Dwarf as well.

It's not to different from Sword of Shannara which it's more or less contemporary with.

You read it now it's aged kinda poorly espicially compared with GoT.

It had aged badly in the early 90s when I read it relative to other contemporary authors (David Gemmel, Raymond E Feist, Mercedes Lackey, Katherine Kerr, even Eddings and he has aged badly as well).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, and game of thrones is just a knock off of Tolkien too.

It really isn't. That's not even arguable. It doesn't follow a similar structure, feature similar characters, use similar themes, nor is it derivative of Tolkien's work except in the sense Tolkien essentially created the modern fantasy genre by making world-building cool (GRRM has talked about this a fair bit).

Whereas the Shannara books are absolutely a Tolkien rip-off, and even in an interesting way. Specifically (as discussed in the excellent BBC series The Worlds of Fantasy), when LotR came out, many people couldn't/didn't process it as fantasy (a genre they were unfamiliar with for the most part), but as science-fiction, and specifically a common "fan theory" (in the long pre-internet days) was that LotR was distantly post-apocalyptic. Shannara takes that literally - it was written after that idea was debunked by Tolkien - but is basically a "what if you did do a distantly post-apocalyptic LotR?". It is extremely derivative though, essentially "extruded fantasy product" (again, a term from the same documentary).

 

[Stormonu]

Not really as it follows completely different style.

Group of heroes lead by elven blod wander off on quest involving a McGuffin. There's a Dwarf as well.

It's not to different from Sword of Shannara which it's more or less contemporary with.

You read it now it's aged kinda poorly espicially compared with GoT.

It had aged badly in the early 90s when I read it relative to other contemporary authors (David Gemmel, Raymond E Feist, Mercedes Lackey, Katherine Kerr, even Eddings and he has aged badly as well).

All I can say is I completely disagree.

 

[Zardnaar]

All I can say is I completely disagree.

Have you read other fantasy that was contemporary with D&D novels? Or reread them now?

Around the time period Drizzt and they were making Dragonlance Feist turned in the Empire Trilogy with Janny Wurts.

I read the War of the Lance 1993 aged 14 or 15. Even then it was dated.

I tried rereading it not to long ago bought the anthology. Mein gott its bad couldn't even finish it.

Public at large would view it as a lotr knock off. Even ignoring some of the issues other have Tasselhof onscreen would just aggravate the audience. He would he the new Jar Jar Binks if depicted accurately. Flints a walking stereotype, Sturms a jackass and Kitiara is your sex kitten bad girl.

If I was American it's 50/50 I would shoot the TV. And I kinda liked it. Aged 15. If you want to kill D&D as a movie or TV franchise do a somewhat faithful adaption of Dragonlance.

 

[Mecheon]

LotR knock off isn't the only thing. They'd probably also go "This is just a worse Warcraft" after a point as well

The time for a Dragonlance live action was decades ago. It doesn't have the impact now it did then and would probably sink as much as Disney's attempt at John Carter.

 

[Parmandur]

It really isn't. That's not even arguable. It doesn't follow a similar structure, feature similar characters, use similar themes, nor is it derivative of Tolkien's work except in the sense Tolkien essentially created the modern fantasy genre by making world-building cool (GRRM has talked about this a fair bit).

Whereas the Shannara books are absolutely a Tolkien rip-off, and even in an interesting way. Specifically (as discussed in the excellent BBC series The Worlds of Fantasy), when LotR came out, many people couldn't/didn't process it as fantasy (a genre they were unfamiliar with for the most part), but as science-fiction, and specifically a common "fan theory" (in the long pre-internet days) was that LotR was distantly post-apocalyptic. Shannara takes that literally - it was written after that idea was debunked by Tolkien - but is basically a "what if you did do a distantly post-apocalyptic LotR?". It is extremely derivative though, essentially "extruded fantasy product" (again, a term from the same documentary).

Man, Shannara made me angry only the way a 13 year old who spends too much time reading can get angry. First book I didn't finish.

Though I really enjoyed Terry Brooks autobiography, interesting personality. Also made it understandable to me that what he did as a young lawyer writing novels as a hobby was just to take a book he liked, deconstruct it and rewrite it to see how it worked. Ao he did the same thing to Lord of the Rings when he read it, and got published.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Man, Shannara made me angry only the way a 13 year old who spends too much time reading can get angry. First book I didn't finish.

High five brother! Very similar experience.

Shannara is the dubious honour of being the first book that I ever just straight-up physically abandoned. I'd stopped reading books before, but never left one to its fate.

I was also in my early-mid teens, at airport in the US, and I was just like "Nah, I've had enough of this rubbish" - I dunno if I'd just finished it, or if I was just quite late on in the first book, but I put the book down on a bench in the airport, and I just walked away. And I didn't even think about it again until after I'd got back to the UK, weeks later.

It wasn't the first book I physically hurled away though - that'd be Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind, which is a reprehensible book on a wide variety of levels, but particularly offended me by it's grotesque and almost worse clumsy and obvious sexualization and fetishization of torture and even murder, in a way I felt, even as a teenager with limited familiarity with such subjects, was insulting to people actually into BDSM, and just insulting to humanity in general. This was together with stuff like using the abuse of children (in exactly the way you think) as like a truly unnecessary plot point to try and make a bad guy seem more bad, and just a whole lot of just bad writing of the most basic "male power fantasy" kind. I had, I must admit, bought it purely because it had a great cover and high production values, and back in 1994, that usually meant a fantasy was successful and well-regarded at least. Or so I thought! Hah! Idiot!

I finished it, because I wanted to see if this was all going to be rescued at the last minute. It was not. Indeed Goodkind managed to make it worse. It was summer or warm autumn. I was on the third floor our house, with the back window open, and from my bed, I just absolutely hurled it. Luckily it hit the wall right by the window, because it was quite hefty and someone might have been out there! Anyway I then just put it in the bin.

So now I don't buy fantasy novels from anyone called Terry.

 

[Parmandur]

High five brother! Very similar experience.

Shannara is the dubious honour of being the first book that I ever just straight-up physically abandoned. I'd stopped reading books before, but never left one to its fate.

I was also in my early-mid teens, at airport in the US, and I was just like "Nah, I've had enough of this rubbish" - I dunno if I'd just finished it, or if I was just quite late on in the first book, but I put the book down on a bench in the airport, and I just walked away. And I didn't even think about it again until after I'd got back to the UK, weeks later.

It wasn't the first book I physically hurled away though - that'd be Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind, which is a reprehensible book on a wide variety of levels, but particularly offended me by it's grotesque and almost worse clumsy and obvious sexualization and fetishization of torture and even murder, in a way I felt, even as a teenager with limited familiarity with such subjects, was insulting to people actually into BDSM, and just insulting to humanity in general. This was together with stuff like using the abuse of children (in exactly the way you think) as like a truly unnecessary plot point to try and make a bad guy seem more bad, and just a whole lot of just bad writing of the most basic "male power fantasy" kind. I had, I must admit, bought it purely because it had a great cover and high production values, and back in 1994, that usually meant a fantasy was successful and well-regarded at least. Or so I thought! Hah! Idiot!

I finished it, because I wanted to see if this was all going to be rescued at the last minute. It was not. Indeed Goodkind managed to make it worse. It was summer or warm autumn. I was on the third floor our house, with the back window open, and from my bed, I just absolutely hurled it. Luckily it hit the wall right by the window, because it was quite hefty and someone might have been out there! Anyway I then just put it in the bin.

So now I don't buy fantasy novels from anyone called Terry.

Brooks is mid and Goodkind is outright awful and grotesque (probably the most obhextionable views on anything of any writer I have ever read, and frankly I am hard to offend pokitically), but surely Pratchett can redeem the Terrys!

Sadly I was able to muddle my way through Goodkind, with increasing horror (at least I git them from the library, I guess?). You chose well.

I am surprised that Sword of Shannara didn't get a glossy big screen treatment in the Suggts, frankly, I think it could've been improved by a director looking to imitate Peter Jackson.

 

[Parmandur]

Let it be noted that I am sticking with "obhextionable" to describe the work of Terry Goodkind, for they are at once questionable, objectionable, and cursed.