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.

 

[LordEntrails]

Which frankly just isn't how it works. Some movies are good and make money, some movies are bad and don't. Some movies are bad and make money at first because of strong marketing but are immediately forgotten, some movies are good but don't make money because of bad marketing but find audiences later on and make a lot of money over the years.

So it's all about marketing? My wife will be happy to hear that

 

[Abstruse]

So it's all about marketing? My wife will be happy to hear that

Pretty much. While its influence has dropped over the decades, for the longest time film marketing was the only consumer industry where it was consistently proven that spending on advertising directly correlated to increased sales. Like Coca-Cola can spend all the money on ads it wants but pretty much everyone who drinks sodas already knows the product exists, so any advertising isn't going to help. Everybody looking to buy a new car knows that Ford is an option and nothing that can be put into a 30 second commercial is going to sway them for getting a Ford over any other brand.

Film, however, needs to build that brand recognition from scratch immediately. It has changed over the years ("Star Wars" and "Marvel" are having the same issues because people know they exist already so marketing doesn't do a whole lot as people generally know if they want to see the new one or not), but the more that's spent on advertising for a film going back to the 1980s directly translated to higher opening box office weekends.

The other big change besides reliance on franchises to carry brand recognition is social media. Marketing was more influential because word of mouth only kicked in on the second weekend - People saw the movie on the weekend, got into work on Monday and told their colleagues whether it was good or not, and then they went to go see it or decided against seeing it the following weekend. Now, however, everyone's posting their opinions 5 minutes after the Friday matinee. So if a movie sucks, it doesn't matter how good the marketing is because people will know before they've bought a ticket to find out for themselves.

Also, studios just can NOT figure out how social media works. The biggest example was the meme for Morbius with "It's morbin time!" Sony executives saw how much that was trending and couldn't understand that people were making fun of the movie, so pushed for a second full release several weeks after it opened. And they lost a LOT of money doing it.

 

[Yaarel]

Yup. Go Castlevania route. For cost of one live action episode, you can make complete animated season.

D&D live tv show would cost some big bucks per episode just cause of pure technical stuff. Effects, costumes, props, scenography. Add to that money for actors pay and you have easily 10 mil per episode.

I never realized animations were significantly cheaper to make. What about an artistic animation, like the recent Spiderman cinema movie? Its textures are beautiful.


Its funny, as a kid, I loved all animations. But now as an adult, I am more sparing. I enjoyed the Critical Role animation, Vox Machina, also the Dragon Prince, Young Justice, and some others. I would go for a D&D animation as long as it was inclusive and adult enough.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I never realized animations were significantly cheaper to make.

Stuff like Spider-Verse isn't using most of these shortcuts, though.

 

[Yaarel]

I was referring specifically to your assessment of The Boys' writing. It has some of the best written complex characters in current genre fiction, miles better than its source material.

I have not seen any of the other shows you mentioned except RoP, which I like even if it is not Tolkien.

Titans is impressively well written.

 

[GrimCo]

Godzilla Minus One has good visuals and $15M total budget.

I'll take your word on it, didn't see it. Kaiju stuff isn't my jam.

Hollywood needs to stop taking the easy path of just throwing money at visuals. It's not necessary.

Well, stuff costs money. And people want good visuals. Sorry, i didn't fork out 2000e on 77" 4k oled tv to watch 90s level visuals. Movies are visual media. Visuals convey story as much as dialogues.

There are thousands of superb actors who don't charge Clooney money. Hollywood needs to stop depending on actor name recognition as part of their marketing budget. It's not working anymore.

Sure, but even remotely famous actors are payed six figures per episode. You could go with no names, but good luck getting budget.

And eliminate most of your potential audience.

Why do you think that? Anime is more mainstream than ever. With animation and few milion dollars, you can make one show that's more oriented to younger crow (PG-13) and one which is more for adult audience (R rated).

Exactly this. Some of the most consistently good, nuanced and believable acting I've seen has been in short-form horror movies over on YouTube and Shudder by people with like 75 credits that are all "Guy In Convenience Store #3".

Sure, there are great no name actors. But, you need at leas someone kind of famous to advertise project.

On top of that, there are plenty of name actors that will basically do any movie for like $15 and a cheeseburger at some point in their career. I mean, Nic Cage and Chris Walken were each in 85 movies a year for about 24 years straight, few of them big budget flicks.

Nic Cage is meme at this point. He was once legit solid actor. And still, Nick Cage isn't really cheap, six figs minimum.

I never realized animations were significantly cheaper to make. What about an artistic animation, like the recent Spiderman cinema movie? Its textures are beautiful.

They are. Look at credits of any block buster movie. Than look at credits of any animated movie. Amount of people that work on live action is wastley greater than on animated one. Live action one need tons more of technical staff, plus filming on locations cost money.

Its funny, as a kid, I loved all animations. But now as an adult, I am more sparing. I enjoyed the Critical Role animation, Vox Machina, also the Dragon Prince, Young Justice, and some others. I would go for a D&D animation as long as it was inclusive and adult enough.

Vox Machina, as far as animations go, isn't even that good. It's ok. From pure technical side of it. But it's fun to watch.

Someone mentioned Viva La Dirt. I love those guys. But they are parody. That kind of low level visuals can fly with parody or comedy. In serious show, it would just look cheap. We are spoiled. But GoT set the bar for production quality. It's benchmark as far as modern fantasy tv shows go.

 

[Mistwell]

I'll take your word on it, didn't see it. Kaiju stuff isn't my jam.

Well, stuff costs money. And people want good visuals. Sorry, i didn't fork out 2000e on 77" 4k oled tv to watch 90s level visuals. Movies are visual media. Visuals convey story as much as dialogues.

Again, we just had solid evidence you can have great visuals for much lower cost. It just won the Oscar for visual effects. Hollywood has gotten incredibly lazy on VFX. They throw money at the issue for mediocre results. When you actually gather a good dedicated team in-house at VFX that are creative and able to combine digital with prop technology, you get better results for far less costs. It's a story worth watching for a few minutes:

Sure, but even remotely famous actors are payed six figures per episode. You could go with no names, but good luck getting budget.

And that's the problem. What they're doing right now with name actors isn't working. It's not making that money back. They're using an old model of marketing with actor names which isn't paying off in marketing anymore.

Why do you think that? Anime is more mainstream than ever. With animation and few milion dollars, you can make one show that's more oriented to younger crow (PG-13) and one which is more for adult audience (R rated).

Because it's not selling? More mainstream than ever is saying very little, since it wasn't mainstream at all before and now it's just a blip in terms of overall popularity. I am not anti-anime and if people like it. more power to them. I certainly love Myazaki movies. But most anime gets only a fraction of the viewers needed to sustain a major property.

 

[mamba]

You are missing out on some phenomenal storytelling.

maybe, but that is ok, there is so much content I will never get around to all the good content anyway, and I am just not interested in seeing anything animated

 

[timbannock]

Again, we just had solid evidence you can have great visuals for much lower cost. It just won the Oscar for visual effects. Hollywood has gotten incredibly lazy on VFX. They throw money at the issue for mediocre results. When you actually gather a good dedicated team in-house at VFX that are creative and able to combine digital with prop technology, you get better results for far less costs. It's a story worth watching for a few minutes:


And that's the problem. What they're doing right now with name actors isn't working. It's not making that money back. They're using an old model of marketing with actor names which isn't paying off in marketing anymore.

Because it's not selling? More mainstream than ever is saying very little, since it wasn't mainstream at all before and now it's just a blip in terms of overall popularity. I am not anti-anime and if people like it. more power to them. I certainly love Myazaki movies. But most anime gets only a fraction of the viewers needed to sustain a major property.

Agree with all of this, but mostly just wanted to reply in order to say how shocked I am with how little they were working with! A team of 35 to get that degree of quality is absolutely insane. Even a mid-tier SFX-heavy American movie has easily over 3x that many people on slightly fewer total shots.

They did such a good job.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Whats the budget for a series like Daredevil or Jessica Jones? As far as live action goes, Id be quite happy with the DnD equivalent of those shows.