Darth Shoju
First Post
Scott_Rouse said:
Yeah he's my choice too. Ever since I saw him in Brotherhood of the Wolf I've thought "that guy is Drizzt."
Pitch me your ulitmate D&D movie
- Thread starter Scott_Rouse
- Start date
Yeah he's my choice too. Ever since I saw him in Brotherhood of the Wolf I've thought "that guy is Drizzt."
Glyfair
Explorer
RangerWickett said:
Because if it's a modern soundtrack, then the story won't be taken "seriously." It will be looked at as a humor movie.
You can have a good fantasy movie that doesn't take itself too seriously (see "A Knight's Tale"), but that's not what most D&D fans want. In fact, some D&D fans wouldn't even be enjoyed a good humorous movie, simply because they take their games seriously and expect the movie to take it as seriously.
I wouldn't mind a more non-serious fantasy movie. However, I think if you want to establish a brand and have them continue, then you need a more serious treatment (which can have humor, ala classic James Bond).
Then again, I think a movie is the wrong way to go. I think it should start with an enjoyable TV series. As others have said, D&D is episodic, and TV series do that better than movies.
Upper_Krust
Legend
I got your D&D movie right here...
Hey all!
...okay, its called Tomb of Horrors.
I have the details on my website.
www.immortalshandbook.com/shrine3.htm
Hey all!
...okay, its called Tomb of Horrors.
I have the details on my website.
www.immortalshandbook.com/shrine3.htm
ivocaliban
Explorer
Glyfair said:
I can't even make it past the Queen's "We Will Rock You" at the opening of A Knight's Tale. Nothing turns me off faster than a film with a soundtrack that sounds false or forced into place. Think of how much better the film Ladyhawke would be if it wasn't buried under the Alan Parson Project's spacey synthesized score, for instance. The images and the music don't blend, they stand at odds with each other. Not in some thought-provoking philosophical way...they simply don't work together to make the film into a cohesive whole.
Why do I not want to hear modern music in a period film (even a fantasy period film)? For the same reason I wouldn't want to hear Toby Keith* in Letters from Iwo Jima or Lamb of God* in a Pixar film. For me, it's the equivalent of putting mustard on a banana split. The flavors are simply incompatible.
*These artists were chosen at random and in no way reflect the opinions or tastes of the author.
RangerWickett
Legend
I suppose you didn't like Samurai Champloo (rap and hip-hop with samurais) or Cowboy Bebop (funk and blues with sci-fi). My perspective here is that action movies often have rock soundtracks, and D&D is definitely in the action genre.
I would be interested in the results of a poll, but how to word it precisely?
I would be interested in the results of a poll, but how to word it precisely?
Arrgh! Mark!
First Post
On the music issue:
It kind of depends. I love Cowboy Bebop because the music is extremely well done for the mood and fight choreography that goes into it.
A fantasy movie on the other hand, if it is to be done well should have music that emphasizes its mood and doesn't take it away. Sci-fi doesn't need a particular long, stretched out synthesized score but I think some forms of sci-fi might; Blade Runner (the movie) would have been a whole lot different with punk rock, and would of been made almost ludicrous if it had pop.
Music emphasizes the particular mood, but can create a dissonance if the music and the plot seperate too rapidly.
Conan the Barbarian had a pretty cool soundtrack that if you listen to it emphasizes hope, isolation, strength and so on - exactly the same as the actual movie. In one particular scene, the creepy music builds to a fever pitch as they creep through the temple, only to be changed into a very light and surreal tune as they check out the slave girl harem thing.
What modern music would do to a traditional fantasy movie would be to break the fourth wall - it actively demolishes the belief that the characters are real by creating a dissonance. This basically lets you get away with a comedic plot, but actively stops you from being suckered in and thinking the characters are real. LOTR would have died if it had modern music, IMO.
And generally, the goal of any fantasy is to create and let you fully experience the fantasy - fantasy books will very rarely have self-referential jokes in them. Breaking that fundamental fantasy idea is probably a bad idea if you want to create a good fantasy story. If you want to create a comedy, go right ahead. If you want to create an Eberron story, you want darkish music with creepy moments and high adventure.. and girls singing in nightclubs to jazz bands. A traditional fantasy music score would suck in that place.
It kind of depends. I love Cowboy Bebop because the music is extremely well done for the mood and fight choreography that goes into it.
A fantasy movie on the other hand, if it is to be done well should have music that emphasizes its mood and doesn't take it away. Sci-fi doesn't need a particular long, stretched out synthesized score but I think some forms of sci-fi might; Blade Runner (the movie) would have been a whole lot different with punk rock, and would of been made almost ludicrous if it had pop.
Music emphasizes the particular mood, but can create a dissonance if the music and the plot seperate too rapidly.
Conan the Barbarian had a pretty cool soundtrack that if you listen to it emphasizes hope, isolation, strength and so on - exactly the same as the actual movie. In one particular scene, the creepy music builds to a fever pitch as they creep through the temple, only to be changed into a very light and surreal tune as they check out the slave girl harem thing.
What modern music would do to a traditional fantasy movie would be to break the fourth wall - it actively demolishes the belief that the characters are real by creating a dissonance. This basically lets you get away with a comedic plot, but actively stops you from being suckered in and thinking the characters are real. LOTR would have died if it had modern music, IMO.
And generally, the goal of any fantasy is to create and let you fully experience the fantasy - fantasy books will very rarely have self-referential jokes in them. Breaking that fundamental fantasy idea is probably a bad idea if you want to create a good fantasy story. If you want to create a comedy, go right ahead. If you want to create an Eberron story, you want darkish music with creepy moments and high adventure.. and girls singing in nightclubs to jazz bands. A traditional fantasy music score would suck in that place.
Last edited:
Catavarie
First Post
Scott_Rouse said:
Star Wars Episode IV, V, & VI redone with D&D backdrop, hell you could even keep the script just replacing the techno-bable with steam punk/fantasy bable, and changing the names. Otherwise there you have a known winner.
As for director go with either George Lucas or Kevin Smith
Writer: Anyone that didn't work on Star Wars Episode I, II, or III
Cast: Anyone with serious acting chops and low ego, and a bit of the hippity dippity grass wouldn't hurt
Format: Live Action
Producer: Speilberg
Effects: ILM
Studio: Which ever one wants to throw the most money at it esspecially for marketing and hell with speilberg and lucas on board the stuidos would be seriously fighting for it
Budget: What ever it takes to do it right.
Projected sales: People will go see it just because it has Speilberg and Lucas's names on it.
mhacdebhandia
Explorer
Director/Writer: Lawrence Kasdan, writer of The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi, and writer-director of The Big Chill and Silverado. The man knows how to write a rollicking action-adventure story and how to write and direct an ensemble piece, which is exactly what you need for a true D&D movie. He's still working, but he wouldn't be as expensive as some of the big-name directors being touted in this thread.
Storyline: I would definitely adapt Keith Baker's Dreaming Dark novels. Because The City of Towers is set entirely within Sharn (with only occasional flashbacks and dream sequences set elsewhere), you save on production costs and can benefit from a spectacular but relatively inexpensive setting - impossibly-tall stone towers being a lot easier to CGI into the background than expansive outdoor vistas.
The City of Towers also features an absolutely classic D&D creature as its villain (the identity of which is kind of a spoiler), which is great from the point of view of making the film uniquely D&D without badly shoehorning it in like they did the beholder in Courtney Solomon's flick.
If the film were a success, you can increase the budget and move to much more exotic locations for the second novel, The Shattered Land, which largely takes place in Xen'drik, and the third, The Gates of Night, which largely takes place in Thelanis and Dal Quor.
Cast
Daine: Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Slither), if he doesn't mind growing a stubbly beard and abandoning his normal floppy hairstyle - and reprising the "disillusioned veteran without a country" role. He can play both comedy and drama very well, and has a solid screen presence without looking like a muscleman.
Lei: Rose Byrne (Troy, 28 Weeks Later, Sunshine). Beautiful, but not implausibly so; she doesn't come across as delicate or vapid on screen, which is necessary for an adventurer. The only thing you need to do is give her red hair, which is not exactly difficult.
Pierce: CGI-over-live-performance, a la Gollum. The thing I would avoid is giving him a voice which is too deep, because it doesn't suit the character to sound like URL from Futurama, Optimus Prime, or Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I would hire a professional voice actor such as Billy West, Frank Welker, or Phil Lamarr (all from Futurama, among many others) to create the vocal character, and a professional physical performer for the body (rather than hope for a combination of both like Andy Serkis).
Format: Live-action. For one thing, I would love to see a D&D story done properly as an action-adventure piece with a solid cast, and for another . . .
I'm not really a fan of animated movies, whether it be traditional Western cartoons, Pixar-style CGI, or anime. There's absolutely no reason why you can't make The City of Towers and its sequels as live-action films, and the story wouldn't work as well animated because you'd lose the true gravitas of several elements (Daine's painful war memories and Daine and Lei's mutual attraction, to name two).
There's also absolutely no way an animated version of Sharn could ever look as impressive as a CGI version which has to fit in with live action.
Producer: Francis Ford Coppola. He understands "genre" movies, having produced Sleepy Hollow and directed Bram Stoker's Dracula. He understands war stories and the trauma of veteran soldiers, having directed and produced Apocalypse Now and Gardens of Stone. He knows how to adapt a story to the screen, as we see in The Godfather which takes an indifferent novel and cuts it down to the excellent setpieces, so he'd be able to make sure the film gets at the heart of the action.
He also, presumably, knows Lawrence Kasdan through George Lucas.
Effects house: I don't think you need or want a big name like Industrial Light & Magic or WETA Workshop. WETA has never done an urban setting (the cities in The Lord of the Rings are nothing like Sharn), and while ILM is the best digital effects studio in the world it would cut down on the budget to use someone who's not right at the cutting edge.
I would use Zoic Studios - Firefly, Spider-Man 2, Serenity, and Battlestar Galactica. They're exceptionally good - and their CGI shaky-cam would be good fight scenes! - but nowhere near as expensive as ILM.
If I could swing it, I'd have Wayne Reynolds submit character designs to use as templates, especially when it comes to the warforged and monsters in the storyline. At the very least, require the studio to use actual Eberron artwork for reference.
Studio: TriStar. For one thing, they use a pegasus on their logo. For another, they specialise in "genre" films now, theoretically (The Mask of Zorro, Silent Hill, and its forthcoming sequel are TriStar pictures). For a third, they've got Columbia and Sony Pictures behind them.
Budget: $35 million. You don't need as much CGI or as large a cast as Serenity ($39m) but you need better-quality creatures and a more ambitious goal than, say, Slither ($29.5m), to stick with Nathan Fillion's resume.
Since The Lord of the Rings, the closest thing to a D&D film has been Eragon which grossed $75m in the U.S. and a total of $249m worldwide. Lacking the fanbase of Christopher Paolini's novel but adding in the recognition of the D&D and Eberron brands, I would project that a good film based on The City of Towers could gross $45m in the US and at least $120m worldwide.
A point on the branding: I'm not sure how you would work it out, but I'm thinking that you'd want Dungeons & Dragons to be part of the title but not in an obtrusive way. Think the reverse of the way The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was heavily promoted as a Narnia film (it's the biggest word on the poster by an enormous amount, for instance).
You'd want the D&D logo right there above the title - I'd suggest using the same D&D logo as on the books - but place the marketing emphasis on the title The City of Towers, or even Eberron: The City of Towers. In fact, you don't need the name D&D to be part of the actual title as long as it's always part of the logo and branding.
Anyway, there's my idea. PM me, Scott, if you think it'd work!
Storyline: I would definitely adapt Keith Baker's Dreaming Dark novels. Because The City of Towers is set entirely within Sharn (with only occasional flashbacks and dream sequences set elsewhere), you save on production costs and can benefit from a spectacular but relatively inexpensive setting - impossibly-tall stone towers being a lot easier to CGI into the background than expansive outdoor vistas.
The City of Towers also features an absolutely classic D&D creature as its villain (the identity of which is kind of a spoiler), which is great from the point of view of making the film uniquely D&D without badly shoehorning it in like they did the beholder in Courtney Solomon's flick.
If the film were a success, you can increase the budget and move to much more exotic locations for the second novel, The Shattered Land, which largely takes place in Xen'drik, and the third, The Gates of Night, which largely takes place in Thelanis and Dal Quor.
Cast
Daine: Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Slither), if he doesn't mind growing a stubbly beard and abandoning his normal floppy hairstyle - and reprising the "disillusioned veteran without a country" role. He can play both comedy and drama very well, and has a solid screen presence without looking like a muscleman.
Lei: Rose Byrne (Troy, 28 Weeks Later, Sunshine). Beautiful, but not implausibly so; she doesn't come across as delicate or vapid on screen, which is necessary for an adventurer. The only thing you need to do is give her red hair, which is not exactly difficult.
Pierce: CGI-over-live-performance, a la Gollum. The thing I would avoid is giving him a voice which is too deep, because it doesn't suit the character to sound like URL from Futurama, Optimus Prime, or Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I would hire a professional voice actor such as Billy West, Frank Welker, or Phil Lamarr (all from Futurama, among many others) to create the vocal character, and a professional physical performer for the body (rather than hope for a combination of both like Andy Serkis).
Format: Live-action. For one thing, I would love to see a D&D story done properly as an action-adventure piece with a solid cast, and for another . . .
I'm not really a fan of animated movies, whether it be traditional Western cartoons, Pixar-style CGI, or anime. There's absolutely no reason why you can't make The City of Towers and its sequels as live-action films, and the story wouldn't work as well animated because you'd lose the true gravitas of several elements (Daine's painful war memories and Daine and Lei's mutual attraction, to name two).
There's also absolutely no way an animated version of Sharn could ever look as impressive as a CGI version which has to fit in with live action.
Producer: Francis Ford Coppola. He understands "genre" movies, having produced Sleepy Hollow and directed Bram Stoker's Dracula. He understands war stories and the trauma of veteran soldiers, having directed and produced Apocalypse Now and Gardens of Stone. He knows how to adapt a story to the screen, as we see in The Godfather which takes an indifferent novel and cuts it down to the excellent setpieces, so he'd be able to make sure the film gets at the heart of the action.
He also, presumably, knows Lawrence Kasdan through George Lucas.
Effects house: I don't think you need or want a big name like Industrial Light & Magic or WETA Workshop. WETA has never done an urban setting (the cities in The Lord of the Rings are nothing like Sharn), and while ILM is the best digital effects studio in the world it would cut down on the budget to use someone who's not right at the cutting edge.
I would use Zoic Studios - Firefly, Spider-Man 2, Serenity, and Battlestar Galactica. They're exceptionally good - and their CGI shaky-cam would be good fight scenes! - but nowhere near as expensive as ILM.
If I could swing it, I'd have Wayne Reynolds submit character designs to use as templates, especially when it comes to the warforged and monsters in the storyline. At the very least, require the studio to use actual Eberron artwork for reference.
Studio: TriStar. For one thing, they use a pegasus on their logo. For another, they specialise in "genre" films now, theoretically (The Mask of Zorro, Silent Hill, and its forthcoming sequel are TriStar pictures). For a third, they've got Columbia and Sony Pictures behind them.
Budget: $35 million. You don't need as much CGI or as large a cast as Serenity ($39m) but you need better-quality creatures and a more ambitious goal than, say, Slither ($29.5m), to stick with Nathan Fillion's resume.
Since The Lord of the Rings, the closest thing to a D&D film has been Eragon which grossed $75m in the U.S. and a total of $249m worldwide. Lacking the fanbase of Christopher Paolini's novel but adding in the recognition of the D&D and Eberron brands, I would project that a good film based on The City of Towers could gross $45m in the US and at least $120m worldwide.
A point on the branding: I'm not sure how you would work it out, but I'm thinking that you'd want Dungeons & Dragons to be part of the title but not in an obtrusive way. Think the reverse of the way The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was heavily promoted as a Narnia film (it's the biggest word on the poster by an enormous amount, for instance).
You'd want the D&D logo right there above the title - I'd suggest using the same D&D logo as on the books - but place the marketing emphasis on the title The City of Towers, or even Eberron: The City of Towers. In fact, you don't need the name D&D to be part of the actual title as long as it's always part of the logo and branding.
Anyway, there's my idea. PM me, Scott, if you think it'd work!
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
Don't have a pitch as such (I'm not much of an author) but do have a few relevant comments.
Agreed that any "D&D" movie should not be branded "D&D" so much as identified with a specific character, characters, or world setting. I strenuously suggest it not be any currently published world just for the sake of oniline sanity. Pick Eberron over Dragonlance, or Dragonlance over Greyhawk, etc. and THERE WILL NEVER BE AN END TO THE BITCHING. Pick actor 'A' for a part over actor 'B' and you get much the same result. When some production team proves they can get it right AT ALL - then and only then would you really want to risk the internet bitchfest prompted by attempting the definitive Dragonlance adaptation, or whatever. Other than that limited concern, the setting is largely not a great concern.
What is of great concern is the writing. This cannot be stressed enough. Why this should need mention at all is unfathomable to me, but with movies like [must... say... it...] Dungeons & Dragons, or Eragon those projects should have been aborted long before they got to production after just ONE person read the scripts. When I can walk out of a movie convinced that _I_ can write better scripts then someone way back at the greenlight stage has committed an unforgivable crime. While it's not a guarantee of success it is a VASTLY better place to start. It's so much more difficult to make crap out of a good script (with wooden perfomances, inept editing, and bad effects), than to make a good movie out of a crap script (by a fine actor going wasted, editing being unable to plug plot holes and fix bad pacing, or stellar CGI having nothing to do but try to distract from a dead story with pretty pictures).
Any pitch must not rely upon anything like a "built-in" fanbase. As any sane WotC greenlight authority will be aware, not only are RPG's a seriously minor market segment they are abnormally critical of entertainment that does not meet their personal standards or expectations. For example, any pitch that even hints that Dragonlance fans will attend in droves smacks of delusion and should be tossed out. Your audience is NEVER going to be Dragonlance fans and you should abandon all hope of actually pleasing them. Your audience is going to be those who don't know what the hell Dragonlance is at all - which is the staggering majority of potential moviegoers. Weed out the true believers at the start. It will be your only hope for financial success.
Ignore franchise potential. Accept no pitch that may in ANY way require a later film to "complete" it. Let EACH pitch stand on its own merits as a one-and-only film and I think you'll actually be more likely to see it succeed. Success alone is what breeds the opportunity for good sequels and building a franchise.
JMHO
Agreed that any "D&D" movie should not be branded "D&D" so much as identified with a specific character, characters, or world setting. I strenuously suggest it not be any currently published world just for the sake of oniline sanity. Pick Eberron over Dragonlance, or Dragonlance over Greyhawk, etc. and THERE WILL NEVER BE AN END TO THE BITCHING. Pick actor 'A' for a part over actor 'B' and you get much the same result. When some production team proves they can get it right AT ALL - then and only then would you really want to risk the internet bitchfest prompted by attempting the definitive Dragonlance adaptation, or whatever. Other than that limited concern, the setting is largely not a great concern.
What is of great concern is the writing. This cannot be stressed enough. Why this should need mention at all is unfathomable to me, but with movies like [must... say... it...] Dungeons & Dragons, or Eragon those projects should have been aborted long before they got to production after just ONE person read the scripts. When I can walk out of a movie convinced that _I_ can write better scripts then someone way back at the greenlight stage has committed an unforgivable crime. While it's not a guarantee of success it is a VASTLY better place to start. It's so much more difficult to make crap out of a good script (with wooden perfomances, inept editing, and bad effects), than to make a good movie out of a crap script (by a fine actor going wasted, editing being unable to plug plot holes and fix bad pacing, or stellar CGI having nothing to do but try to distract from a dead story with pretty pictures).
Any pitch must not rely upon anything like a "built-in" fanbase. As any sane WotC greenlight authority will be aware, not only are RPG's a seriously minor market segment they are abnormally critical of entertainment that does not meet their personal standards or expectations. For example, any pitch that even hints that Dragonlance fans will attend in droves smacks of delusion and should be tossed out. Your audience is NEVER going to be Dragonlance fans and you should abandon all hope of actually pleasing them. Your audience is going to be those who don't know what the hell Dragonlance is at all - which is the staggering majority of potential moviegoers. Weed out the true believers at the start. It will be your only hope for financial success.
Ignore franchise potential. Accept no pitch that may in ANY way require a later film to "complete" it. Let EACH pitch stand on its own merits as a one-and-only film and I think you'll actually be more likely to see it succeed. Success alone is what breeds the opportunity for good sequels and building a franchise.
JMHO
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