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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trickster Spirit" data-source="post: 6556114" data-attributes="member: 6701829">This comes down to the timescale argument I mentioned previously. Let's say Wizards stops putting out D&D products entirely after Princes of the Apocalypse comes out. No rpg books, no board games, no video games, no Salvatore novels even.It'll have zero impact on the success or failure of a D&D movie. 21 Jump Street didn't need a network television revival in order to have a successful film made out of it, just a decent script, funny actors and brand recognition that was a holdover from the late 80s. Five years is nothing, reboots and adaptations routinely pick up properties that have been lying fallow for decades.D&D was an enormous fad from the late seventies / early eighties. It spawned the Baldur's Gate series, played by millions, and the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels, regular New York Times Best Sellers. The tabletop game could have ceased to exist after TSR collapsed in the 90's and it's eventual film reboot would still be an inevitability. The only reason it hasn't already happened is because of the cluster$#@! that was the film rights being indefinitely retained by Sweetpea. The legal case over the matter heard closing arguments last year, the outcome of the trial (or a settlement agreement between Warner Brothers / Sweetpea and Universal / Hasbro) will be determined this year.Movies take time to be made, and number of current 5E players in 2015 isn't even on the movie studios' radars, let alone what they'll be in 2017. They're not going to sit on the IP for three years just to see how 5E fares before they decide whether or not to make the movie. They'll wait for the legal issues to be resolved, take a look at 2014 sales figures if they even bother to care about those numbers, and start pre-production in 2015, for a 2017 or 2018 release.At which point they could care less about how the tabletop game does, because the movie will either be a success or a flop. If it's a success, the tabletop game is irrelevant to the film franchise, we're now in movie sequel territory where the studios are most comfortable and Hasbro will make bank on merchandising. If it bombs badly enough that there's no interest in making another, it's a dud and how well or poorly the tabletop game is faring is also irrelevant to the film franchise. The tabletop game is only relevant to the strength of the brand before the first movie gets put out, and the primary strength of the brand is that it was a really, really popular thing back in the 70's and 80's, the history of everything since, editions 3-5 included, are an afterthought. The fact that there are still younger gamers (Mearls said most players were around college age) is a point in D&D's favor that makes it attractive to the studios but a big fantasy epic that'll target the wallets of everyone who remembers hearing about "Dungeons and Dragons" back in the game's golden age is what makes it really valuable as an IP.You don't think that the 21 Jump Street movie got greenlit because executives at Columbia and MGM noticed a spike in the old series' DVD sales circa 2010, do you?</blockquote>

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