D&D General There’s a Baldur’s Gate TV Show Coming!

According to Deadline, there’s a TV show based on Baldur’s Gate 3 coming from US TV studio HBO and the co-creator of The Last of Us—another TV show based on a popular video game.

Craig Mazin will “create, write, executive produce and showrun” the TV adaptation. Other executive producers include Hasbro's Gabriel Marano, plus Jacqueline Lesko and Cecil O'Connor.

Chris Perkins—who used to work at WotC—will be acting as a consultant for the show.

The show will be a sequel to the video game, rather than a retelling of it (as was done with The Last of Us).

Marin said “After putting nearly 1000 hours into the incredible world of Baldur’s Gate 3, it is a dream come true to be able to continue the story that Larian and Wizards of The Coast created. I am a devoted fan of D&D and the brilliant way that Swen Vincke and his gifted team adapted it. I can’t wait to help bring Baldur’s Gate and all of its incredible characters to life with as much respect and love as we can, and I’m deeply grateful to Gabe Marano and his team at Hasbro for entrusting me with this incredibly important property.”

The show will feature both characters from Baldur’s Gate 3 and new characters.

Separately, Netflix is still producing Shawn Levy’s Forgotten Realms based TV show.

 

[charlesatan]

Craig Mazin, the eminent creator of "Scary Movie 3" and "The Last of Us?"

I think I have a quote that sums up his career; "Not great, not terrible."

The major difference there is the power dynamic writers have in movies vs TV.

In movies the director is king, while in TV, the lead writer is king.

Directors will also make all sorts of changes, while the lead writer calls those shots in TV.

And also you're comparing Mazin when he was a level 5 writer compared to when he's an level 15 writer. And they knew enough to remove their name from Borderlands.

 

[BRayne]

I actually don't have a problem with TLoU and think it's a good show and well regarded as a good video game adaptation; but I want to emphasize that while he's had some recent successes the dude has a laundry list of clunkers to his name too.

I think his involvement in Scary Movie 4 and Superhero movie is more relevant than Scary Movie 3 which from my memory was broadly fine for what it is.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

How would be HBO producing adaptations of "Birthright" or "Dark Sun"? We know BG3 has got romance scenes but... my fear is "rule 34" becoming worse because this, even action-live XXX parodies. I don't advice to show too much about that because it could hurt the brand. Hasbro wants to show this to be family-friendly.

Some times in the past I said "Ravenloft" could be the easiest option to be adapted into an action-live production.

* Any new about "Dragonlance" adaptation?

 

[charlesatan]

How would be HBO producing adaptations of "Birthright" or "Dark Sun"? We know BG3 has got romance scenes but... my fear is "rule 34" becoming worse because this, even action-live XXX parodies. I don't advice to show too much about that because it could hurt the brand. Hasbro wants to show this to be family-friendly.

Some times in the past I said "Ravenloft" could be the easiest option to be adapted into an action-live production.

* Any new about "Dragonlance" adaptation?

Hasbro was probably interested in giving HBO the rights mainly because Baldur's Gate is a household name (will all the baggage that entails) while the other settings aren't.

Having said that, any project titled Baldur's Gate is precarious due to its rabid fanbase. When Baldur's Gate 3 was announced, fans of the previous two games were up in arms because:

• It wasn't Real Time with Pause.
• It wasn't using AD&D rules.
• It wasn't continuing the story from Baldur's Gate 2.

I suspect there will be an amount of complainers about the show regardless if the material is good or not, simply because it's drastically different from Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Hasbro was probably interested in giving HBO the rights mainly because Baldur's Gate is a household name (will all the baggage that entails) while the other settings aren't.

What do you mean by:

Baldur's Gate is a household name (will all the baggage that entails)

You're implying that there is a downside to being popular. Not at all saying you're wrong, but you kind of need to explain the specifics of what you think the baggage is.

Having said that, any project titled Baldur's Gate is precarious due to its rabid fanbase. When Baldur's Gate 3 was announced, fans of the previous two games were up in arms because:

• It wasn't Real Time with Pause.
• It wasn't using AD&D rules.
• It wasn't continuing the story from Baldur's Gate 2.

I suspect there will be an amount of complainers about the show regardless if the material is good or not, simply because it's drastically different from Baldur's Gate 3.

The fraction of the anticipated target audience for this show who would care let alone know about these issues is infinitesimal. It may be that these matter to you, I don't know. But none of this will have any impact on this show once released.

 

[charlesatan]

What do you mean by:

You're implying that there is a downside to being popular. Not at all saying you're wrong, but you kind of need to explain the specifics of what you think the baggage is.

By baggage, I mean the cultural baggage it comes with, some of which I've mentioned in the bullet points.

As for the "fraction of the anticipated target audience", yes, once the hypothetical show is out, that might very well be the case, but before the show actually airs, there will be a vocal (minority???) group that will voice their displeasure. Ideally this would be ignored and let the showrunners do its thing--and succeed/fail based on those merits--but there are also times when companies (erroneously) heed the complainers and pivot (e.g. the Snyder cut).

But none of this will have any impact on this show once released.

If the show proves to be successful, you are correct this will have no impact.

If the show is a failure, it could be one of the factors.

I'm just getting ahead of the curve to say that some fans will complain that the TV show is not "faithful" to the series and will voice such criticisms regardless of the actual quality of the show.

 

[Zardnaar]

By baggage, I mean the cultural baggage it comes with, some of which I've mentioned in the bullet points.

As for the "fraction of the anticipated target audience", yes, once the hypothetical show is out, that might very well be the case, but before the show actually airs, there will be a vocal (minority???) group that will voice their displeasure. Ideally this would be ignored and let the showrunners do its thing--and succeed/fail based on those merits--but there are also times when companies (erroneously) heed the complainers and pivot (e.g. the Snyder cut).



If the show proves to be successful, you are correct this will have no impact.

If the show is a failure, it could be one of the factors.

I'm just getting ahead of the curve to say that some fans will complain that the TV show is not "faithful" to the series and will voice such criticisms regardless of the actual quality of the show.

If the tone is like the movie its not to faithful to the game.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

By baggage, I mean the cultural baggage it comes with, some of which I've mentioned in the bullet points.

Some good points! But you still have not at all explained what you mean by baggage though, except to expand your statement from 'baggage' to 'cultural baggage'. What do you mean by cultural baggage? The only bullet points in your post are about BG 1/2 features... nothing resembling cultural baggage.

 

[charlesatan]

Some good points! But you still have not at all explained what you mean by baggage though, except to expand your statement from 'baggage' to 'cultural baggage'. What do you mean by cultural baggage? The only bullet points in your post are about BG 1/2 features... nothing resembling cultural baggage.

I think when you mention Baldur's Gate, various people will have various interpretation of what that means. (If I'm being vague, it's because of this. There's too much to cite.)

I'll give you one example: For some people, that means divorcing Baldur's Gate from D&D altogether and exclusively reliant on lore mentioned in the video game (in this case, Baldur's Gate 3).

Another example: the comment above stated: "If the tone is like the movie its not to faithful to the game." That's another potential baggage/cultural baggage.

Here's a third example: when Baldur's Gate 3 was initially announced, some found it to be not sequel-worthy because of its absence of Bhaalspawn, or post-release, how it fucks up some of the endings of the original Baldur's Gate characters (even if their endings in Baldur's Gate 2 was always a player choice--they could have ended up with a good/neutral/bad ending). Fans of the game might even say "there aren't any Mindflayers in the TV series so it doesn't count".

Suffice to say, there will be all sorts of reasons that people will make as an excuse that "this detail is not Baldur's Gate" even if it's a detail that might be relevant to D&D, the Forgotten Realms, or a reasonable conclusion to events that transpire after the game.

* I also want to qualify that when I say cultural baggage, I don't mean real human cultures, but more of the fandom culture associated with the games. Fans of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 have a different culture compared to fans of Baldur's Gate 3 in terms of their expectations, as an example.

 

[dbm]

"On tilt" is a poker term I first encountered in FPSes. It means to be emotionally upset.

It comes from pinball machines. If you tried to cheat by lifting the machine they went into ‘tilt’ mode.