D&D Movie/TV Update on D&D TV Show -- Underdark, Small, 6-10 Episodes

Writer Derek Kolstad (John Wick) has shared an insight into the upcoming D&D TV show with Collider, which he says will be 6-10 serialized episodes with an Underdark element.

His approach is a "tinier sliver" of the world, compared to epic stories like Lord of the Rings. He compares it to Star Wars and Jaws. He mentioned that he's like to go "deeper and deeper into the Underdark".

"In the first Star Wars, you heard about Jabba the Hutt and you don't see him until the third one because you earn at that point, and whatever the budget was for the third one compared to the first one, who cares, right? And I think in Dungeons and Dragons, who has this massive, dedicated community of acolytes, I don't want to suddenly throw everything on screen and say, 'Here's the buffet.' You'd much rather keep the story intimate. When you think of our favorite movies, I'd rather do the First Blood version. It's a guy in the woods being hunted. And it's very small, but you allude to the other things through conversation."

As yet the show is untitled. Kolstad talked a bit about legal meetings and available characters for use. It sounds like he wants to set it towards the end of any 'metaplot' that D&D might have -- "... don't want to go in the middle of the mythos. I want to come near the end where everything is canonical, it's biblical, it's happened. Or, it's about to happen. That way you can revisit certain sequences and storylines that everyone loved in the past through flashback, but where we go is new"

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Most of that can be dealt with by using raised / dropped floors on the sets,

You have just doubled the cost of the set.

and just making sure the camera doesn't show them.

And crimped your camera angles.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

there are a number of important diminutive characters in the LOTR movies,

This is the key thing. If you only have one major dwarf character you could cast a short actor. And there is that thing that hasn't really been done yet: female dwarfs.

The other thing with LOTOR/Hobbit is that for many scenes you only have your short characters on screen.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Tom Cruise.

 

[ART!]

You have just doubled the cost of the set.

And crimped your camera angles.

Only for a fraction of your shots, though, and often those special shots are more dynamic, so it might be win-win.

As for sets, a lot of that just requires plopping down some boxes for the taller characters, or plopping down little raised walkways for walking shots.

 

[MarkB]

You have just doubled the cost of the set.

And crimped your camera angles.

Any way you do it will involve some higher costs. An increased (not doubled) initial outlay for the sets may be worth paying if the results are good. It's certainly not "too expensive for TV".

Look at WandaVision. Every single shot that involves Vision not in disguise is a CGI shot because much of his head and costume doesn't physically exist. And they had to completely break down and re-build the set for each new era the show progressed through. Still not too expensive for TV.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Look at WandaVision. Every single shot that involves Vision not in disguise is a CGI shot because much of his head and costume doesn't physically exist. And they had to completely break down and re-build the set for each new era the show progressed through. Still not too expensive for TV.

Pretty sure this show will have a budget that is a tiny fraction of that of WandaVision.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Obviously I meant campaigns we have all played in, FR products, modules, books, etc. LOL

Only time that I've ever used the Underdark in 35 years of D&D is when I ran Out of the Abyss. I found it quite interesting to my surprise (my attitude toward it before that was similar to yours, I presume, generally eye-rolling.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Pretty sure this show will have a budget that is a tiny fraction of that of WandaVision.

I very much doubt that, given that it will necessarily be a fairly CGI-heavy show.

WandaVision's likely budget was in the $100-200m range (I can go into details if you want - my personal estimate is probably around $152m given the actual length of the episodes and so on), which is pretty typical for shows of this kind (and compares favourably to movies about similar subjects, in terms of $ per runtime). For example, Netflix's Altered Carbon was $150m for S1 (S2 unknown but I bet it was a lot less because it looked cheap and made excessive re-use of sets despite being on another planet), and CBS' Star Trek Discovery is somewhere north of $100m per season. Most Amazon Prime originals have a budget of $9-10m/episode so are in a similar ballpark (The Boys, High Castle were both $10m/episode). Mandalorian was $15m/episode (and er... it doesn't consistently look like it, sadly... imho anyway), GoT was similar ($15m-ish per ep). Amazon's LotR show allegedly is looking at a budget of $1bn+ over 5 seasons, so probably about $200m/season, which is really not that much more than one might expect. Indeed it might be a little low. I could go on and on, but realistically you're not making a show like this for less than $10m/episode unless you're willing to have production values so low that they'll be noticeably bad to casual viewers.

Kolstad hasn't announced a network yet, but it's hardly material. I mean, it might not get made - but if it does get made, the odds are very good that it'll be looking at $10m/episode or more - assuming it's on a either a streaming platform or a major US network. They're all in the same ballpark.

Now maybe for you "a small fraction" is "2/3rds" or something or "1/2", and in that case it's mere semantics, but for me "a small fraction would usually mean 1/5th or less and you'd be really stretching the term to get to say 1/3rd. I would suspect this show, if it gets made, is looking at a real budget of $10m+ which is well over half the likely per episode for WandaVision (allegedly it was "up to" $25m/episode, but given the longest episode is nearly twice the real runtime as the shortest, and most were closer to the shorter end, aaaaaaand the last episode had more CGI than all the rest by miles, I think we can guess it averaged at like $16-17m/episode).

If you tried to make it on like $5m/episode it would end up looking like a bad SyFy show, note.

EDIT - I'd note that the primary Underdark setting is perhaps actually attractive to bean-counters, because whilst it means there will be a significant minimum spend on on sets and CGI, it also means that shooting will be on soundstages (or whatever we call them these days) and greenscreens, not on location, and that's a hell of a lot cheaper than shooting on location at the same level of quality, and it's a lot easier to contain maximum expenditure shooting on soundstages rather than on location. Part of why previous fantasy shows have been expensive is heavy location shooting (yes, you can do it in Europe, but it still ain't cheap).

 

[Oofta]

...
If you tried to make it on like $5m/episode it would end up looking like a bad SyFy show, note.

Hey now, Sharknado had ... umm ... effects and a truly relevant and believable storyline!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I very much doubt that, given that it will necessarily be a fairly CGI-heavy show.

WandaVision's likely budget was in the $100-200m range

And Doctor Who is an FX heavy show with a budget of about 1.5 million per episode. Disney throw silly money at their shows. Agatha had a refrigerated body-suit under her witchy costume so she didn't get too hot. Go on Doctor Who and you might get a cup of tepid water if you are lucky.

Given the "lets film it all in some caves" approach it sounds more like a BBC production than a Disney+ production to me.