D&D General What Are Dragonlance's Weis & Hickman, and Actor Manganiello Cooking Up?

Actor and D&D superfan Joe Manganiello and Dragonlance co-author Tracy Hickman have both posted a cryptic image on their respective social medias showing themselves, along with Margaret Weis standing together in front of a large dragon statue at Wizards of the Coast's offices in Renton, Washington.

Hickman's image was accompanied by the words "Something is coming...", and in Manganiello's case "WE'RE BACK", to which Wizards of the Coast replied "Welcome back to the table!" A later photograph from Weis also included Laura Hickman and Dan Ayoub, who was named head of Dungeons & Dragons back in July of this year.

The posts have sparked speculation as to what they might mean, with guesses ranging from a revival of Manganiello's Dragonlance TV show project--which was no longer in development after he stated in February 2024 that "Dragonlance is not a property WotC are interested in developing further currently"--to a new Dragonlance-based D&D adventure.

Weis and Hickman co-wrote a new Dragonlance trilogy in recent years following a legal dust-up with Wizards of the Coast which was ultimately dismissed without prejudice, so it would seem that any bad blood from the dispute has been left in the past.

The question now remains--what are they all cooking up this time?

 

[Sacrosanct]

sure it failed, bad reviews, drastically reduced viewer numbers. It hasn’t been cancelled but that is not the same as not failing

Really, only the people in charge of the show can say if it failed or not because they are the ones who set the metric for what is a success. Not any of us.

 

[mamba]

Really, only the people in charge of the show can say if it failed or not because they are the ones who set the metric for what is a success. Not any of us.

I disagree, and by that logic we would never know that anything failed or succeeded.

There are metrics to go by, we do not need to speculate about what someone in charge may or may not consider acceptable. If you spend 3 times as much as a comparable show that gets 50% more audience (numbers entirely made up…), you failed, no matter whether the guys in charge are honest enough to publicly admit it.

 

[Zaukrie]

GoT managed to look good and have interesting characters established in episode 1. The TV adaptation of WoT had unlikeable characters and looked a bit naff. It’s amazing it lasted as long as it did. Frankly, I don’t think the quality of the original novels really matters in order to make a successful TV show. If DL could manage cool eye candy and likeable main characters (with good actors) it could do just fine.

Couldn't disagree more with this post. Lots of people liked WoT from the beginning.

 

[Zaukrie]

If GoT really wanted to subvert things, he could have had the women win, even in this world. They were headed that way in every nation, thru guile, and patience.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I disagree, and by that logic we would never know that anything failed or succeeded.

There are metrics to go by, we do not need to speculate about what someone in charge may or may not consider acceptable. If you spend 3 times as much as a comparable show that gets 50% more audience (numbers entirely made up…), you failed, no matter whether the guys in charge are honest enough to publicly admit it.

Granted, I'm only speaking from my perspective as a project manager, but IME, every project has a goal of what is considered a success. Some things may seem to be a complete failure but are actual successes (lost leaders, etc.). I'm not saying RoP is a lost leader (it's likely not), but none of us actually know what the criteria for a success is. For example, maybe a success was defined at 15+ million global viewers in season 1, with one season being the bar. It ended up as an all time PRIME record for viewers (25 million) and had more than one season. So while a lot of people are looking at the drop in viewership from season 1 to 2 as a failure, for all we know, that was never the goal in the first place and the numbers from the first season were so much higher than goal that it is in fact a success.

Accusing project owners of being dishonest rather than accept the more likely route of them knowing criteria more than you seems a bit unscrupulous to me.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The streaming success of Critical Role on Prime with an 18+ label proves there is a market for 'mature' fantasy animation. WotC probably wants a share of that.

Thanks to BG3 doing so much better then DADHAT, I think the Netflix FR show will be 18+ as well.

 

[mamba]

Accusing project owners of being dishonest rather than accept the more likely route of them knowing criteria more than you seems a bit unscrupulous to me.

I am not calling them dishonest, I say they have their reasons for not telling everyone what their metrics are and whether they were met, and some of those reasons are about saving face

Not telling me something does not make you dishonest, telling me something that you know isn’t true does

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Rings of Power should have been great. Instead it's lackluster. Huge missed opportunity. I think it's only on the air because of sunk costs. Amazon has invested too much $$$ in the property to cut bait.

 

[mamba]

Rings of Power should have been great. Instead it's lackluster. Huge missed opportunity. I think it's only on the air because of sunk costs. Amazon has invested too much $$$ in the property to cut bait.

yeah, you do not spend $250M on a license and $465M on the first season and then expect a show that is an ‘also ran’ that looses 60% of its viewers during season one (that is one metric Amazon cannot be happy with, whether they admit it or not). You could accomplish that for a lot less money…

While it started with record viewer numbers for Amazon, it now only has numbers in the range of many other shows while being considerably more expensive

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Rings of Power would be like "you don't cook like my mommy!". It is like you go to a restaurant after of lot of time after and you ask your favorite plate but when you taste it you realised this time the cook is different. Tolkien's style was like sweetswitter, like missing the glory of past age, a lot of nostalgy vibes. RoP hadn't got that spirit or essence but more "the evil guys is arriving, we are going to kick them ass".

Mabye Games of Thrones wasn't perfect but now is among the most famous fantasy sagas. It wasn't only the plot but the wisdow showed in some characters' quotes.

I advice a serie instead a movie because with more time there is more space to tell more details.

I suspect the scriptwritters teams could add their own ideas about the setting and this could mean some future retcon.

Maybe some cultural advisor should be hired but I support the que-shu tribe should appear in the serie.

Kenders could need a little retcon because if all kenders are like Tassleholf then they may become too annoying and the fun would be lost, like if you were telling the same joke everyday. Not all the kenders should be like cleptomaniac but more like compulsive collectors, their own version of Diogenes' syndrome. Maybe a jewel appears in a kender's backpack and she answer this was placed by a tricked fay (and the fun is she is right, it was stolen by the fey and placed in the backpack to cause troubles)

Gullys could be softed. For example everybody says they can't count more number three. The truth is they can but with the numbers of their own languange, they forgot the numbers from common languange.

I dare to say some characters could be retconected to promote classes, something like a positive discrimination quota. Maybe I am wrong but they could dare to do it.

* Other idea could be an animate isekai where a group of players create their own homemade alternate timeline. Then something happens and they arrive to their alternate Krynn, with their own changes, for example Tass is a girl and Raistlin's face is covered by tribal tatoos.