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?

 

[Scribe]

Trust me, the internet is barely representative of real fantasy enjoying communities out there. People in the real world love mature fantasy. Modern viewers are much, much smarter than people give them credit for.

Oh I know. The online discourse is wildly disconnected from reality.

 

[Dire Bare]

so if Spock and Kirk were different actors of different colors and genders in each episode, that would be perfectly fine because they are fictional and have no identity?

Dude, you keep straying into ridiculous territory. Nobody is arguing that we should have different actors per episode or anything like that. Make some real arguments.

 

[Dire Bare]

As a long time comic reader and this question spiraling from that and into the current discussion, which props to the people active in this thread keeping things civil and respectful, what do we think the discourse would be in 15-20 years if Marvel decided to recast or do a new origin story for RiRi Williams in the Iron man story verse? She’s portrayed as an African American in both the comics and the disney plus tv show currently but in the future went Asian, white, Native American, etc? Would the fans care, would social media be active in the discussion of changing of a colored character?

More of a thought experiment and if it’s been discussed before in other threads, sorry as I must have missed out on that discussion.

Context matters.

When doing a new adaptation of existing material and deciding how to cast the characters . . . is the character's ethnicity an important part of their story? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Not only that, but ethnicity swapping can be neutral or it can punch down. It blows my mind how folks don't see this.

For a very long time and even to this day, movies and TV in the US have been very, very white. We're getting better, but Hollywood is still a very white place. Ethnic groups that are marginalized in society are also marginalized in casting. It's why casting a new show, original or an adaptation, with a mostly white cast is problematic. It doesn't represent modern society, and it perpetuates racist ideas, tropes, and practices, even if unintentionally.

Casting Laurana with an actress of color is an ethnicity change that helps breaks barriers. It's not important to Laurana's story that she be a Euro-coded elf, regardless of how many times she has been described as pale versus "woodland brown" in the original books.

Casting RiRi Williams with an actress who isn't of African descent would be insulting and punching down, not to mention that a large part of her story would no longer make sense. It shouldn't be hard to see the difference.

 

[...m...]

...at this point any competent executive producer can point to vox machina as exhibit A that there's a legitimate market for respectfully-produced mature animated fantasy; that's the greatest change since joe's dragonlance initiative last sputtered out...

...in whatever case, a sustained good-faith dragonlance publishing initiative is probably the one thing which could give me pause to reconsider 5.24; otherwise i'm done with D+D after 5.14...