D&D Movie/TV (Yet another) D&D Movie Speculation thread.

[robus]

EDIT- And I do mean I am genuinely confused; your comments seem to be divorced from the realities of current movie-making.

I think the confusion is about why? Why on earth did a movie company decide to make another D&D movie after all the other failed attempts? What is D&D bringing other than the promise of disaster?

Now the audience seems much more ready for a fantasy movie, given the popularity of GoT and LotR and the resurgence of D&D, the challenge (which they must be aware of) is producing something generally entertaining but recognizably connected to D&D to not piss-off the core fanbase.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Dessert Nomad]

So, if I have to teach the audience all the tropes anyway... why am I also *paying* someone to use the D&D brand? Why am I not just making my own fantasy movie? Given the dorky and bad-movie baggage "D&D movie" now carries with it?

How much 'baggage does D&D really carry with it now? There was a bad movie decades ago, but (like was pointed out in the other thread) there were a variety of awful superhero movies before Marvel started hitting blockbusters out of the park. I don't think the old movie is going to hold much baggage. Same thing with 'dorky', I don't think 'Marvel Comic Book' was significantly less dorky than 'D&D', but those are widely popular movies. And D&D is far from a niche hobby today; I remember that 3e did a good job at setting records back in the day, but 5e core books had already outsold the lifetime totals of 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, and 4.0 (each considered individually, not added together) when it was out for only 2 years, and keeps setting new records each year.

I think the idea that D&D has baggage was appropriate 20-30 years ago, but it's become much more routine in recent decades, and things like the wildly successful movie franchises like LOTR, Marvel, and Transformers demonstrate that 'geeky' is not a detriment to popular sales any more.

 

[Azzy]

As for the movie, I fear that the producers are going to take things far too seriously and try for an epic, GoT-esque story. It really needs to be a light-hearted romp through fantasy tropes, celebrating some (heroic self-sacrifice) and mocking others (damsel in distress).

Ella Enchanted might actually be a good model, it has a narrator (i.e. a DM stand-in) and an entertaining story. Of course rather than a rom-com the D&D movie would be swash-buckling adventure but with its tongue firmly in cheek. The narrator providing entertaining asides on the action and foreshadowing trouble ahead.

Oh, god no. It's one thing for an action movie to have some lighthearted moments, but I would never watch what you described.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Other option is trying with a sci-fi lincence like Gamma World, Star*Drive or Star Frontiers.

And we can't forget a cartoon for TV. The reboot of My Little Pony is a total succes. Why not a spin-off like "Equestria Girls" but with centaurides/centauresses(female centaurs) in a softer version of a sword & sorcery world?

 

[robus]

Oh, god no. It's one thing for an action movie to have some lighthearted moments, but I would never watch what you described.

Yeah - I'm worried the producers feel the same way

 

[generic]

Other option is trying with a sci-fi lincence like Gamma World, Star*Drive or Star Frontiers.

And we can't forget a cartoon for TV. The reboot of My Little Pony is a total succes. Why not a spin-off like "Equestria Girls" but with centaurides/centauresses(female centaurs) in a softer version of a sword & sorcery world?

Aherm, I (would) wouldn't watch that.

I'm too old for My Little Pony (lying scoundrel).

 

[Prakriti]

I predict that halfway through filming, there will be a huge Barney revival, and the filmmakers will digitally alter all the characters to look like purple dinosaurs and change the title to The Barney Movie.

This is show-business, after all.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Indeed, the D&D movie was a leap into the realm of CGI a bit too early. Maybe if they had just had a few dragons instead of all the dragons, it might have looked better.


But really, the practical effects weren’t all that great, either. Props looked more like props, not items produced by a specific culture, like LOTR.

2. Special effects. Don't discount this. The increased sophistication and decreased price in the past two decades has been extraordinary.

 

[Mercurius]

As I said in another thread, what I'd like to see (and think would be successful, if done well) is a two pronged approach:

*A Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy of movies. Big budget spectacles. Serious with touches of humor, but not campy - and no in-jokes. This also allows you to avoid the "Drow Problem."

*A Dungeons & Dragons TV series (Netflix?) that follows a group of adventurers through iconic adventures in the Forgotten Realms. This could be more campy, or at least Guardians of the Galaxy style humor.

As for the Drow Problem, I don't think it really has to be a problem. Avoid black-face. Avoid only using African American actors. Use a variety of skin colors. Use a variety of actors in terms of race and ethnicity. Possibly go the CGI route (ala Avatar) to make them more inhuman (although I prefer against this as it takes away human qualities, subtleties of emotion, etc; again, like Avatar).

If you want to touch the race thing (which I advise against), you could emphasize that they were royally screwed thousands of years ago by despotic light skinned elves and aren't really "evil," just "different." Maybe going with a pagan thing - that the new "Religion of Light" of Corellon Larethion sought to get rid of all elves od darker skin colors, and Lolth took them in and corrupted them a bit.