Time to roll the dice and save vs. bad movie!

[Tev]

There's a new D&D movie on the horizon!

A movie based on that titan of tabletop, Dungeons & Dragons, is moving ahead at Warner Bros., reports Variety.

After sorting through a rights dispute between Allspark Pictures and Sweetpea Entertainment, Warner Bros. is now in the clear. Allspark Pictures is a division of Hasbro Studios (a division of Hasbro, which produces the Dungeons & Dragons games), while Sweetpea Entertainment produced 2000's Dungeons & Dragons and 2005's Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God. Neither film was well received by critics and fans (Ed. note: or most people with eyeballs).

The solution is that both studios will produce the new flick, which already has a script set in Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms setting, familiar to many players and fantasy fans from R.A. Salvatore's novels as well as D&D games. David Leslie Johnson took writing duties on the project.

Despite the fact that Dungeons & Dragons is literally a storytelling engine, getting a decent film adaptation out of the license has historically been a game where almost everybody rolls 1s. If there's a ray of hope for Warner Bros.' latest effort, it's that one of the producers of The Lego Movie, Roy Lee, is involved. If Lego can get an Academy Award-nominated film to theaters, surely the time is right for Dungeons & Dragons to get a watchable film to theaters.

So it looks like Hasbro has finally finished its legal fight with Sweatpea Entertainment and has gotten some control of the D&D movie rights back under its thumb. It also sounds like they've got a Lego Movie producer on the payroll to make it not suck as much as the three previous ones.

Now to wait and see if this will end up being a bland generic fantasy action movie with some setting dressing (Forgotten Realms) and certain IP monsters and character races unique to D&D, or if this is going to be a badly done self-referential nerd-fest of shoving people in bags of holding, stopping by the corner magic shop to buy a +5 beholder-slaying sword of legends, and gamist jargon that only us insiders could hope to follow.

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by Tev

Now to wait and see if this will end up being a bland generic fantasy action movie with some setting dressing (Forgotten Realms) and certain IP monsters and character races unique to D&D, or if this is going to be a badly done self-referential nerd-fest of shoving people in bags of holding, stopping by the corner magic shop to buy a +5 beholder-slaying sword of legends, and gamist jargon that only us insiders could hope to follow.

Sounds great!

...

>.>

(Which is why Gamers and Dorkness Rising already did it.)

In other news, I really do hope it's good. I think it can be handled well, not come off as either generic, nor overly referential, but I think it's a tight rope to walk. The key, as I've always said, is make it an ensemble piece. That is D&D's greatest strength, and always has been... but it's a really difficult thing to pull off.

While D&D spin-offs have often been either single player (hello, Neverwinter Nights) or non-RPGs (hello, old arcade beat-'em-up!) for numerous reasons, the core of the experience has was always "here's a way to tell a fantasy story with your friends about exploration, heroism, and getting wealthy" (though, naturally, the motivations can easily differ, based on setting and the characters).

The problem with ensemble pieces is that they're hard to pull off. You have to like, or at least enjoy watching, everyone on screen.

Clue did this masterfully, but it's a fast-paced comedy. It's bound to happen.

The other "core" to the D&D experience, at least as far as most games go, is going through some <series of deathtraps>, overcoming <"random" encounters>, and defeating a <final boss and/or powerful creature> at the end in order to save <people>.

For a film that does this marvelously, I suggest looking at Die Hard. Heck, if you wanted to follow a D&D campaign "gist" almost flawlessly, I'd suggest the Die Hard series: you start out as little-more than average joes who get in way over your head and, through luck and guile, manage to accomplish a difficult thing and gain reward; set-backs ensue with other (usually semi-related) adventures, until you're nationally, and perhaps internationally famous and doing things that were, until your group came along, considered impossible and stupidly dangerous to attempt (and are now considered only stupidly dangerous to attempt); your success has made you legendary, and you've become something like a classic superhero without the tights or necessarily the flying (unless you're a flying monk who likes tights).

Or, for a film series that actually pulls these disparate parts together pretty well, see: Avengers and Ghost Busters.

There are lots of series that gets a lot of what D&D is down rather well. It remains to be seen whether those things can be pulled together for the purposes of an actual D&D film.

[phil_]

Originally Posted by Tev

a badly done self-referential nerd-fest ... that only us insiders could hope to follow.

It's set in the Forgotten Realms, which makes Pun Pun a possibility.

I wonder how much this and the MTG movie Fox is working on will cannibalize each other's ticket sales and whether Hasbro cares.

[shiney]

Movie fails unless someone rolls a 1

[mauve]

Oh, this'll be a disappointment no matter what, but maybe it'll end up being enjoyably stupid.

Although I gotta say, Chris Perkins' recent revelation that Omin Dran's place as a Masked Lord of Waterdeep is officially canon makes me hope to see at least a background cameo of a purple-robed wizard conjuring illusory doves at people and signing autographs in the background of a scene.

[Flarecobra]

Is it riffable?

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Forgotten realms, eh? I'll eat my goddamned shoe if it turns out to not be a glorified Drizzt wankfest.

[phil_]

Is he still around in 5th ed.? Gotta push those books, after all.

I post that, then immediately think "elf." Guessing he's alive, then.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

No. Thankfully, Salvatore hasn't polluted 5th with his garbage. At least not yet.

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by Grandmaster_Skweeb

No. Thankfully, Salvatore hasn't polluted 5th with his garbage. At least not yet.

It's worth noting that I don't think Salvatore's works are garbage. I don't think they're nearly as exceptional as some do, but they're not terrible. They're just... okay.

Bizarrely, my impression of his older work - Crystal Shard, etc. - is that he's actually gotten much better at characterization and emotional resonance as he's written, and better at focusing and understanding people, moving away from a kind of shallow and weird 'super-hero' -esque stories and more into 'actual people with great skill' stories. He's also gotten worse at the excessive monologue and pseudo-philosophizing, though at least the latter actually occasionally introduces concepts that fit with a chaotic good mindset.

I think at least part of the hatred is the over-exposure, and the snowflakiness of Drizzt, especially as interpreted by the fandom (due, ironically, to a few earlier decisions that Salvatore has since backed away from), and the subsequent imitation thereof.

I also do not begrudge anyone who can successfully make a living - or even part of one - as an author. Live the dream for us all, sir. Live the dream for us all.

That said, Paul S. Kemp is a fine writer, and I strongly recommend him over Salvatore for Realms-based novels any day.