The core problem with a 'D&D' movie is that movie success is to a large degree driven by strong characters and plots, and, well, D&D doesn't provide either of those things -- it's up to the players to come up with characters, it's up to the DM to come up with a plot, and the game is just providing tools for execution. To the degree game adaptations do well, it's usually because there's some really iconic storylines and/or characters that people want to see, and, well, what are those things today? In the 80s you could look to Dragonlance, in the 90s you could look to Drizzt, but what are the iconic storylines today? There's no novels branch any more, Curse of Strahd is way too obviously derivative, and is there really another adventure that's particularly iconic (at least, from Wizards; a Critical Role based movie is probably unlikely but more plausible than any D&D adventure I can think of).
Modern action flicks rarely have much in the way of characters or plots. They're mostly just CGI-filled explosionfests.
Modern action flicks are certainly heavily dependent on CGI and rarely have impressive acting, but that doesn't mean interesting plot and characters are unnecessary.
I'd be surprised if they make another movie, with all of them bombing at the Box Office from all of the previous movies. For a game that claims to be worlds most popular, it doesn't seem to transfer to the Box Office or even to Social Media. Neither D&D's Twitter or Youtube Channel is close to 1 million subcribers. And supposedly there are 1.4 million players around the world.
Now "Stranger Things" has nearly 6 million followers and the classic 80s movie with Tom Hanks, 'Mazes and Monsters" is still a cult classic TV movie with Gen X and the younger Boomers. It seems to me that D&D has more success when it is a movie where the cast play the D&D game, than a movie about D&D itself. Although the animation "Dungeons and Dragons" was okay for the time period.
Maybe they could pull a Princess Bride and have the movie be about people playing the game (narrators) but the story is their game. It opens with them sitting down to play and then we're transported into the Forgotten Realms. Every so often they pull back to the people playing for some goofy line like, "Has anyone seen the cheetos.", or everyone dying of laughter at the table when the wizard says, "I cast Magic Missle at the darkness."!
According to tax records Honor Amongst Thieves made $58 million after everything else. It wasn't a major profit but they got something off of it and this doesn't include future profits from home video ie when people watch on Netflix and Amazon. If we're looking at the long game it is still worth it to do another just to squeeze even more out of the brand over time. The XP from 10,000 goblins is just as much as idk some other higher level beast. It just takes longer to kill them due to action economy.
I love that someone considered the older Wayans movie a flop because Mario came out the same year. No. That movie was just bad. I rewatched it and fell asleep. The Tom Hanks movie is a banger though. They could off load the burden by just licensing the IP to someone else but then they wouldn't make as much as the profits aren't all that much.
Regardless, I want to see another D&D movie that is as good if not better and I think characters being trolled into killing themselves would be hilariously dark. It might even be something that could be used to make a point about online bullying but making it into a critique of modern morals and ethics might be a mistake.
The core problem with a 'D&D' movie is that movie success is to a large degree driven by strong characters and plots, and, well, D&D doesn't provide either of those things -- it's up to the players to come up with characters, it's up to the DM to come up with a plot, and the game is just providing tools for execution. To the degree game adaptations do well, it's usually because there's some really iconic storylines and/or characters that people want to see, and, well, what are those things today? In the 80s you could look to Dragonlance, in the 90s you could look to Drizzt, but what are the iconic storylines today? There's no novels branch any more, Curse of Strahd is way too obviously derivative, and is there really another adventure that's particularly iconic (at least, from Wizards; a Critical Role based movie is probably unlikely but more plausible than any D&D adventure I can think of).
Funnily enough the guy doing the Forgotten Realms series for Netflix was saying something similar a couple of days ago. When you adapt a book you’ve got characters and plot to work with but a D&D series just has a setting so you’re basically having to start from scratch and to make it worse everyone has a slightly different version of the setting because of how their games went
Funnily enough the guy doing the Forgotten Realms series for Netflix was saying something similar a couple of days ago.
I didn't think I was proposing a deep insight that no-one else ever had. Admittedly there are some really stupid ideas for movie adaptations where there's no iconic anything (e.g. Settlers of Catan), but I expect the result will be... less than stellar.
How many action films that were released in the last year would you actually say had actually deep plots and well-developed protagonists?
Don't get me wrong, it's much better when they do, but most action films have generic plots and generic characters.
That's not a profit in Hollywood studios. In order to make a profit a film has to do at least twice it's budget, just to break even. I have a link, but I don't know if outside links having nothing to do with D&D are allowed.
How many action films that were released in the last year would you actually say had actually deep plots and well-developed protagonists?
There's no requirement for a deep plot , the requirement is for iconic.
Not really. Isn't much iconic about "bad guy gonna do something bad, good guy gotta stop him." The lack of plot is considered a feature rather than a bug in many cases: makes it easier to sell to international audiences, especially in China, India, and other nations that don't care much about American stuff.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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The core problem with a 'D&D' movie is that movie success is to a large degree driven by strong characters and plots, and, well, D&D doesn't provide either of those things -- it's up to the players to come up with characters, it's up to the DM to come up with a plot, and the game is just providing tools for execution. To the degree game adaptations do well, it's usually because there's some really iconic storylines and/or characters that people want to see, and, well, what are those things today? In the 80s you could look to Dragonlance, in the 90s you could look to Drizzt, but what are the iconic storylines today? There's no novels branch any more, Curse of Strahd is way too obviously derivative, and is there really another adventure that's particularly iconic (at least, from Wizards; a Critical Role based movie is probably unlikely but more plausible than any D&D adventure I can think of).
Modern action flicks rarely have much in the way of characters or plots. They're mostly just CGI-filled explosionfests.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Modern action flicks are certainly heavily dependent on CGI and rarely have impressive acting, but that doesn't mean interesting plot and characters are unnecessary.
How many action films that were released in the last year would you actually say had actually deep plots and well-developed protagonists?
Don't get me wrong, it's much better when they do, but most action films have generic plots and generic characters.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Maybe they could pull a Princess Bride and have the movie be about people playing the game (narrators) but the story is their game. It opens with them sitting down to play and then we're transported into the Forgotten Realms. Every so often they pull back to the people playing for some goofy line like, "Has anyone seen the cheetos.", or everyone dying of laughter at the table when the wizard says, "I cast Magic Missle at the darkness."!
According to tax records Honor Amongst Thieves made $58 million after everything else. It wasn't a major profit but they got something off of it and this doesn't include future profits from home video ie when people watch on Netflix and Amazon. If we're looking at the long game it is still worth it to do another just to squeeze even more out of the brand over time. The XP from 10,000 goblins is just as much as idk some other higher level beast. It just takes longer to kill them due to action economy.
I love that someone considered the older Wayans movie a flop because Mario came out the same year. No. That movie was just bad. I rewatched it and fell asleep. The Tom Hanks movie is a banger though. They could off load the burden by just licensing the IP to someone else but then they wouldn't make as much as the profits aren't all that much.
Regardless, I want to see another D&D movie that is as good if not better and I think characters being trolled into killing themselves would be hilariously dark. It might even be something that could be used to make a point about online bullying but making it into a critique of modern morals and ethics might be a mistake.
"Life is Cast by Random Dice"
Burn my candle twice.
I have done my life justice
Against random dice.
Funnily enough the guy doing the Forgotten Realms series for Netflix was saying something similar a couple of days ago. When you adapt a book you’ve got characters and plot to work with but a D&D series just has a setting so you’re basically having to start from scratch and to make it worse everyone has a slightly different version of the setting because of how their games went
There's no requirement for a deep plot , the requirement is for iconic.
I didn't think I was proposing a deep insight that no-one else ever had. Admittedly there are some really stupid ideas for movie adaptations where there's no iconic anything (e.g. Settlers of Catan), but I expect the result will be... less than stellar.
That's not a profit in Hollywood studios. In order to make a profit a film has to do at least twice it's budget, just to break even. I have a link, but I don't know if outside links having nothing to do with D&D are allowed.
Not really. Isn't much iconic about "bad guy gonna do something bad, good guy gotta stop him." The lack of plot is considered a feature rather than a bug in many cases: makes it easier to sell to international audiences, especially in China, India, and other nations that don't care much about American stuff.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.