What we know so far about the D&D movie is that its by Paramount Picture, was finished filming in Iceland and it's now set to release in March 2023. It’s written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, Regé-Jean Page, Hugh Grant, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Jason Wong and Daisy Head. The synopsis reads as follows:
An ex-Harper turned thief escapes from prison with his partner, a female barbarian, and reunites with a no-talent wizard and a druid new to their team in an effort to rob the cheating conman who stole all their loot from the heist that landed them behind bars, and used it to install himself as the Lord of Neverwinter. Only the traitor is allied with a powerful Red Wizard who has something far more sinister in store.
What we know so far about the D&D movie is that its by Paramount Picture, was finished filming in Iceland and it's now set to release in March 2023. It’s written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, Regé-Jean Page, Hugh Grant, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Jason Wong and Daisy Head. The synopsis reads as follows:
An ex-Harper turned thief escapes from prison with his partner, a female barbarian, and reunites with a no-talent wizard and a druid new to their team in an effort to rob the cheating conman who stole all their loot from the heist that landed them behind bars, and used it to install himself as the Lord of Neverwinter. Only the traitor is allied with a powerful Red Wizard who has something far more sinister in store.
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Hoping the Druid summons a bunch of fairies who then polymorph them all into woolly mammoths, would love to get tips on how to help the BBEG deal with that ;)
"You want to check out that Dungeons and Dragons movie?" "Yeah, sure, I never played, but curious what they made of the movie."
"You want to check out this Greyhawk movie?" "What? I heard there isn't even a pigeon in it, let alone a grey hawk."
"You want to check this Forgotten Realms movie?" "...."
Dungeons and Dragons means something, it has cultural cachet beyond the player base. Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, I'm pretty sure there are D&D players who think they know quite a bit about the game that haven't heard of the former and may not even realized the published adventures for the most part are set in the latter.
No one's going to make any association between this Dungeon and Dragons and Jeremy Irons walks onto the set of Dungeons and Dragons years ago to any more of a degree than folks wanting to see the new Dune are going to associate it with David Lynch Alan Smithee's work.
Honestly I think the D&D fanbase ought to look at what love Bay's Transformers (hi Hasbro!) paid or served that toy's fans if you want to see how much attention the movie is really giving those who "really know" the brand. It took the Transformers fandom some time to really except Bay's movies as the standard bearer, quite a few still don't. Yet those movies do phenomenally well compared to other efforts to get big robots the spotlight on the big screens.
Or heck look at what Disney did with either Marvel (oversimplification of dense lore) or Star Wars (there were how many decades of lore attached to ... nah, we'll get around to calling them Legends maybe and maybe port them back in on the flip side, but we're going back to the movies as if none of that were there.
Movie won't change anyone's game. Might make a few more people curious about it.
Hey, remember when they announced the Guardians of the Galaxy movie which was a space adventure with no recognisable heroes, a cartoon racoon and a "talking" tree?
Don't know what you're trying to say there, other than prove my point about Disney taking Marvel and oversimplifying dense lore. The Guardians' various iterations are part of a pretty dense ecosystem of "cosmic" adventures (Captain Marvel riffs off of too). I'm actually disappointed that they've done two Guardians movie, Rocket appears in four, and they're evidently waiting for the third Guardian's movie for the Gideon punchline.
So again, we can at best expect a Disney handling of D&D and at worst (IMHO) Bayformers ride. Since Hasbro was actually involved with the latter as well as, ahem, Battleship, I think lowered expectations on the fan fidelity front are in order.
Side not, Guardians also had the benefit of MCU picking either well established (Branagh) or "proven rising talents" (Gunn) for their films. D&D has ... two guys who directed an episode of "In the Dark" together ... it's just not promising.
Well, if I need to spell it out, my point was this: the guardians of the galaxy, before the movies, were obscure characters. If you'd ask someone in 2000 who Rocket Raccoon was, unless they were into comics, they likely wouldn't know. And yet the film still did well.
Saying that it should be a D&D movie instead of a Forgotten Realms for brand recognition is misguided. Many of the big brands had to be established originally. But that doesn't mean Iron Man was called "Marvel Cinematic Universe: Iron Man".
That's a lot of decontextualized "evidence" you're trying to put out there. As 6th points out. Guardians really doesn't serve as a counterpoint to anything I've brought up. It was the ninth movie within six years of a proven box office brand, Marvel studios had built enough of a foundation with the MCU to start taking very measured "risks" in Guardians case moving more into "space heroes" and the whole cosmic marvel side of things, using a director who had sort of hipster/edgy cred to see how he'd play out with what was already being recognized as the Marvel formula.
And again, my point was the Marvel project did in fact simplify/reduce the comic lore into smaller doses, even Guardians of the Galaxy (like the Kree play a major role but we don't really know anything about them from that movie, they save that for several movies later). Yes, SHIELD is introduced in Iron Man, but it's done in this easter eggy expositional joke way through Coulson, and even Nick Fury jumping in the stinger is something that likely went over the heads of most audiences, but it gave them enough to want more.
A Dungeons and Dragons movie can name drop Neverwinter and Harpers but choosing to call a movie Forgotten Realms instead of Dungeons and Dragons would be like Marvel deciding to call Iron Man, Earth 616.
The biggest problem I see is folks thinking Chris Pine is a Box Office draw. People saw Star Trek because of Star Trek, people didn't see Star Trek because of Chris Pine. He's a good working actor who had some higher marquee during a period where Hollywood was still trying to figure out what do after peak Matt Damon. More concerning is relegating the movie to two writer/directors whose biggest credit to date are an episode of Afraid of the Dark. The whole production are basically "company men" and its production history to date just feels bland ... which isn't a fair way to judge, maybe the film maintained a Lucasfilm level secured set.
Regardless, if it's coming 2023 maybe we'll get some real looks at it through Memorial Day trailers next year.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The biggest problem I see is folks thinking Chris Pine is a Box Office draw.
He's no A-lister for sure, but paying say, Dwayne Johnson's current salary would arguably have been disproportionate and the cast has more box office pull than that of the 2000 movie (with all due respect to Jeremy Irons). Heck, Chris Pine alone has more box office pull than that entire cast at the time. It's still definitely a step up.
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The biggest problem I see is folks thinking Chris Pine is a Box Office draw.
He's no A-lister for sure, but paying say, Dwayne Johnson's current salary would arguably have been disproportionate and the cast has more box office pull than that of the 2000 movie (with all due respect to Jeremy Irons). Heck, Chris Pine alone has more box office pull than that entire cast at the time. It's still definitely a step up.
I keep brain drifting Sam Neil into Hugh Grant's space in the current cast. Sam Neil would've been an awesome Red Wizard. Hugh Grant ... I'm thinking someone told their agent he wanted to do sone more CGI driven stuff so he could phone it in like Colin Firth ... agent thought Grant meant Kingsmen level not Paddington, so here we are.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
"You want to check out that Dungeons and Dragons movie?" "Yeah, sure, I never played, but curious what they made of the movie."
"You want to check out this Greyhawk movie?" "What? I heard there isn't even a pigeon in it, let alone a grey hawk."
"You want to check this Forgotten Realms movie?" "...."
Dungeons and Dragons means something, it has cultural cachet beyond the player base. Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, I'm pretty sure there are D&D players who think they know quite a bit about the game that haven't heard of the former and may not even realized the published adventures for the most part are set in the latter.
No one's going to make any association between this Dungeon and Dragons and Jeremy Irons walks onto the set of Dungeons and Dragons years ago to any more of a degree than folks wanting to see the new Dune are going to associate it with David Lynch Alan Smithee's work.
Honestly I think the D&D fanbase ought to look at what love Bay's Transformers (hi Hasbro!) paid or served that toy's fans if you want to see how much attention the movie is really giving those who "really know" the brand. It took the Transformers fandom some time to really except Bay's movies as the standard bearer, quite a few still don't. Yet those movies do phenomenally well compared to other efforts to get big robots the spotlight on the big screens.
Or heck look at what Disney did with either Marvel (oversimplification of dense lore) or Star Wars (there were how many decades of lore attached to ... nah, we'll get around to calling them Legends maybe and maybe port them back in on the flip side, but we're going back to the movies as if none of that were there.
Movie won't change anyone's game. Might make a few more people curious about it.
Hey, remember when they announced the Guardians of the Galaxy movie which was a space adventure with no recognisable heroes, a cartoon racoon and a "talking" tree?
Don't know what you're trying to say there, other than prove my point about Disney taking Marvel and oversimplifying dense lore. The Guardians' various iterations are part of a pretty dense ecosystem of "cosmic" adventures (Captain Marvel riffs off of too). I'm actually disappointed that they've done two Guardians movie, Rocket appears in four, and they're evidently waiting for the third Guardian's movie for the Gideon punchline.
So again, we can at best expect a Disney handling of D&D and at worst (IMHO) Bayformers ride. Since Hasbro was actually involved with the latter as well as, ahem, Battleship, I think lowered expectations on the fan fidelity front are in order.
Side not, Guardians also had the benefit of MCU picking either well established (Branagh) or "proven rising talents" (Gunn) for their films. D&D has ... two guys who directed an episode of "In the Dark" together ... it's just not promising.
Well, if I need to spell it out, my point was this: the guardians of the galaxy, before the movies, were obscure characters. If you'd ask someone in 2000 who Rocket Raccoon was, unless they were into comics, they likely wouldn't know. And yet the film still did well.
Saying that it should be a D&D movie instead of a Forgotten Realms for brand recognition is misguided. Many of the big brands had to be established originally. But that doesn't mean Iron Man was called "Marvel Cinematic Universe: Iron Man".
That's a lot of decontextualized "evidence" you're trying to put out there. As 6th points out. Guardians really doesn't serve as a counterpoint to anything I've brought up. It was the ninth movie within six years of a proven box office brand, Marvel studios had built enough of a foundation with the MCU to start taking very measured "risks" in Guardians case moving more into "space heroes" and the whole cosmic marvel side of things, using a director who had sort of hipster/edgy cred to see how he'd play out with what was already being recognized as the Marvel formula.
And again, my point was the Marvel project did in fact simplify/reduce the comic lore into smaller doses, even Guardians of the Galaxy (like the Kree play a major role but we don't really know anything about them from that movie, they save that for several movies later). Yes, SHIELD is introduced in Iron Man, but it's done in this easter eggy expositional joke way through Coulson, and even Nick Fury jumping in the stinger is something that likely went over the heads of most audiences, but it gave them enough to want more.
A Dungeons and Dragons movie can name drop Neverwinter and Harpers but choosing to call a movie Forgotten Realms instead of Dungeons and Dragons would be like Marvel deciding to call Iron Man, Earth 616.
The biggest problem I see is folks thinking Chris Pine is a Box Office draw. People saw Star Trek because of Star Trek, people didn't see Star Trek because of Chris Pine. He's a good working actor who had some higher marquee during a period where Hollywood was still trying to figure out what do after peak Matt Damon. More concerning is relegating the movie to two writer/directors whose biggest credit to date are an episode of Afraid of the Dark. The whole production are basically "company men" and its production history to date just feels bland ... which isn't a fair way to judge, maybe the film maintained a Lucasfilm level secured set.
Regardless, if it's coming 2023 maybe we'll get some real looks at it through Memorial Day trailers next year.
I really don't care about Marvel lore. Not in the slightest. I don't care if the movies were inaccurate and I don't care about the content of the comics. It's immaterial to the point debated.
The point I was making was that obscure becomes mainstream by its success. You're putting the cart before the horse by insisting that the name has to be recognisable before it does anything of note. The Guardians of the Galaxy is a counter point because it absolutely bucks the idea that you need name recognition to market the movie. They didn't have name regonition and as a result of a succesful movie, they do now. If your point were true, the that movie would not have been successful.
The point I was making was that obscure becomes mainstream by its success. You're putting the cart before the horse by insisting that the name has to be recognisable before it does anything of note. The Guardians of the Galaxy is a counter point because it absolutely bucks the idea that you need name recognition to market the movie. They didn't have name regonition and as a result of a succesful movie, they do now. If your point were true, the that movie would not have been successful.
You do need something though. If not a valuable IP, then actor fame. Or previous credits that were successful from basically anyone involved, including people you never see or hear like producers. Or you go with an inventive cheap campaign, or you just throw lots of money at the advertising budget (this is not typically a good idea if the movie itself was low budget). The point isn't that you absolutely need a recognizeable name, the point is that you need something and a recognizeable name can be that something. That aside, GotG might have been called "MCU movie 10" and it wouldn't really have mattered; I really don't see how you can argue that just being part of the MCU franchise by then had no effect on box office pull.
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"You want to check out that Dungeons and Dragons movie?" "Yeah, sure, I never played, but curious what they made of the movie."
"You want to check out this Greyhawk movie?" "What? I heard there isn't even a pigeon in it, let alone a grey hawk."
"You want to check this Forgotten Realms movie?" "...."
Dungeons and Dragons means something, it has cultural cachet beyond the player base. Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, I'm pretty sure there are D&D players who think they know quite a bit about the game that haven't heard of the former and may not even realized the published adventures for the most part are set in the latter.
No one's going to make any association between this Dungeon and Dragons and Jeremy Irons walks onto the set of Dungeons and Dragons years ago to any more of a degree than folks wanting to see the new Dune are going to associate it with David Lynch Alan Smithee's work.
Honestly I think the D&D fanbase ought to look at what love Bay's Transformers (hi Hasbro!) paid or served that toy's fans if you want to see how much attention the movie is really giving those who "really know" the brand. It took the Transformers fandom some time to really except Bay's movies as the standard bearer, quite a few still don't. Yet those movies do phenomenally well compared to other efforts to get big robots the spotlight on the big screens.
Or heck look at what Disney did with either Marvel (oversimplification of dense lore) or Star Wars (there were how many decades of lore attached to ... nah, we'll get around to calling them Legends maybe and maybe port them back in on the flip side, but we're going back to the movies as if none of that were there.
Movie won't change anyone's game. Might make a few more people curious about it.
Hey, remember when they announced the Guardians of the Galaxy movie which was a space adventure with no recognisable heroes, a cartoon racoon and a "talking" tree?
Don't know what you're trying to say there, other than prove my point about Disney taking Marvel and oversimplifying dense lore. The Guardians' various iterations are part of a pretty dense ecosystem of "cosmic" adventures (Captain Marvel riffs off of too). I'm actually disappointed that they've done two Guardians movie, Rocket appears in four, and they're evidently waiting for the third Guardian's movie for the Gideon punchline.
So again, we can at best expect a Disney handling of D&D and at worst (IMHO) Bayformers ride. Since Hasbro was actually involved with the latter as well as, ahem, Battleship, I think lowered expectations on the fan fidelity front are in order.
Side not, Guardians also had the benefit of MCU picking either well established (Branagh) or "proven rising talents" (Gunn) for their films. D&D has ... two guys who directed an episode of "In the Dark" together ... it's just not promising.
Well, if I need to spell it out, my point was this: the guardians of the galaxy, before the movies, were obscure characters. If you'd ask someone in 2000 who Rocket Raccoon was, unless they were into comics, they likely wouldn't know. And yet the film still did well.
Saying that it should be a D&D movie instead of a Forgotten Realms for brand recognition is misguided. Many of the big brands had to be established originally. But that doesn't mean Iron Man was called "Marvel Cinematic Universe: Iron Man".
That's a lot of decontextualized "evidence" you're trying to put out there. As 6th points out. Guardians really doesn't serve as a counterpoint to anything I've brought up. It was the ninth movie within six years of a proven box office brand, Marvel studios had built enough of a foundation with the MCU to start taking very measured "risks" in Guardians case moving more into "space heroes" and the whole cosmic marvel side of things, using a director who had sort of hipster/edgy cred to see how he'd play out with what was already being recognized as the Marvel formula.
And again, my point was the Marvel project did in fact simplify/reduce the comic lore into smaller doses, even Guardians of the Galaxy (like the Kree play a major role but we don't really know anything about them from that movie, they save that for several movies later). Yes, SHIELD is introduced in Iron Man, but it's done in this easter eggy expositional joke way through Coulson, and even Nick Fury jumping in the stinger is something that likely went over the heads of most audiences, but it gave them enough to want more.
A Dungeons and Dragons movie can name drop Neverwinter and Harpers but choosing to call a movie Forgotten Realms instead of Dungeons and Dragons would be like Marvel deciding to call Iron Man, Earth 616.
The biggest problem I see is folks thinking Chris Pine is a Box Office draw. People saw Star Trek because of Star Trek, people didn't see Star Trek because of Chris Pine. He's a good working actor who had some higher marquee during a period where Hollywood was still trying to figure out what do after peak Matt Damon. More concerning is relegating the movie to two writer/directors whose biggest credit to date are an episode of Afraid of the Dark. The whole production are basically "company men" and its production history to date just feels bland ... which isn't a fair way to judge, maybe the film maintained a Lucasfilm level secured set.
Regardless, if it's coming 2023 maybe we'll get some real looks at it through Memorial Day trailers next year.
I really don't care about Marvel lore. Not in the slightest. I don't care if the movies were inaccurate and I don't care about the content of the comics. It's immaterial to the point debated.
The point I was making was that obscure becomes mainstream by its success. You're putting the cart before the horse by insisting that the name has to be recognisable before it does anything of note. The Guardians of the Galaxy is a counter point because it absolutely bucks the idea that you need name recognition to market the movie. They didn't have name regonition and as a result of a succesful movie, they do now. If your point were true, the that movie would not have been successful.
The fact that invalidates your point is that Guardians of the Galaxy would not have been successful if it was not, in fact, "Marvel Studios Movie 9 (or 10, maybe Sixth is right). Yes, Guardian's was "different" but audiences were also well aware of a consistent quality product via precedent.
I'll do you a favor and argue with myself better than you've proven capable in this thread. Now Breakouts can happen, the viral tag or whatever we called them before there were hashtags back in the day "What is the Matrix?" was a smash that did "come out of nowhere" (though I was in one of the college towns at the time that were selected as a test screening audience to build the hype or whatever marketers were calling virality pre-facebook). The thing about The Matrix though was it was a risk, yes, but a modest risk budget wise (i.e. not just overall budget "we'll do all the high flying stunts in Australia, where labor costs are down plus we can tap into the Hong Kong choreography/stunt crowd which is much more affordable than doing it here in NorthAm), but also an investment in a pair of filmmakers already proven to be both narrative and technical innovators in film making. The Matrix "is like nothing you've ever seen before" was part of the draw. D&D, to date, doesn't have that and the info passed around in what another poster calls "the trades" isn't that promising beyond possibly a movement beyond prior IP quick cash grabs. And I think a lot of it has to do with how Hasbro licensing relates with Hollywood. At best, we're going to get something like Transformers, possibly/inconsistently entertaining but will leave fans divided on the fidelity to source front. At worst, Battleship.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The guardians argument absolutely ignores 2 important facts.
First Guardians was part of a successful well known franchise. I mean AntMan did huge money and it’s AntMan.
But second and more importantly Guardians was a SciFi movie, as I said before it is an accepted fact that audiences will turn out for SciFi but will not for fantasy unless it is a very well known IP. Lord of the rings is an example of a successful fantasy series. I challenge anyone to name another. The last witch hunter made 149 million against a 90 million Production budget, which I would guess, when promotion costs are taken into account, means it actually ended up taking a loss for the studio. That was a fantasy film based supposedly on his own DND campaign.
People just do not go out and watch fantasy wizards and warriors movies en mass and I don’t see anything about this film that will change that.
Lord of the rings is an example of a successful fantasy series. I challenge anyone to name another.
Hey now, Wrinkle in Time had D&D messiah Chris Pine and ... oh wait.
Seriously, I think you're right. Harry Potter is probably the other "fantasy" franchise that did well, but that was predicated on a global reading phenomenon that really was unlike anything in the children's book market. On the more conventional fantasy front, there was an effort at Narnia, but it didn't stick. "Fantasy" films just don't seed in popular imagination the way science fiction, or now superhero films have. I don't think this eternally dooms them (again, LOTR did in fact work, though I'm curious whether Amazon's endeavor to milk more life out of the franchise will). I do think part of the problem is that when folks think "fantasy" they see largely tired tropes.
Did anyone see/like The Green Knight? I had been hoping to see it in theaters, but there was Delta variant freak outs going on when it was playing in my area so it never happened.
Maybe we'll luck out and when Ridley Scott's done kicking the self-parasitic corpse of Alien around, he'll return to Legend (kidding). And I've heard some talk of Willow being revisited (anyone else here think Drizzt's signature fighting style has Mad Martigan in its DNA? I dare Salvatore and his game table to say know, they're the exact age for that to have an impact).
The Guardians quip wasn't so much an argument as a quip not uninformed by the circumstances of Guardian's production on any level.
Fantasy tends to do better (and thus is better represented) in the animated segment, because it's often considered more juvenile than sci-fi, and because live action fantasy used to be very difficult to make look good compared to sci-fi. GoT cutting down on direwolves for budget reasons should tell us that while that's gotten a lot better, it's still definitely an issue. Now, maybe movies like Frozen, Moana or Raya and the Last Dragon aren't what immediately comes to mind when you're asked about fantasy, but Star Wars and even Star Trek (particularly modern Trek) don't come to mind first to me when I'm asked about sci-fi either - both genres are quite broad.
edit: alternative successful fantasy series - Pirates of the Carribean.
Fantasy tends to do better (and thus is better represented) in the animated segment, because it's often considered more juvenile than sci-fi, and because live action fantasy used to be very difficult to make look good compared to sci-fi. GoT cutting down on direwolves for budget reasons should tell us that while that's gotten a lot better, it's still definitely an issue. Now, maybe movies like Frozen, Moana or Raya and the Last Dragon aren't what immediately comes to mind when you're asked about fantasy, but Star Wars and even Star Trek (particularly modern Trek) don't come to mind first to me when I'm asked about sci-fi either - both genres are quite broad.
edit: alternative successful fantasy series - Pirates of the Carribean.
For some reason I never think of Pirates as Fantasy, but then again I think they are massively overrated as a movie franchise :)
Amazons Wheel of Time series may encourage people to take a punt on a fantasy movie, especially as despite all the talk of the Dragon Reborn there are never any actual live, or dead for that matter, Dragons represented in it :). Something I was very disappointed in the first time I read the full series :).
It is strange how we define genres of film, your right I never consider Animation when it comes to fantasy, although Starwars and Star Trek are my definition of Sci Fi (and not as Sheldon insists Starwars being Sci Fantasy because it has magic and swords in it).
For some reason I never think of Pirates as Fantasy, but then again I think they are massively overrated as a movie franchise :)
That's the thing, there's plenty of things people don't think of as fantasy that really are. If it's fairytales like Snow White or Beauty and the Beast it's not typically thought of as fantasy, yet it is. Mulan isn't thought of as fantasy because it's oriental, yet it is. Steampunk is often thought of as sci-fi but it's fantasy and has been since Jules Verne's futuristic ideas got left in the dust by actual progress. Norse-themed adventure stories are usually considered fantasy but those with classic mythology as their base often are not, for some weird reason. PotC has undead pirates and curses and magical ships - it's fantasy alright. I won't speak to its quality or possible lack thereof, but I don't think anyone can deny its success as a franchise.
Star Wars and Star Trek are sci-fi, but both are also more specifically described as space operas. They're not speculative about future science, as "hard'" sci-fi is typically described. The Alien franchise is sci-fi, but most people will categorize it as horror first (both fantasy and sci-fi movies often get categorized as "horror" when aired on tv even if they're really not, which annoys me on a personal level). When I think of sci-fi movies I think of Interstellar, 2001: a Space Odyssey, Inception or Wall-E; I don't really think of Jurassic Park, The Hunger Games, MiB or Snowpiercer even though they're all more sci-fi than both Star Wars and even Star Trek. The OG Star Trek movies had some speculative aspects that bring it closer to 'obvious' sci-fi (the tv-series certainly do), but the recent batch are straight-up action flicks that revolve around characters, not ideas.
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What we know so far about the D&D movie is that its by Paramount Picture, was finished filming in Iceland and it's now set to release in March 2023. It’s written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, Regé-Jean Page, Hugh Grant, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Jason Wong and Daisy Head. The synopsis reads as follows:
.
Hoping the Druid summons a bunch of fairies who then polymorph them all into woolly mammoths, would love to get tips on how to help the BBEG deal with that ;)
That's a lot of decontextualized "evidence" you're trying to put out there. As 6th points out. Guardians really doesn't serve as a counterpoint to anything I've brought up. It was the ninth movie within six years of a proven box office brand, Marvel studios had built enough of a foundation with the MCU to start taking very measured "risks" in Guardians case moving more into "space heroes" and the whole cosmic marvel side of things, using a director who had sort of hipster/edgy cred to see how he'd play out with what was already being recognized as the Marvel formula.
And again, my point was the Marvel project did in fact simplify/reduce the comic lore into smaller doses, even Guardians of the Galaxy (like the Kree play a major role but we don't really know anything about them from that movie, they save that for several movies later). Yes, SHIELD is introduced in Iron Man, but it's done in this easter eggy expositional joke way through Coulson, and even Nick Fury jumping in the stinger is something that likely went over the heads of most audiences, but it gave them enough to want more.
A Dungeons and Dragons movie can name drop Neverwinter and Harpers but choosing to call a movie Forgotten Realms instead of Dungeons and Dragons would be like Marvel deciding to call Iron Man, Earth 616.
The biggest problem I see is folks thinking Chris Pine is a Box Office draw. People saw Star Trek because of Star Trek, people didn't see Star Trek because of Chris Pine. He's a good working actor who had some higher marquee during a period where Hollywood was still trying to figure out what do after peak Matt Damon. More concerning is relegating the movie to two writer/directors whose biggest credit to date are an episode of Afraid of the Dark. The whole production are basically "company men" and its production history to date just feels bland ... which isn't a fair way to judge, maybe the film maintained a Lucasfilm level secured set.
Regardless, if it's coming 2023 maybe we'll get some real looks at it through Memorial Day trailers next year.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
He's no A-lister for sure, but paying say, Dwayne Johnson's current salary would arguably have been disproportionate and the cast has more box office pull than that of the 2000 movie (with all due respect to Jeremy Irons). Heck, Chris Pine alone has more box office pull than that entire cast at the time. It's still definitely a step up.
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I keep brain drifting Sam Neil into Hugh Grant's space in the current cast. Sam Neil would've been an awesome Red Wizard. Hugh Grant ... I'm thinking someone told their agent he wanted to do sone more CGI driven stuff so he could phone it in like Colin Firth ... agent thought Grant meant Kingsmen level not Paddington, so here we are.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I really don't care about Marvel lore. Not in the slightest. I don't care if the movies were inaccurate and I don't care about the content of the comics. It's immaterial to the point debated.
The point I was making was that obscure becomes mainstream by its success. You're putting the cart before the horse by insisting that the name has to be recognisable before it does anything of note. The Guardians of the Galaxy is a counter point because it absolutely bucks the idea that you need name recognition to market the movie. They didn't have name regonition and as a result of a succesful movie, they do now. If your point were true, the that movie would not have been successful.
You do need something though. If not a valuable IP, then actor fame. Or previous credits that were successful from basically anyone involved, including people you never see or hear like producers. Or you go with an inventive cheap campaign, or you just throw lots of money at the advertising budget (this is not typically a good idea if the movie itself was low budget). The point isn't that you absolutely need a recognizeable name, the point is that you need something and a recognizeable name can be that something. That aside, GotG might have been called "MCU movie 10" and it wouldn't really have mattered; I really don't see how you can argue that just being part of the MCU franchise by then had no effect on box office pull.
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The fact that invalidates your point is that Guardians of the Galaxy would not have been successful if it was not, in fact, "Marvel Studios Movie 9 (or 10, maybe Sixth is right). Yes, Guardian's was "different" but audiences were also well aware of a consistent quality product via precedent.
I'll do you a favor and argue with myself better than you've proven capable in this thread. Now Breakouts can happen, the viral tag or whatever we called them before there were hashtags back in the day "What is the Matrix?" was a smash that did "come out of nowhere" (though I was in one of the college towns at the time that were selected as a test screening audience to build the hype or whatever marketers were calling virality pre-facebook). The thing about The Matrix though was it was a risk, yes, but a modest risk budget wise (i.e. not just overall budget "we'll do all the high flying stunts in Australia, where labor costs are down plus we can tap into the Hong Kong choreography/stunt crowd which is much more affordable than doing it here in NorthAm), but also an investment in a pair of filmmakers already proven to be both narrative and technical innovators in film making. The Matrix "is like nothing you've ever seen before" was part of the draw. D&D, to date, doesn't have that and the info passed around in what another poster calls "the trades" isn't that promising beyond possibly a movement beyond prior IP quick cash grabs. And I think a lot of it has to do with how Hasbro licensing relates with Hollywood. At best, we're going to get something like Transformers, possibly/inconsistently entertaining but will leave fans divided on the fidelity to source front. At worst, Battleship.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The guardians argument absolutely ignores 2 important facts.
First Guardians was part of a successful well known franchise. I mean AntMan did huge money and it’s AntMan.
But second and more importantly Guardians was a SciFi movie, as I said before it is an accepted fact that audiences will turn out for SciFi but will not for fantasy unless it is a very well known IP. Lord of the rings is an example of a successful fantasy series. I challenge anyone to name another. The last witch hunter made 149 million against a 90 million Production budget, which I would guess, when promotion costs are taken into account, means it actually ended up taking a loss for the studio. That was a fantasy film based supposedly on his own DND campaign.
People just do not go out and watch fantasy wizards and warriors movies en mass and I don’t see anything about this film that will change that.
Hey now, Wrinkle in Time had D&D messiah Chris Pine and ... oh wait.
Seriously, I think you're right. Harry Potter is probably the other "fantasy" franchise that did well, but that was predicated on a global reading phenomenon that really was unlike anything in the children's book market. On the more conventional fantasy front, there was an effort at Narnia, but it didn't stick. "Fantasy" films just don't seed in popular imagination the way science fiction, or now superhero films have. I don't think this eternally dooms them (again, LOTR did in fact work, though I'm curious whether Amazon's endeavor to milk more life out of the franchise will). I do think part of the problem is that when folks think "fantasy" they see largely tired tropes.
Did anyone see/like The Green Knight? I had been hoping to see it in theaters, but there was Delta variant freak outs going on when it was playing in my area so it never happened.
Maybe we'll luck out and when Ridley Scott's done kicking the self-parasitic corpse of Alien around, he'll return to Legend (kidding). And I've heard some talk of Willow being revisited (anyone else here think Drizzt's signature fighting style has Mad Martigan in its DNA? I dare Salvatore and his game table to say know, they're the exact age for that to have an impact).
The Guardians quip wasn't so much an argument as a quip not uninformed by the circumstances of Guardian's production on any level.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Fantasy tends to do better (and thus is better represented) in the animated segment, because it's often considered more juvenile than sci-fi, and because live action fantasy used to be very difficult to make look good compared to sci-fi. GoT cutting down on direwolves for budget reasons should tell us that while that's gotten a lot better, it's still definitely an issue. Now, maybe movies like Frozen, Moana or Raya and the Last Dragon aren't what immediately comes to mind when you're asked about fantasy, but Star Wars and even Star Trek (particularly modern Trek) don't come to mind first to me when I'm asked about sci-fi either - both genres are quite broad.
edit: alternative successful fantasy series - Pirates of the Carribean.
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For some reason I never think of Pirates as Fantasy, but then again I think they are massively overrated as a movie franchise :)
Amazons Wheel of Time series may encourage people to take a punt on a fantasy movie, especially as despite all the talk of the Dragon Reborn there are never any actual live, or dead for that matter, Dragons represented in it :). Something I was very disappointed in the first time I read the full series :).
It is strange how we define genres of film, your right I never consider Animation when it comes to fantasy, although Starwars and Star Trek are my definition of Sci Fi (and not as Sheldon insists Starwars being Sci Fantasy because it has magic and swords in it).
That's the thing, there's plenty of things people don't think of as fantasy that really are. If it's fairytales like Snow White or Beauty and the Beast it's not typically thought of as fantasy, yet it is. Mulan isn't thought of as fantasy because it's oriental, yet it is. Steampunk is often thought of as sci-fi but it's fantasy and has been since Jules Verne's futuristic ideas got left in the dust by actual progress. Norse-themed adventure stories are usually considered fantasy but those with classic mythology as their base often are not, for some weird reason. PotC has undead pirates and curses and magical ships - it's fantasy alright. I won't speak to its quality or possible lack thereof, but I don't think anyone can deny its success as a franchise.
Star Wars and Star Trek are sci-fi, but both are also more specifically described as space operas. They're not speculative about future science, as "hard'" sci-fi is typically described. The Alien franchise is sci-fi, but most people will categorize it as horror first (both fantasy and sci-fi movies often get categorized as "horror" when aired on tv even if they're really not, which annoys me on a personal level). When I think of sci-fi movies I think of Interstellar, 2001: a Space Odyssey, Inception or Wall-E; I don't really think of Jurassic Park, The Hunger Games, MiB or Snowpiercer even though they're all more sci-fi than both Star Wars and even Star Trek. The OG Star Trek movies had some speculative aspects that bring it closer to 'obvious' sci-fi (the tv-series certainly do), but the recent batch are straight-up action flicks that revolve around characters, not ideas.
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