D&D to adapt role-playing game to big screen
by Paul Florence
Paramount Pictures announced that they will be releasing a “Dungeons and Dragons” movie due out November 2021. There has been a well-received draft of the movie script from writer Michael Gilio, who wrote and starred in indie movie “Kwik Stop,” and did additional writing for “Jolene.”
“The script appears to give the movie some forward traction at long last,” said Christian Hoffer in comicbook.com.
The film will be directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who wrote the screenplay for “Spider-man: Homecoming” and directed “Game Night.”
Paramount Pictures is also hoping to land some well-known actors for the main role. This list includes actors Will Smith, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt, Jamie Foxx, Joel Edgerton, Dave Bautista, Jeremy Renner, or Johnny Depp. Some of these famous Hollywood actors, such as Vin Diesel, have stated that they are huge fans of the game D&D.
In an interview by sciencefiction.com, producer Roy Lee described the new D&D movie as a “Guardians of the Galaxy-tone movie in a Tolkien-like universe” and “ a ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ romp inside that world.”
Judge teacher Matt Vanderlaan, moderator of the Judge Adventuring Guild (JAG), said that he doesn’t feel like they should include big names, and instead make this film a launching platform for younger, lesser-known actors.
Junior Mark Monette, a member of JAG said, “I’m not sure if it is [a good idea] because D&D has so many different storylines you could do. I find it odd that they would make a D&D movie because there are so many different plots that you could choose. I’m not sure how it would differ from any fantasy movie.”
Mr. V said, “I think it’s definitely a popular thing, and capitalizing upon that makes sense to me. I think the challenge would be adapting a game that’s purposefully open-ended storytelling into a movie.”
There have been past attempts, though some unsuccessful to bring the popular game to big screen and small screen alike. There was the TV show “D&D,” which ran for three seasons from 1983-1985 on CBS which followed six kids being sucked into the magical realm of D&D from an amusement park ride, which seemed generally well-received by fans and critics alike.
There was also the first attempt to turn the popular role-playing game – where you create your own characters, go on adventures, and fight villains –into a franchise which started in 2000 and ended in 2012. The films in the trilogy were “D&D(2000),” “D&D: Wrath of the Dragon God(2005)”, and “D&D: The Book of Vile Darkness(2012).” All of these films attempted to go into the deep lore of the game D&D, but unfortunately were unsuccessful and not well-received by critics or fans.
Mr. V recalled some memories of seeing the movies when he was in middle school and high school.
“I remember the first D&D movie was terrible,” he said. “I saw it in theaters when I was in like maybe 7th grade and I didn’t really like it because it was just kind of low-quality, but the second one that came out that went straight-to-DVD, I think it was like Wrath of the Dragon God, I actually had a lot of fun with. My friends and I purposefully found it in high school, had a movie night after we played D&D together and kind of watched that and shared in it. It was a good bonding experience.”
One successful attempt so far of D&D game-to-screen adaptation has been the popular thriller TV show “Stranger Things.” This show greatly revived the popularity of the game, and Hasbro has even released a D&D/Stranger Things crossover starter set. Because of the growing popularity of the game, the time might just be ripe for another game-to-big-screen adaptation.
“D&D is definitely having another moment in popular culture. It’s popular, it’s trendy, there’s lots of discussion about it on YouTube and in various places where people broadcast the games that they’re playing,” Mr. V said.
Since its beginnings there has been controversy around D&D. Mr. V recalled memories of the “Satanic Panic” in the 1980s and 90s,
“There was a popular little kind of pamphlet about that time that went around called ‘Dark Dungeons.’
“It was one of the Jack Chick tracts. Jack Chick was a very, kind of fundamentalist Christian publisher who made these little comic books about issues, and one of them was about the dangers of D&D. In it he interpreted the game as people actually performing spells and worshipping the devil and becoming witches. Chick also claimed that it led to the death of actual players.
“When I got into D&D and saw what it actually was, I kind of laughed aloud because those rumors were ridiculous and so off compared to what actually was going on. I think that there was definitely this kind of Satanic Panic that arose in the ‘80s and the ‘90s about it. But when I got more into the game as I got older, by about 8th grade on, there was definitely a shift in understanding that this was just what nerds do to have fun and hang out.”
With the franchise wars going on right now in the movie industry, Paramount Pictures may be looking for another franchise to make them more money at the box office. They might get just that if this first reboot of D&D in movie form succeeds.
They also just might be looking to make D&D into a cinematic universe if it is successful enough. Look at how much money the Marvel company has made from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If Paramount Pictures could mirror this success with a D&D cinematic universe, it would not only be phenomenal, but make the studio much more money at the box office than ever before.
However, it is hard to adapt a game with such deep lore and so much freedom to the big screen. You would have to find the perfect balance between a real-life party going on a quest actually playing the game, and the characters in the fantastical world of the Forgotten Realms.
D&D could either fail like some of the other attempts to bring the game to the big screen, or be a fantastic success and make Paramount another money-making franchise – or even if it is very well-received, a cinematic universe.
I hope that the new adaptation will have the same sort of real D&D quest feel that 2005’s “Wrath of the Dragon God” because I think that’s really what will make it a success for avid fans of the game like me.
Whatever the success of the movie, D&D seems to be making a resurgence because of how much attention it is getting now in pop culture.
