DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Movie Will Be Like GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Set in Middle Earth
Warner Bros. has been slowly trying to develop a Dungeons & Dragons movie since they landed the rights to the property in 2013. They finally started to get rolling on it last year when WB executive Greg Silverman said:
“We are so excited about bringing the world of Dungeons & Dragons to life on the big screen. This is far and away the most well-known brand in fantasy, which is the genre that drives the most passionate film followings. D&D has endless creative possibilities, giving our filmmakers immense opportunities to delight and thrill both fans and moviegoers new to the property.”
Producer Roy Lee recently did an interview with Collider in which he gives us an idea of what they are planning. He says they are going to draw inspiration from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the Middle Earth world of J.R.R. Tolkien:
“This new Dungeons & Dragons will be a Guardians of the Galaxy-tone movie in a Tolkien-like universe. Because when you think of all the Hobbit movies and The Lord of the Rings, they have an earnestness to them, and to see something fun, a Raiders romp inside that world, I feel is something the audience has not seen before.”
I can get behind that concept. It could make for a very fun film, but they’ve gotta have a smart script and director to be able to effectively pull it off. Mixing fantasy and comedy isn’t necessarily an easy thing to pull off — just look at the movie Your Highness. The current script they have for the film was written by David Leslie Johnson (Orphan), and from the sound of it, the studio likes what they see. Lee continues:
“I think it will really be moving forward quickly, and I don’t anticipate it not getting greenlit this year, mostly because Warner Bros. has DC now, and LEGO, and the Harry Potter universe that’s being cultivated as their franchises. I believe they see Dungeons & Dragons as something that could be cultivated as a multi-universe movie where there will be spinoffs from the first movie being in Forgotten Realms and subsequent movies being in different worlds.”
For those of you not familiar with Forgotten Realms, it is what D&D players refer to as a “campaign setting,” a world in the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse in which a player group’s adventures can take place. Forgotten Realms is a Middle Earth-type world, and others include a steampunk-inspired world called Eberron and the dystopian, post-apocalyptic desert world of Dark Sun.
Lee goes on to talk about how faithful the film will be to the game explaining:
“Everyone who’s involved with it now, especially the writer of the first draft is a fan from the very beginning starting with Chainmail, which turned into Dungeons & Dragons, so you’ll see things that are very faithful to the source material as well as new elements are being incorporated with help from Wizards of the Coast, who are giving a lot of input on the script.”
I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, but I am familiar with it, and I love fantasy films, so this has the potential to be something special and an incredibly entertaining movie. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.