Who thinks that the next dungeons & dragons movie will bomb?

Bad

WB will fuck it up. It will have a shit script, a shit director, a shit cast, and it won't get the spirit of D&D right. They will make up a new setting rather than tapping into the decades of settings and lore available. They won't think to try an MCU model by having Forgotten Realms movies, Greyhawk movies, Dragonlance movies, etc all with different aesthetics, styles, direction, etc.

Bad in the US, really good in China.

China's a big market, didn't know why they like Fantasy though.

Literally everybody thinks it will bomb.

The only thing that would make it even possible to succeed is to not include D&D in the name because even most D&D nerds don't want to see that shit. And even then, it would still more likely bomb.

>Everybody thought it was pretty bad
I didn't think it was bad, but it wasn't good. I liked seeing the visuals and how the world came alive, but the writing was truly awful.

Yup! The stigma of having D&D in the title will hurt it.

The only dungeons and dragons thing that could ever possibly get anywhere in terms of movies is Drizzt related shit and that would NEVER be made because it would involve blackface.

Isn't "bomb" just a finance thing? Aren't there bombs that were critically/popularly well-received?

>I didn't think it was bad, but it wasn't good.
Same
Warcraft was a mediocre movie whose appeal was in seeing the big screen realization of a setting that people have enjoyed for years, the same would probably be true for a D&D movie
Of course if they actually do something with one of the settings hopefully not Forgotten Realms or at least not the Sword Coast and treat it with a modicum of respect the film could do fairly well

Will it spawn a franchise a-la Michel Bay's Transformers? Probably not, but even if its the same quality of the last ones so long as its entertaining I'll eventually get to purchasing it on DVD.

It will flop but I don't get why.

They want a Guardians of the Galaxy type film, and GotG was good because James Gunn is great. Yet for all these throwaway IP films, they keep hiring writers and directors who have either a) done nothing or b) pumped out nothing but trash.

Instead of hiring Brett Ratner or Jon M. Chu, why not get someone good? Isn't there someone out there who's passionate about the source material and makes good films?

It's "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising". Part of the Gamers trilogy (soon to be quadrilogy). Love those silly movies.

Warcraft was far from passibly written. And the problem with making a D&D movie is that they just be adapting a setting, not any particular story. That means it could go in any direction, no matter how horrible.

Critical bombs are a thing as well, not to mention financial AND critical bombs.

>Part of the Gamers trilogy

Wait, there was a third one? How is it?

Did it pan out for Warcraft?
I was under the impression that went poorly, despite that phenomenon.

It's pretty good, by far the most professional movie they've made. It focuses more on a fictional magic-the-gathering-inspired card game than RPGs though. The extended edition is free on youtube, search for "The Gamers: Hands of Fate". In a few months we'll be a getting a new one as well, so that's neat.

>It focuses more on a fictional magic-the-gathering-inspired card game than RPGs though.

That's a shame, I like that they actually got the D&D licence (?) for the second one. But I guess there's only so much you can do.

Still, I'll definitely watch it before I judge it too much, thanks for the heads up.

A D&D movie can't be good, too much temptation by people out of touch to put surface level references in it or wrong headedness in thinking it would have to be high fantasy like the Warcraft movie. And that movie alone should be enough of a warning sign as to a another D&D film.

The only possible way I would see it as anywhere near digestible anymore is making it a comedy. Follow the basic premise of the old D&D cartoon but instead of plucky teens, a bunch of lovable losers get dropped into it. Play the world they get dropped into completely straight as a nightmarish medieval setting where there are terrible monsters, paladins that can't be reasoned with, hot demons and shit covered peasants. Play this out for what it is and have them constantly trying to escape while slowly adapting and becoming murder hobos for real. Maybe the fattest one gets eaten by something or actually gets wizard powers. A comedy cross between Jumanji, Wish Master and one of those horrible Japanese MMO fantasy novels where a sue gets dumped into some shitty other world. Jack Black can be the dungeon master/impish magical being trying to teach the losers something and Vin Diesel can either be the villain they run afoul or the "that guy" of the group.

No problem! I'm actually on the lookout for more /tg-relevant movies and web-series. It's a niche genre, but there are some hidden gems here and there.

I don't think D&D is mainstream enough to warrant a cinematic universe, but that does sound neat. Sadly, these studios want to mass produce formulaic movies. James Gunn is the exception to the rule. Our odds of getting a good team behind the movie are slim to none.

youtube.com/watch?v=2Wbjtl8U760

youtube.com/watch?v=S8PKYUlWHNE

This so much. Recent anime has made "getting sucked into a game" fashionable again, and it has a lot of potential in a D&D movie.

Hell, even the made-for-TV movies were kind of charming when they did meta-jokes. Just don't overdo it and it could work.

Vin's character would have to be the only one initially enjoying himself and wanting to stay.

>No problem! I'm actually on the lookout for more /tg-relevant movies and web-series. It's a niche genre, but there are some hidden gems here and there.

Fear of Girls is okay, Freaks and Geeks is great.

Fuck everything you just said
Making it a comedy would be worse then it actually failing while still being a straight fantasy
If you try to make a D&D comedy it WILL turn into Your Highness and no one wants that

And sucked into a fantasy world is the laziest shit ever

Wheter it bombes or not (it will bomb), I hope that at least it will produce entertaining material like the previous one did.

Warcraft went poorly in the west, but China (and maybe Korea?) ate that shit up.

Would also work if Vin's character is the older brother of one of them, have him also get transported and fully go ham as their villain. Sort of like how the Lego movie played out. Doing that would probably work better as a series though.

I like Your Highness for everything but the comedy.

Has Jeremy Irons ever said anything about this?

He's a good actor and I've heard rumours he was chewing the scenery to see if he could get away with it. That seems pretty unprofessional even for such a shitty film, was it not just bad direction?

They don't like fantasy, They like World of Warcraft

I think just inherently being a 'game' movie hurts it, too.

The best 'game' movie I've seen is the new Ratchet and Clank, and we had to pull it from our theater because a whole 5 people were showing up to see it each day.

The marketing for it was horrible (many people didn't even know it existed) and the movie itself was the exactly plot of the new game, so if you already played it you had no reason to see the movie. (A lot of the scenes were straight rips from the game, with better visuals.)

Assassin's Creed was decent to, but I wouldn't really call it a 'game' movie because it's more like they took the idea of the game and did their own thing instead of basing it on the games. (However, it also bombed at our theater.)

Warcraft in China is like Starcraft in Korea.

It's the only way it could be even remotely passable as a film concept.

Your Highness succeeded in its intent because of the stoner comedy boom, the old D&D movie failed because it was an unintentional comedy. and the ganre of getting transported into another setting is actually popular now. LotR was a massive success but because of that other straight faced high fantasy settings cannot ever measure up. The Hobbit movies tried and failed and those piles of shit had the best chance of success.

The comedy D&D movie approach wouldn't be stoner comedy like Your Highness but more about people getting stuck in a horrible situation of their own making, a dark fantasy parody where amusingly bad things keep happening.

>I wouldn't really call it a 'game' movie because it's more like they took the idea of the game and did their own thing instead of basing it on the games.

This is how a film adaptation should be, but when you have a strong fanbase it's a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. Imagine if they destroyed Waterdeep or killed off The Lady of Pain or something, people would be pissed regardless of context.

This is one of the most genius movie pitches I've seen in a while. It would also make sense from a money perspective, as it could cash in on nostalgia from the old cartoon.

A light-hearted D&D adventure could be just the thing the fantasy genre needs right now.

I've yet to watch either of those, actually. Thanks!

>The comedy D&D movie approach wouldn't be stoner comedy like Your Highness

I almost want this.

The 2002 Scooby-Doo movie (again, James Gunn) was originally planned as a more adult-oriented comedy poking fun at the original series (Shaggy is a stoner, Velma is a lesbian, etc.). With 40 years of history and maybe a framing device like The Lego Movie, they could definitely do something like this.

>I've yet to watch either of those, actually. Thanks!

No problem, also go watch Mazes and Monsters, based on the suicide scare of early D&D. Pretty sure it was Tom Hanks' first role too.

This is why I think the concept of 'game' movies would be better off as miniseries. The plot is generally too large in scope for a movie, and the series can stay more true to the games.

Otherwise I think the movies should not try and take the plot of the original games, but expand upon the universe. (While staying relatively true to it.)

I hate the idea of this movie being a comedy, it reminds me too much of people turning "geek culture" into a punchline like Big Bang Theory or anything Felicia Day has ever done, and when people take something retro and turn it into a parody of itself like 21 Jump Street and CHiPs

If I had my way the movie would be Dungeons&Dragons: The Bloodstone Lands and it would be about Zhengyi the Witch-King coming back and Gareth Dragonsbane having to go kick his ass

For example, I think the Assassin's Creed movie should have focused on another test subject or Abstergo employee instead of just taking the "memories through DNA and templars" thing and rolling with that.

If they were going to make it serious, they could use an official campaign and base it on that. This way it could keep to the series, and they could sell the campaign to get new people into the game.

However, I agree with the others that it would be better off as a comedy. 'Geek' culture has already been played as a joke for years and it's not like anything's going to change that. If anything it's made it more acceptable/mainstream.

>If I had my way the movie would be Dungeons&Dragons: The Bloodstone Lands and it would be about Zhengyi the Witch-King coming back and Gareth Dragonsbane having to go kick his ass

Think about what you just said, how could any audience ever take anything like that with a straight face? Geek culture IS a punchline. The people behind the money know this and that is why it's always presented the way it is. The idea of another D&D movie done totally serious cannot be made unless you make it more like Game of Thrones, which would suck.

The only thing serious that would work for D&D is a a cartoon series on Netflix or something. A serious movie just wouldn't work unless you took something corny like the Black Company and called it D&D.

Honestly the best way to do the movie would just be to drop D&D from the title and put it in the opening credits like Marvel
Treat the thing like any other fantasy movie and just set it in Greyhawk or Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms no one outside of Veeky Forums would know the difference
Have a decent movie that isn't billed as a D&D movie but as a movie from the "minds" behind D&D whatever the fuck that means

But what would it have over any other generic superhero/fantasy movie? We've had those since the 80s.

This is why the comedy/Earth angle could work. Throw in puppets, throw in jokes only greybeards will get, but don't try to be the next Lord of the Rings. Do something different: maybe it's actually the story of some 70s teens playing D&D.

I think a lot of the Marvel movies would fare horribly if it wasn't for the Marvel connection. If they invented a new superhero called Green Ogre or Lightning God and otherwise were the same, they wouldn't be above 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. Licensing goes a long way.

The Hobbit failed because of milking the cow too hard and trying to spread something which should have been a single movie into 3. Awful CGI (contrasting LotR's famous practical effects), unnecessary changes to the plot (like adding a bunch of original scenes and plotlines which were almost universally hated, the hamfisted romance ones and Smaug getting gold poured on him in particular), and 60fps gimmicks that only made the awful CGI look even more awful on top of making everything look like a particularly high production values soap opera didn't help either. And there was absolutely no need for the prologue.

This is about critical failure, mind you. Financially they did great.

Have it be about a group of modern teens and the older brother DM.
Then sell the modules/adventures.
Have them discussing meta strategy in character and the NPC's wondering about it and the DM in voice over telling them it was awful.

Fuck it, that could work. A movie like The Princess Bride or The Gamers but with some Scream mixed in there.

For anyone who's curious, there's an edit of the Hobbit trilogy which makes it faithful to the books (or at least about as faithful as LotR was). It's 3 hours long I think but definitely worth watching if you want to see what the project could have been if not because of greed. And it would be even better with practical effects.

Fuckin whatever at this point
All I'm saying is I wouldn't go see a comedy D&D movie because that was what the first one was and it was fucking horrible, it was released in theaters and bombed harder than Timothy McVeigh
All I want is a good fantasy movie period, I don't care if it's D&D or not I just want a good fantasy movie, I would however prefer that the D&D movie be a played completely straight high fantasy film
But if all of you want to sit there and watch a movie with surface level baby's first D&D joke "comedy" while a bunch of people who don't actually get the joke cackle around you the fine

I think that the tabletop origin should be ignored for a movie. They should just make something based off a book series or use one of the settings for an original work, taking a lot of artistic license to make it more palatable

Wasn't their a movie about 7 dwarves trapped in a collapsed cave? There were 1-2 threads here discussing the trailer.

Obviously I'm just seeing the comparison here.

Is there a title or a link you'd like to share? I'd like to watch it.

Chinese government has actively supressed works of fiction that do not express a world grounded in reality, so fantasy and sci-fi. Their fear has been that such stories might contain hidden, subversive notions that would speak out against the party.

Lately, however, it seems they have discovered that fantasy is generally metaphor for internal journeys as opposed to sci-fis political and social themes. They seem to be relaxing their stance on fantasy works.

It'll be set in The Forgotten Realms and will therefore suck ass. So I don't want it to be made.

>It'll be set in The Forgotten Realms and will therefore be fucking awesome. So I don't want to wait one more second for this epic lotr killer movie.
Ftfy

Yeah, look for The Tolkien Edit

Him chewing the scenery was the only good thing about that movie.

I don't think it will bomb. Superhero movies are still popular.

When good actors see shitty scripts, they tend to have as much fun with it as possible.
Partly in order to at least make it entertaining, but mostly because a good actor surrounded by shit/inexperienced actors and a shit script actually makes things worse by highlighting how terribly everyone else is.
The Eragon movie showcases this perfectly

It has more reasons to suck.
>Stewart was quick to add that inclusivity, with regard to race, gender, age, sexual identity and other factors, were also key concerns as WotC moves forward with the movie project. In fact, that's been part of the entire 5th edition of D&D.

First film D&D film.was so bad it's almost good. Unironically enjoyed the second film. Haven't seen the third.

Oh dear, didn't they put a load of shit about 'nonbinary genders' in the phb?

I feel a bit bad for any inexperienced actor in one of those movies. Don't have experience to be gloriously bad but knowing the movie is going to be the only thing you are known for.

Oh no? Female characters in a fantasy movie? As long as none of them are the black thief sidekick from the first movie muppeting about I'm ok with that.

This doesn't bother me as much as you could think. I wish they said how much movie will kick ass or what kind of story or feel it will have before appeasing Bioware crowd.

Did you just assume the gender of characters in the movie you fucking cis scum?!

That's kind of the point; nobody who matters actually gives a shit.
Promoting it as a plus despite the demographic not caring means they're either unaware of their strengths, or don't think they're good enough for marketing, and neither is a good sign.

> Yfw they are actually talking in veiled terms about being IN UNIVERSE inclusive.

Can someone enlight me? Is a new D&D movie coming out?

Are you a literal fucking retard? How the fuck do you not know what bombing at the box office means?

Supposedly yes. Virtually nothing is known about it yet, I think. Not sure but I'm only halfway keeping up with the shit show.

Yes, WotC said they want it to be like Guardians of the Galaxy

The first one or the second one?

Also does that mean they want it to be comedy gold instead of serious business for serious autists? How is that gonna work? Shouldn't D&D be gritty and dark as fuck, with lots of rape involved?

The first one, I guess

>An ancient evil has awoken

Keep in mind that a "box office bomb" usually means that a movie doesn't make back what it cost to produce. In a way, it's much easier to bomb if your movie is very high budget, even with wide release - e.g. Heaven's Gate or Waterworld. By contrast, "sci-fi channel original" giant-whatever flicks don't make much money, but they produce them for pocket change, so they end up being profitable.

That's likely to be a case with any new D&D movie. The last few didn't have big sales, but they also didn't have big budgets, so they're not bombs. The first one (the Jeremy Irons / Marlon Wayans one) was only a bomb because they spent $45m on it (somehow). Bottom line, nobody's going to risk enough on it for it to ever be considered a bomb.

>That seems pretty unprofessional even for such a shitty film, was it not just bad direction?
Nah, not really. I'm sure it was obvious to everyone on set that it was going to be a B movie... most of the costuming and props are bordering on Ed Wood territory. It's not like Irons had any chance of "ruining" something. Better to have fun with the role and hopefully at least make it entertaining than to try and play it straight.

>some producer picks up a idea for a DnD movie
>pitches it to some studio
>"sounds ok, but we want the transformers audience. Throw some patriotic shit and Mark Walhberg and we'll deal. Oh and anime adaptions are a trend now, be sure to capitalize on that"
>accidentally ends up becoming the hollywood version of gate

I would lie if I said I don't want this to happen

would watch
Veeky Forums > /tv/

No, they didn't. It's literally one paragraph on the Sex section of the Personality and Background chapter, and the rest of it is another paragraph clarifying there's no mechanical difference between a male and female character.

>You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, for example, and some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon's image. Vou could also play a female character who presents herself as a man, a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male. Likewise, your character's sexual orientation is for you to decide.