When it landed in arcades in 1983, Dragon’s Lair was one of the most buzzed-about video games around. How could it not be? While games like Mario Bros. had you jumping around the screen as a little pixelated plumber, Dragon’s Lair featured beautiful animation from Don Bluth, the guy behind movies like An American Tail and All Dogs Go to Heaven. Sure, the game basically amounted to you hitting a button to avoid whatever traps Dirk the Daring encountered on his quest to rescue the beautiful Princess Daphne, but who cares when it looked like this?
Just to remind you, other games of the time looked like this:
The difference was real. Dragon’s Lair was even featured on the second season of Stranger Things, that running homage to all things ’80s.
At the time, people thought Dragon’s Lair would usher in a new era for arcade games. Of course it didn’t, because however cool the game looked, there wasn’t much to actually playing it. But there was quite a lot of talk of a movie adaptation — Don Bluth himself even tried to crowd-fund one a couple years back. And now, it finally may happen.
THR reports that Ryan Reynolds is in talks to star in and produce a live-action movie version of Dragon’s Lair for Netflix, which finally acquired the rights to the game after a year of negotiations. Bluth would produce, along with Gary Goldman, Jon Pomeroy, Trevor Engelson and Roy Lee. Dan and Kevin Hageman, who worked on The LEGO Movie, would write the script.
If this does to pass, it would fit with Reynold’s recent predilection for video game movies. First there was Detective Pikachu. And he’ll soon be starring in Free Guy, which isn’t an adaptation of any specific video game out there but is definitely about them:
Another fun note about Dragon’s Lair: although the idea was to get Dirk through a castle filled with hazards, it was hard, and he died, a lot. The death animations might have been the best thing about the game:
I feel like you can’t make a Dragon’s Lair movie without having Dirk die a bunch? Sounds like the kind of twisted thing Reynolds would be up for.
Here’s hoping this comes through. In the meanwhile, Free Guy hits theaters on July 3…I mean, if it doesn’t get pushed back like everything else.
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