Hollywood has tried to make movies out of the popular fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons before. It didn’t go well, but with the game experiencing a resurgence in interest, now seems like a good time for another swing.
Stepping up to the plate are writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who appropriately enough helmed the movie Game Night. The cast is pretty good too: it includes Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Bridgerton breakout star Regé-Jean Page.
But what kind of movie is it, exactly? To hear Pine tell it, we’re in action-comedy territory.
Dungeons & Dragons movie will mash together Game of Thrones, Monty Python, and more
“We had a hell of a fun time making it,” Pine told Collider. “There was a lot of laughs. The way that I’ve been describing it, it’s like Game of Thrones mixed with a little Princess Bride, just a smidge of Holy Grail; it’s somewhere in that ballpark. It’s a lot of fun. It’s got a lot of thrills. It’s poppy, it’s ’80s heartfelt, there’s a bit of Goonies in there.”
"My character, he’s the ultimate party planner. I think it’s going to be really good. I mean, who f***ing knows, but I think we got a good shot and John and John are killer guys. They know comedy and they know heart and we had a great cast and we had a good time making it. And that’s all you can ask for."
Between House of the Dragon, The Wheel of Time, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, there’s a lot of fantasy either out there or on the way that takes a serious approach to the materials, so sure, why not lighten things up a bit? Anyone who’s ever played Dungeons & Dragons knows that things tend to get a little goofy.
Pine’s description kind of reminds me of Vox Machina, Amazon’s animated D&D-adjacent show. There are worse ideas than a live-action big screen version of that.
The Dungeons & Dragons movie is due out on March 3, 2023.
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