Hugh Grant to bully some nerds as the villain in new Dungeons & Dragons movie
Film Features Hugh Grant
According to Deadline, Hugh Grant and Sophia Lillis (Beverly Marsh from It) have boarded the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, joining Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Regé-Jean Page. Paramount and eOne, which are putting out this movie, still haven’t put out any plot details, meaning we still don’t know if it’s a straight-up fantasy movie based on D&D lore or if it’s some kind of Jumanji thing where real people get transported to a fictional world, but we intend to keep complaining about it in these news stories until the studios decide to provide more details.
As for these new hires, Deadline doesn’t know who Lillis will be playing, but its sources are confident that Hugh Grant will be “the film’s antagonist.” Without any plot details to go off of, we’d have to guess that that means he’ll be playing the cool older brother of Chris Pine’s dorky nerd protagonist, and at some point Grant and his mean jock friends will go down into the basement where Pine and his nerd friends are playing D&D and make fun of them. Mean jock Hugh Grant will say something brutal in his charming accent, like, “Oh, you’re playing with elves and stuff, get some real friends!” and then Chris Pine will say “I have real friends, we’re playing D&D and it’s actually considered cool these days and they’re making a new movie about it,” but Hugh Grant won’t listen because he’ll be stealing some of their dad’s beers and taking them to a party.
Dungeons & Dragons is being written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who previously made Game Night with Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman. That was kind of a high-concept comedy about games, so it seems likely that there will be something wackier going on here than just people with swords, but again, we do not know.
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He’s clearly going to play the Demi-Lich.
He should play Vecna, and just spend the whole movie complaining that people keep trying to behead him.
Bonus points for namechecking Vecna, but I’d have gone with trying to steal his eye and/or hand for the real nerd cred.
Nah, he’s playing the DMPC who the DM’s entire campaign revolves around.
I hope this is good, but I also sort-of hope it fails and disappears from people’s memories quickly, just so we can get a movie of Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’s DIE instead.
DIE absolutely deserves an adaptation. Only wish the issues came out more frequently. I ended up falling off a bit after the first arc.
I ended up sticking to the volumes, TBH. (I also really enjoy all the variant covers collected at the end)
I found that, knowing it was going to be four five-issue arcs, waiting to read it in chunks helped the delay.
Holy crap, I don’t think this timeline is good enough for such a thing.
Die is amazing, but I don’t think cinema is capable of capturing all it’s nerdy greatness. No way you could fit the JRR Tolkien, Brontes, and HG Wells bits into a screenplay, for instance.
This is going to suck, isn’t it?Thirteen year old me from the past really wants a LOTR quality movie or TV show for D&D, before he leaves the mortal coil one day, but given the last 30 years it’s not looking good.
I mean D&D is just a set of game rules, I don’t know why anyone thinks there’s a great movie there. There are the campaign settings and you could have a Drizzt the Drow movie or something but even then it feels more “Forgotten Realms” than D&D itself.
Battleship is BINGO on steroids; somebody thought there was a gr…well, a movie in there.
“Battleship is BINGO on Ambien; somebody thought there was a gr…well, a movie in there.”Fixed that for you.
If nothing else, it got Rhianna her SAG card. Because I’m sure she was having a hard time getting insurance.
I always thought that the Drizzt stories would make for good animation.
I thought the same about Dragonlance. Then someone made it and we must never speak of it again.
Oh, sounds like it’s pretty bad then as no-one talks about it today. I used to read the Dragonlance books back in the pre-Game of Thrones era, and didn’t know of an animated series (remember the various games though). Seems like that animated series is best left, er… forgotten, in some… realms, then.
Who cares about that when you have……a Russian musical adaptation?
Oh man, I remember when DragonHeart came out and there on the movie screen was an awesome looking CGI dragon. (This was 1996 and it looked awesome) and I thought, “Now they can finally do an awesome Dragonlance movie.Turns out that Hollywood wasn’t thinking that my favorite book series as a 13 year old would make a good film.
I read one of the Drizzt books as a teen. The only thing that stood out to me were the fight scenes. Everything else was so forgettable.
You see, I actually think it’s for that reason that D&D and it’s framework is ripe for the taking, with lots of room for a good writer(s) to develop original characters and a great story that takes place in that familiar setting. I also think what you said fits perfectly. I imagine the Drow series of modules fleshed out and given depth to the basic framework that’s there could be amazing. The World of Greyhawk and the White Plume Mountain module given more story and compelling characters, with Blackrazor? Yes please! I could think of many more too.
The bottom line is the quality of writing and production. Using the settings and basic framework would provide familiarity, while at the same time provide similar flexibility to creatives that these modules gave DMs in the roleplaying setting. The problem is the quality and choices of what to adapt have been poor, not that creating something in a D&D world isn’t a winner if done right.
It’s hard to even imagine a scenario where it won’t. D&D doesn’t really have a central story on which to hang a movie. Sure there’s a lot of stories written in various D&D universes, but this movie isn’t called like “The Castle of Strahd” or “Tanis and Raistlin” or anything, so it’s gonna be generic sword and sorcery crap.
As for these new hires, Deadline doesn’t know who Lillis will be playing, but its sources are confident that Hugh Grant will be “the film’s antagonist.” If they were adopting the 80s cartoon, she’d make a perfect Sheila.
My first cartoon crush. And now that I think of it, my preference for red heads with freckles
Lemme guess. They all play at some beloved comic book shop, and Grant’s character wants to buy it and tear it down to erect condos. They have to raise the money in a big contest to buy it back, and along the way, they’ll learn more about each other and make a few new friends.
That, or it will be a psycho-sexual journey following the erotic misadventures of a teenage virgin drow trying to find true love in the Underdark. Either way.
Either way, I just threw up a little in my mouth.
It can be two things!
Worst… screenplay… ever!
But there’s a twist! The prize for winning the contest is the exact amount they need, but this will be the first time in movie history the winnings are taxable, leading to a downer ending.
The sequel will involve them having to do it again to save the D&D rec center. The title will be Dungeons and Dragons 2: Illithid Bugaloo
And the only way to save the comic book store will be by winning the big ski competition!
He should be playing Venger to Peter Dinklage’s Dungeon Master … who IS HIS FATHER!!
Hope they get that one guy from NWA and the Friday movies to play a Gelatin-ice Cube.
I was hoping they went the easy route and used Acquisitions Incorporated
Dungeons & Dragons is being written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who previously made Game Night with Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman. That was kind of a high-concept comedy about games, so it seems likely that there will be something wackier going on here than just people with swords, but again, we do not know.Yeah. You don’t hire Hugh Grant to play a straight villain. I mean, you might do that (like in The Undoing) but it’s probably more likely that you want him to play a villain with a comic edge, like in Paddington 2, which would make a lot more sense for a movie directed by the Game Night people. Especially when Chris Pine is your hero, an actor whose best work to date was playing an action hero who pokes fun at himself (Wonder Woman). So, yeah, this is coming into focus. It will either be an action adventure comedy set in the D&D universe, or an action adventure comedy about people who play D&D and possibly travel through a portal into the D&D universe … where they will find action and comedy.
My favorite Hugh Grant role is in About a Boy, where he’s a terrible person who turns out to be not so terrible. I liked Game Night, so it seems to me this should be at least okay.
I honestly think action comedy is the best way to go with this. And Hugh Grant is great in Paddington 2.
What about the kind of villain he played A Very English Scandal? He could still be a corrupt, closeted gay MP, except this time he’s also a halfling. Now that would be a twist.
I would be totally on board if the film was his Paddington 2 character running a DnD for the boys in the clink. Bonus if every NPC in the fantasy scenes is played by Grant.
Who the heck is Michelle Rodriguez Justice Smith? Do Will & Jada have another one they haven’t annoyed us with yet?
He’s having quite the renaissance.
“Got the use of the brand… got a high-profile actor… Clancy, get one of the interns to pick out one of the sword and elf-fucking scripts.”
An elf fucks a sword? It’s genius! Green light this now!
(and don’t tell David Fincher)
If he bring his hammy Paddington 2 energy then I’m all in.
Straight dungeon crawl fantasy set in Forgotten Realms like the Baldur’s Gate trailer with the mind flayers and dragons OR when you say Jumanji I say the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon people crossing over into a generic fantasy world OR a cutting back and forth between a group of D&D players and their game shown in live-action all have been done before and all were lame.
Come to think of it, Hugh Grant would make a pretty funny DM. I’d play that game!
That might not be his role here, though, even if I think the movie will be something similar to Game Night more than Hot Tub Time Machine…
It never ceases to amuse me how much Hugh Grant has reinvented himself as a villain actor, and all shades of it, too. In the last six or so years he played a brooding sociopath against Nicole Kidman, an absolutely cartoonish bad guy in Paddington 2, a self-absorbed corrupt politician, a blackmailing private detective in Gentlemen, and also some bad guy in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which I don’t remember much about.Gotta say, it really works for him.
He was Mr Waverly in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., he was a bit iffy but not the bad guy.It’s a shame that movie flopped, as it would have been great to see some sequels. Granted this was before Armie’s recent erm…..issues.
It’s because he was evil all along.
You forgot my favorite! The brutal cannibal warlord in Cloud Atlas. (Also, he technically played several villains in this as well)
He went from a nice guy you hated to a bad guy you loved.
I think he tested the waters in About A Boy and Bridget Jones, and found that people liked him better as a scoundrel.
Didn’t they already make a brutally awful D&D movie with one of the Wayans brothers? It had the distinction of being one of the only films that ever turned Jeremy Irons into a dreadful ham. (and not is a good/funny way)
They actually made three brutally awful D&D movies!
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but I seem to remember Jeremy Irons doing a great hammy performance. Not quite on par with Raul Julia as M Bison, but still pretty good.
Oh, this has Michelle Rodriguez? That’s…that’s not a good sign.
Some day we’ll get a D&D movie that’s actually good. Some day.
It’s great to see John Frances Daley’s career completing the full circle.
“You sound smart like Hugh Grant the movie star, but you’re stupid like Hugh Grant the person!!!”