Paramount rolls the dice with lighter touch at Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves trailer
Chris Pine, Hugh Grant, Regé-Jean Page, and Michelle Rodriguez are smacking some coconuts together with a sillier take on high fantasy
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No fandom has been done dirtier over the last eternity than the loyal Dungeon Masters of Dungeons And Dragons. After spending the ’80s being the subject of public mockery and the ’90s waiting for a movie starring Justin Whalin and Marlon Wayans that we’re told fans hate, Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves aims to finally make the cherished tabletop game of Stranger Things characters a mainstream franchise.
The game has never been more popular, thanks to two years of quarantine, and studios are scrambling for whatever property can possibly compete with Warner’s Game Of Thrones and Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings. But can a property built on a roleplaying tabletop game, without a central story arc, recognizable characters, and with a rule book the size of the Bible, be the center of Paramount’s fantasy universe?
Paramount hopes so, and they’ve enlisted Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant to help.
The first panel at Comic-Con in three years, Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, aims to be a funnier version of fantasy worlds. Led by Chris Pine, the movie took two years to produce and was shot in Northern Island on location and with practical effects. The footage shown looks about as far from an Atlanta parking lot as you can get.
Directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly, best known for the severely underrated Game Night, the duo have now brought that kind of energy to D&D. Daly’s no slouch on pushing the game into the mainstream over the last two decades. He said he learned to play Dungeons And Dragons on the set of Freaks And Geeks and talked about wanting to capture the feeling of playing with people. “It’s not about the game, it’s really the feeling you get when you play the game.” Honestly, the Dungeons And Dragons episode of Freaks And Geeks is a high bar in terms of depictions of the game.
As expected, each member of the cast had to give their experience with Dungeons And Dragons. Chris Pine discussed playing with his family and wanting to “spread the gospel of D&D.” Michelle Rodriguez grew up in Jersey, so, of course, she played Dungeons And Dragons. Regé Jean-Page tried to pretend he was like the mere mortals of the audience by saying he played Diablo as a kid. As the cast shared their D&D bona fides, moderator Karl Jacobs asked if thespian Hugh Grant was into Dungeons And Dragons.
“I think you messed it up with S&M,” Michelle Rodriguez interjected.
“I’ve been an enthusiastic dungeon master for years now,” Grant said. “I believe that’s why the Jonathans thought of me.” Grant, attending his first Comic-Con, said that he tried to get in with Sense And Sensibility, but was turned away. Explaining what the hell he’s doing in a Dungeons And Dragons movie, Grant said that the script was genuinely funny, that it had a “Monty Python vibe.”
The “tonal balance” that producer Jeremy Latcham described at the beginning of the panel was on display as Pine described it as having a Spielbergian energy, its light and buoyant that the cast glommed onto. “Spielberg. We’ll take that compliment,” said co-director Jonathan Goldstein. It’s reflected in the premiere clips from the show, which sees Pine, once again, proving he’s the only one who could ever take on the mantle of Indiana Jones.
In a clip, Chris Pine, smirking up a storm, digs up some zombies to ask them about the film’s still unclear MacGuffin. The clip is funny, with a Sam Raimi energy of quick cuts, loud effects, and lots and lots of skeleton puppets. Fans looking for a dark and gritty Dungeons And Dragons won’t find it here. This looks more like an adventure comedy.
Most importantly, the practical effects and actual sets give the film a texture and excitement that makes the comedy and violence work. When the film dips into more CGI territory, as it did in the second clip, it feels a bit more weightless. But these are unfinished special effects, so we’ll reserve judgment.
And yes, all the monsters and all the spells are accurate to the lore. John Francis Daly said they worked with Wizards Of The Coasts to fact check, and there was even an Easter egg for fans of the ’80s cartoon.
Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves opens March 2023.
119 Comments
This actually looks better than it has any right to.
Right? I’ve seen several headlines that are like “lol lame” but that trailer was pretty damn good.And yes, I saw the 2000 D&D movie in the theater, and even though it was a free screening, afterward I demanded my money back.
It looks like great fun
I desperately want them to sneak a statue or portrait of Jeremy Irons into the background somewhere.
MALKOVICH!
Jeremy Irons in that 90s DnD flick was the only actor who knew what kind of movie he was in.
Yeah but he cause a massive kerfuffle after production was done with the set-builders. His scenery chewing was so intense that there wasn’t much for them to take down afterwards and it ran afoul of guild rules.
Maybe a wizard can cast Jeremy’s Iron to bind an elf.
“even though it was a free screening, afterward I demanded my money back” – and you were RIGHT to do so! That movie… Man… It was just so damn awful that I cannot even encompass it in my brain.
Most of the takes I’ve seen calling this lame seem to come from people who seem committed to some dated “LOL, D&D is for neeeeeerrrrds” bit. This looks fun, it looks self-aware in a way that’s not obnoxious.
The 2000 D&D movie is almost entirely terrible but I will still watch Youtube clips of Jeremy Irons serving the tastiest ham sandwich ever put on screen. I am not sure what you can call what he does in that movie acting but whatever it is, its amazing
It’s ACTING!, with a bunch of rococo flourishes and gold trim
Promising for sure. But then, I’m a D&D nerd, so I was going to see this anyway. Hoping for the best.
I am… cautiously optimistic.
Yeah. That looks like it’ll be, at absolute worst, an entertaining bad movie with some fun scenes.
Heck of a lot worse things to be than that.
And let’s be real – was anyone who actually enjoys D&D looking for a “Grim and Gritty” adaptation?(Unless we’re talking about a Die movie. Give us a Die movie. Please.)
Vin Diesel probably was.
I would fucking kill for a Die movie, hell yes.
don’t have any skin in the game with this ip but that’s a fun ass trailer. medieval gotg works for this guy.
Hah, that’s it exactly! Medieval GOTG is the perfect description for the impression this trailer conveys.
Unless it features a cameo by Tom Hanks losing his mind, I’m out.
I had negative expectations before watching the trailer, but I concur.
I’m here for the lute:
Going the fun, light-hearted route works for the subject matter.
The best times I’ve had playing Pathfinder have been when we were
goofing around and laughing our heads off.
That is kinda the thing with table top RPGs. Sure a lot of them have dark subject matters and the DM/GM is often trying to tell these serious brooding stories but at the end of the day its a group of friends sitting around a table playing make believe. The vast majority of the time its laughing and joking and being silly. Terrible Accents, jokes about how silly fantasy names are, in-jokes within a group that may have started 20 years ago(for old groups), jokes about how bards suck, Paladins are joy kills, Barbarians are dumb and Wizards are beating off when they say they are “memorizing their spells”(See 20 year old in jokes above). Comedy and silliness is part of D&D and table top RPGs because that is how we interact with our friends.
Absolutely. I went in expecting trash and I smiled through the whole trailer.
Its the Chris Pine factory. The man rolled an 18 Charisma and knows how to use it
kind of the Guardians of the Galaxy treatment for D&D
I think the Jumanji movies are probably the closest we’re ever going to get to successful Dungeons and Dragons movies, but I’m willing to see how this goes.
Oh, man, there was a really good trilogy of movies in the early 2000s that featured a big (unwieldy, really; they had to split them up for the second two movies) party with halfings, a dwarf, some elves, and humans, and a bunch of different classes. They played kind of fast and loose with how their wizards functioned, but it was really fun.
Damned if I can remember what it was called, though.
I’d put those movies, whatever they were called, ahead of the Jumanji franchise as “D&D movies,” myself.
Oh yeah! I remember those too! Was beginning to think this was a Mandela Effect thing! And like everything in their fantasy world looked like it was in New Zealand, right?
Haha, fair, but kind of a backdaptation considering D&D is just LotR fanfic anyway.
I think it was called, “The Wizard That Couldn’t Slow Down.”
You are perhaps thinking of the trilogy of movies based on the hack-n-slash video game Dungeon Siege? The first one was branded as In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and its sequels completely dropped the “Dungeon Siege” moniker. You can almost visualize how their budget graph decreased if you look at the succession of leading actors they went with: first Jason Statham, then Dolph Lundgren, then Dominic Purcell.
Conan The Destroyer remains the greatest D&D movie of all time.
Fucking what? No.
definitely looks better than i expected. pretty good cast too
Holy crap, is this… actually going to be good?!I did not have high hopes for this, but it seems like they’ve gone for something tonally modeled on Guardians of the Galaxy, and more importantly, it looks like they might have managed to actually, like, get it.I’m low-key stoked for this now. Very surprising!
“Northern Island”? Jesus Christ, this fucking site.
rule book the size of the Bible
No.The closest thing they have to a singular “rule book” is the Players Handbook, which is 320 pages. That gets you only about a quarter of the way through the Bible, smack dab in a bunch of “begats.”
You’re doing the Lord’s research for us. Thanks.
I worry that pointless snark like in the article might dissuade people who see the trailer and say “hey, that looks like a fun beer and pretzels game to play with my family and friends.” And it is!
You can go to Target right now, get the Starter Set box right now and be playing in an hour. No books anywhere near the size of the Bible required.
Although you have to admit that if you took the word “book” in the sense of “books of the Bible” and then put all the compendiums and sourcebooks for D&D into one collected volume, you’d need a forklift to move it. Sure, you can roll a Warrior while drinking stale pilsners and cracking peanuts but if you want a Chromie Dragonborn Monk/Bard I doubt you’re at that party.
But those are all for different rulesets, haha!The Target box will set me up easily enough to play a Chaotic Neutral Half-Elf Bard in 5e.
The boxed set is the Bible. Everything else is the Talmud…. too Jewish?
And that starter set is really well made and a fun adventure. When my group originally played through it(before the official 5th edition books came out), we fell in love with our premade characters so much that we continued to play them after, even though we could make whoever we wanted once the PHB came out
And those 320 pages are like 1/4 pictures
Hey, if the first people you feature in the book are only wearing fig leaves, hell yes, there’s going to be a lot of pictures.
I wonder how many pages the bible would be printed at the same size as a hardcover sourcebook
Jesus SavesThe rest of you take 20 damage
DM: Eve, do you take an action?Eve: I roll to begat!
(Eve rolls a 20)
DM: Success! You begat Abel! Adam, how about you?Adam: I also roll to begat.(Adam rolls a 2.)DM: Well, it’s not a total failure. You manage to begat a kid, but it’s Cain.Adam: I’m sure this will work out great!
Sounds like how we played D&D in highschool. I was in a group of very lonely nerds 🙂
People who don’t play D&D always cry about “all the rules”. You get someone to sit down and play with a good group and they realize its 95% just playing imagination with your friends and that only one person at the table has to know(or at least pretend) to know the rules. I forget what game I read this in but there was a quote that said “A good DM knows all the rules, a great DM knows when to ignore them”
I’ve run a bunch of games for my dad, who is a natural storyteller and super-extroverted. But he’s always been nervous about being a DM himself. Finally, I just made him look at the adventure I’d just run him through and when he saw how little of it is ever actually on the page, he lit up: “Oh, it’s mostly just bullshitting!”
Taking a serious bent with it was never the way to go – that’s been done better with Lord of the Rings and everyone will compare it to that. If this one doesn’t work, they should just go with the concept of the Saturday morning cartoon, throwing people from our world into that one and seeing the results.
Owlbears! Displacer Beasts! Mimics! Gelatinous Cubes! Non-fire-breathing Dragons!I’ll give it a shot.
“The dragon barfs on you. Roll a d20 to determine your level of disgust.”
Although quite rare, the Yellow-Brown Dragon is not to be fucked with
Unless you’re German. Then, fuck away!
“The cave of Vomitorax the Yellow-Brown! I hear he’s sitting on mountains of treasure! Let’s go!”“Eh, actually…I’m good being poor”
Saving the Beholder for the next trailer, no doubt.
And dungeons. Don’t forget the dungeons.
You know the funny thing with D&D is that while you are likely to see a Dragon when you play, actual Dungeons are few and far between. I mean you get thrown in one by a King upon occasion but what they call dungeons are usually crypts, burial grounds, underground mausoleums. I mean it really is grave robbers the game.
Gelatinous cube eats village…I think it’s terrific.
Missed opportunity to launch a new franchise a la Harry Potter via basing it off the 80’s Saturday morning cartoon about a group of kids on an amusement park roller coaster than gets sucked through a portal into the fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons.
They are apparently including a reference or two to the cartoon in the movie, per the Hall H panel.
And Wizards of the Coast has been putting in a ton of references to the cartoon lately, including in last year’s Wild Beyond the Witchlight adventure campaign.
I would guess we’re going to see some version of the cartoon coming back in the near future.
Is most of the original voice cast from the cartoon still alive? I know Willie Ames and Frank Welker are.
Northern Island —> Northern IrelandDirected by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly, best known for the severely underrated Game Night, the duo have now brought that kind of energy to D&D. —> what the actual fuckno slouch on —> no slouch atThe “tonal balance” that producer Jeremy Latcham described at the beginning of the panel was on display as Pine described it as having a Spielbergian energy, its light and buoyant that the cast glommed onto. —> this sentence is the Antichrist
Wait, are you sure this wasn’t filmed on Northern Island?
From my perspective, most islands are Northern islands.
Okay, but do you know what a chazzwozzer is?
If there were any justice in this world you’d be elevated from volunteer and unleashed on this site. But G/O Media only cares about clicks, and clicks no care if grammar good.
I’d do it for a pittance, too
Isn’t Northern Island where Sonic the Hedgehog lives.
That is, God’s truth, a terrible sentence.Also, it’s John Francis DalEy. He was on Bones, and he co-wrote (with Goldstein) a wee indie movie called Spider-Man: Homecoming, which maybe didn’t do as well at the theater as Game Night, but I don’t know.
Plus, he was the kid in Freaks and Geeks.
“the severely underrated Game Night”
85% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Can we PLEASE use words to mean what they mean?
Considering John Francis Daly is one of the directors, I hope they reference the D&D characters from Freaks & Geeks ep ‘Disco & Dragons’.
Was concerned the party would be in trouble without a healer until I remembered Bards can learn healing spells. I’ve played a little of both Pathfinder and D&D, unfortunately never had the opportunity to team up with a Bard. They sound fun.
Also, fingers crossed that they have some sort of gay rep in the film. One of my favorite things about the campaigns I played was my DM having canonical kingdoms full of buff gay men.
Druids and paladins can also provide healing support.
Fair nuff, I forgot about that.
Chris Pine as the bard is going to seduce the party’s way into and out of all the situations.
Well, that’s what you get when you cast Captain Kirk as a Bard. Seducing one type of green woman to another.
Roll for cautious optimism.Also, how does D&D get a 4th movie and Shadowrun gets nothing?
Given Bright was very much cribbing from Shadowrun perhaps not the best wish.
How about Paranoia. Sell it as a modern gritter/funnier update of Logan’s Run and you could get some interest. Just remember that the Computer is your friend.
Shadowrun is even more of a niche property.
Because FASA’s early days were rife with stealing from other IP’s that translating to another medium is a potential nightmare of rights issues?Netflix’s “Bright” was for all intents and purposes a contemporary Shadowrun.
The trailer doesn’t look bad but I hate the music they chose. I don’t understand the need to put contemporary music on a movie with a medieval setting. If you want to make a Spielberg-like movie, you need to find your John Williams. It won’t make your film look cool, but it might make it look timeless.
They’re not aiming for Spielberg. This clearly copying Guardians of The Galaxy.
Back in my day Led Zeppelin was quintessential music to play while playing D&D. You’d have Zeppelin on along with you cases of Mountain Dew and Doritos and take out and you’d rock on into the wee hours of the morning. D&D and Zep go together like peanut-butter and chocolate. It’s an amazing combo.
I know Pine said “Spielberg”, but unless he specifically means Hook, I don’t know what he’s talking about.Zep is perfect for this. Heavy but not overbearing, and a band known for a lot of Tolkien-based lyrics.
I agreed with you at first before I actually saw the trailer. I think Led Zep works for D&D. They definitely took inspiration from Thor Ragnarok and GOTG but that’s fine.
The music isn’t supposed to evoke a glorious fantasy setting, it’s supposed to evoke playing an RPG with friends.
You were thinking maybe Jethro Tull?
A displacer beast, gelatinous cube, owlbear and a mimic. Otyughs and shriekers also please.Vin Diesel and Joe Mangainello must be eating their nerd guts out.
This screams so much like a rip off of Guardians of the Galaxy. To the point where one of the Producers is a former Disney Producer who did a ton of the MCU Phase 1 movies.I mean this isn’t a complaint. But it is so obvious once you start looking at how the characters act.
Yeah I could be down for fantasy GotG. And everyone loved Game Night so this could be surprisingly good. And with the MCU connections, they did write Spider-Man Homecoming.
I do think the trailer is a little corny and it looks a little cheap but I like the variety of creatures they showed off. Plus I feel like it’s hard to showcase a comedic fantasy in a trailer. It could still be bad of course but it could be amazing and I imagine the trailer would be the same.
This is pretty much how all my D&D games end up regardless of how serious we start out. I’m willing to bet Chris Pine tries to seduce a dragon to save the party at some point.
Cast looks good, though it feels very generic. Like a mix between LOTR, bit of Thor and every other fantasy story. Also, Chris Pine – while I normally like him – just feels too modern and too American for this world.
As a player of D&D since the days of THAC0, my friends and I would start each campaign speaking in thee and thou but halfway through we’d stop. Who’s to say that the inhabitants of the D&D world don’t speak in the modern vernacular. From that clip of ‘I make plans.’ I got a bit his of early Kirk bravado.As a lot of people are saying, it copied GotG, but MCU has been doing that too. This looks like a fun movie about D&D.
Yeah, when I DMed for my friends in my teens I always tried for an epic “save the princess” type campaign but my players always wanted to backstab the princess and hock her jewelry. So I think they have nailed the tone here. It might not be what outsiders expect but this reflects the way the game is played.
Agreed, most of the time when I’ve played the group didn’t come up with a plan beyond getting into an area since we didn’t know what the DM had in store for us behind the door.
My complaint about high fantasy is that just because it looks like medieval England, there is zero reason for everyone to speak like it is, because it’s not.
This looks great, though? It feels like it might capture the spirit of a lighthearted D&D campaign, with a fun diverse party who don’t take themselves too seriously. The masterstroke is that they included the one guy in every RPG group who tries too hard to look cool and ends up looking like a massive dork instead. And they got Chris Pine to play him! Wonder Woman’s dead husband! Spock’s alive husband! He plays the lute! I’m excited for this.
“Pine, once again, proving he’s the only one who could ever take on the mantle of Indiana Jones.”
Stop giving them encouragement!
Meh. It looks like another too-clean fantasy world with too much snarky winking where everyone’s afraid to take the setting seriously.
Fantasy works when everyone buys into the world they’re in (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings). Trying to do it with a foot in both worlds always falls flat on its face.
I just hope someone casts magic missile to attack the darkness.
I hope someone shoots an arrow at a gazebo.
As someone who embarrassingly went to the theater to see the 2000 D&D movie, I will buy all of the popcorn to see this. That trailer fucks hard.
Looks like a lot of fun! I hope the cartoon Easter egg is they approach Eric the Cavalier for help and he’s a massive jerk about it.
“Honestly, the Dungeons And Dragons episode of Freaks And Geeks is a high bar in terms of depictions of the game.”I think you mean the community episode Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. This looks better then the last time they tried to make a D&D movie. I thought Joe Manganiello was involved in this movie, or did he drop out? Also what are the chances Vin Diesel is pissed at Michelle Rodriquez because she is in the movie and he is not.
….that we know of.
Wait – there’s a Community episode on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons? Seems impossible, as it is not available on Netflix.
The problem with D&D as a movie or show or anything other then a game is really the fact that it was created entirely so people could pretend to be in the fantasy stories they loved. So by its very nature its derivative of classic fantasy like the LOTR and Conan and such. Over the last 50 years, many of the settings(IE universes) of D&D have been fleshed out to be unique settings and places with long histories but I feel like they are not really known outside of us D&D geeks. Dragonlance was a successful book series in the 80s and 90s but I don’t think you can find a non-D&D player(hell most actually players these days) who know what Dark Sun is. Which is a shame because I think Athas was a really cool spin on a D&D world. Its basically D&D Mad Max after a magic caused Apocalypse. This movie takes place in the Forgotten Realms, which its sorta the default setting for D&D these days. Its pretty much the second most generic D&D setting, outside of Greyhawk. Which doesn’t make it very interesting but gives movie writers a lot of leeway to tell the story they want.Anyways I am an old grognard gamer and I am excited to see if this is great or sucks. Really Geeky Add-on: During the pandemic my group did a remote campaign and we jokingly designed our characters around each of the Hollywood Chris’. Chris Pratt was a dim witted cleric, Chris Evans was our leader and a Paladin, Chris Hemsworth was a very sexy Dwarf Barbarian, Our mage was Christoph Waltz and I played the bard as Chris Pine(mostly doing his Kirk swagger)
Game Night is one of the best studio comedies of the last decade+.
shot in Northern IslandI love how generic this sounds. The address? erm.. 123 Fake St, Northern… uh, Island?
Northern Island fucking ROCKS!
Congratulations, this might be the AV Club’s worst-written and copy-edited article I have ever read!
“… shot in Northern Island”?
“… its light and buoyant that the cast glommed onto”?Oh, yeah, and the movie looks like it could be cool.
most dragons breathe fire…but this one barfs poop?