Here’s what the Dungeons & Dragons movie directors would do in a sequel

With Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves in theaters and Vital Position’s animated collection The Legend of Vox Machina recent off its second season, it looks like D&D onscreen is having a very mainstream second. Is that this simply the beginning of an even bigger D&D display screen franchise? Is Honor Amongst Thieves headed for a sequel, a film collection, or a bunch of spinoffs? Polygon requested writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein what kind they’d wish to see future D&D tales take.

“I feel stop-motion,” Daley says, with out hesitation. “Rankin/Bass type, a complete throwback.”

Daley means it as a joke. But it surely isn’t the worst thought, given stop-motion animation’s current micro-boom: A brand new Netflix film from Nightmare Earlier than Christmas director Henry Selick and Guillermo del Toro’s extraordinarily darkish, Oscar-nominated tackle Pinocchio each arrived late final 12 months, and 2023 will see a brand new Hen Run sequel and two new Wes Anderson movies that may reportedly embrace stop-motion. Any type of animation may be a very good method for Dungeons & Dragons’ wealthy fantasy worlds. However Daley and Goldstein aren’t really occupied with subsequent steps fairly but.

Will Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves get a sequel?

Picture: Paramount Footage

“It was by no means our intention once we got here on board this movie to make a franchise,” Daley says. “I feel that may cloud our capacity to focus fully on the movie at hand. The cardinal mistake many studios make is to place the cart earlier than the horse, the place they begin crafting a cinematic universe earlier than they even make a very good single movie. So firstly for us was getting this proper.”

That’s a refreshing angle in a world the place studios maintain forgetting to begin small and construct a fandom organically, as an alternative of making an attempt to kickstart a 10-year mega-blockbuster plan with each new film. That stated, with Honor Amongst Thieves out, after all the administrators are occupied with the place they’d wish to see these characters go subsequent.

Goldstein says if that they had carte blanche to do something with the D&D world, they’d in all probability persist with the occasion they set up in Honor Amongst Thieves: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Sophia Lillis as an adventuring crew who forge some private connections over the course of the story.

“The benefit of a sequel is, you don’t need to spend a lot display screen time introducing [the party],” he says. “The viewers is aware of them, and you’ll bounce into the plot extra rapidly. And clearly, we’ve nice affection for each the actors and these roles that they play. However we’d wish to introduce some new figures alongside the way in which, and positively a number of new monsters.”

“And new areas,” Daley provides.

“Yeah, you realize, we did the Forgotten Realms for this one, partly as a result of it’s sort of a recognizable medieval setting,” Goldstein says. “However there are such a lot of worlds inside D&D that we might discover.”

“Now that we’ve completed it, and we’re counting on the fates to determine if this factor is successful, we’d completely like to proceed to inform tales on this world,” Daley says. “We predict it’s completely ripe with potential.”

What would Honor Amongst Thieves 2 appear to be?

Photograph: Paramount Footage

A part of that potential, Daley says, is a core factor of Dungeons & Dragons that doesn’t come up of their film: “I feel if we had been fortunate sufficient to do one other one in every of these, we’d wish to see our characters stage up.” In Honor Amongst Thieves, Pine’s bard character Edgin by no means makes use of magic (for causes the administrators defined to us for our bigger take a look at the film’s decisions), however Daley thinks in a sequel, he’d in all probability add spells to his repertoire. “That might be sort of thrilling to see,” he says.

Goldstein says that when the 2 males had been planning the film — which lists them as co-writers alongside collaborator Michael Gilio, with a narrative by Gilio and Chris McKay — they requested Wizards of the Coast for “a listing of the 30 greatest fan-favorite creatures” to offer them concepts. “After which we had the liberty to pick out what we must always function.”

That explains Honor Amongst Thieves’ use of an owlbear, a displacer beast, and a mimic, amongst different creatures from previous D&D lore. But it surely leaves them with loads to cowl in future tales.

When is Drizzt getting a D&D film?

Picture: Wizards of the Coast

After which there’s one in every of fandom’s greatest questions on Dungeons & Dragons display screen tales: When is fan-favorite character Drizzt Do’urden getting his personal film or TV present? Might he flip up in an Honor Amongst Thieves sequel or spinoff?

“Drizzt did come up, really, as we had been determining what our first movie was going to be,” Daley says. “However the normal consensus was to not go there but. That stated, he’s positively a well-liked character on the earth, and one who may very well be thrilling to discover.”

“How a few film the place Drizzt meets the ’80s characters?” Goldstein asks, referring to the Saturday morning cartoon characters from the Eighties, who function in a maze sequence in one in every of Honor Amongst Thieves’ geekiest references.

“And the ’80s characters are horribly maimed after their expertise within the maze?” Daley laughs.

That appears even much less possible than a stop-motion D&D film. However for Daley, this sort of imaginative toying with the chances of WOTC properties is a part of the enjoyable of a D&D story. “There are such a lot of characters on this world,” he says. “It will be actually enjoyable both to have them be part of the group we’ve established, or do some type of an offshoot of our movie, to get into their backstories.”