If you were to ask us who might be put in charge of a ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ TV series, we’d probably have picked noted fans of the game Vin Diesel or Joe Manganiello. Hasbro and production studio eOne have instead gone for someone with more behind-the-scenes experience, hiring ‘Skyscraper’ and ‘Red Notice’ director Rawson Marshall Thurber to oversee a new, live-action adaptation of the fantasy roleplaying game.
The companies are looking to build something along the lines of ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’ and are hopeful that whatever Marshall cooks up will lead to a universe that blends TV and movies. The show doesn’t yet have a home, but with Thurber’s deal at Netflix, you can certainly imagine the streaming service showing an interest.
“We don’t want it to just be one show, so we are building out, developing out a multi-pronged approach for television, a number of scripted shows and unscripted,” eOne’s Michael Lombardo told Deadline last year.
Thurber is also excited, tweeting about the new opportunity and his history as a player. He’ll write and direct the pilot for the show, but no details were released beyond that.
Once the purview of a nerdier corner of pop culture (which has since moved much more mainstream), ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ is the game designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and first brought to shelves in 1974. It works by gathering a group of players who create characters – warriors, elves, dwarves, wizards etc. – and sending them on a fantasy quest run by a Dungeon Master.
They explore dangerous locales and battle monsters, all using dice to determine the outcome of clashes or other situations. Players earn experience points or XP to level up.
The game has been adapted for screens before, most notably in the 1980s cartoon series that saw a group of kids transported to a fantasy realm by a rollercoaster and being forced to fight for their lives and their way home.
In 2000, Courtney Solomon directed a movie based on the original game concept, starring Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch and Marlon Wayans. It was castigated by critics and proved to be a huge flop at the box office.
A new movie is now in post-production, directed by ‘Vacation’ and ‘Game Night’ duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, starring the likes of Chris Pine, Justice Smith, Michelle Rodriguez and ‘Bridgerton’ breakout Regé-Jean Page.
Not much is known about the tone of that one – there’s a chance it could be more along the lines of ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’, which had fun with the concept while keeping the peril and stakes intact. It’ll be in theaters via Paramount on March 3 next year.
Thurber, meanwhile, is also writing the scripts for two sequels to last year’s action-adventure comedy ‘Red Notice’, which starred Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot.
