Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith join Chris Pine for the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, currently set for release in 2022.
Dungeons & Dragons has definitely enjoyed something of a revival over the last few years. Bolstered in popularity by nostalgic appearances in Stranger Things as well as the popular web series Critical Role, D&D is definitely enjoying a moment. That looks set to continue with the planned, big-budget film adaptation of the game, coming to us courtesy of Paramount and eOne/Hasbro. Already, it promises to be an upgrade on the last time the game went to the movies.
Whilst we don’t yet know too much about the new film, casting is beginning to take shape with the news, via The Hollywood Reporter, that Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith are joining the already-announced Chris Pine.
We already knew that this was going to be a big-budget affair, as the studios involved look to spark a money-spinning franchise in a similar form to their ongoing Transformers collaboration. The ensemble casting that we’re seeing so far seems to confirm it. With Rodriguez hailing from the long-running Fast & Furious franchise and Smith having recently completed his second stint in the Jurassic World saga, the folks behind Dungeons & Dragons are clearly looking for established franchise players.
What makes this project especially interesting though is the folks behind it. Directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are the directors behind 2018’s Game Night, and that film’s successful blurring of the lines between game and reality is most likely what we’ll be seeing in the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons film. After all, we saw a straight-up fantasy adaptation at the turn of the century, featuring Jeremy Irons, and it didn’t go down too well.
Instead, we’re likely to see something a bit more meta. The directors themselves (who have also redrafted the original script) hinted at this in a story we reported on last year, stating “D&D is such a unique look at the fantasy genre where it is contemporary in terms of the people playing it and the way they speak to each other. So we never wanted to spoof the genre of fantasy or take the piss out of it. But we did want to find another way into it that we hadn’t necessarily seen before”.
We have to admit, we’re very intrigued by the prospect of a large-budget adaptation of D&D doing something ‘a little different’, so consider our interest firmly piqued. More news on this one as we hear it.
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