The casting for Paramount’s fresh take on the classic board game continues to grow – and Hugh Grant will be playing the villain.
Dungeons & Dragons’ revival in popularity looks set to continue with the planned, big-budget film adaptation of the game, coming to us courtesy of Paramount and eOne/Hasbro.
Following a pop culture love-in for the fantasy role-playing game over the last few years, the planned film already looks like being an improvement on the last time the game got the movie adaptation treatment back in 2000, which resulted in an unloved film starring Jeremy Irons.
Like its 2000 predecessor, the new film will also see a respected British veteran actor take on the mantle of the film’s villain, with Hugh Grant being cast in this role. Grant will play an antagonist named Forge Fletcher and while we’re no D&D experts, a quick scout around has yielded no results, meaning this could well be an original character.
Grant will be joined by Sophia Lillis, best known for her work in the It films. Her character name has not yet been revealed. The duo join the already-announced Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith as the film’s cast continues to grow.
What makes this project especially intriguing is the directors behind it.
Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are the helmers of 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. 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’re certainly looking forward to this one, with today’s casting announcement simply adding to the feeling that this could be a really fun watch. We’ll bring you more news on the project as we hear it.
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