May 31st 2023 brought us a little film called Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. This was written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. It had a packed cast with the likes of Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Rege-Jean Page, Hugh Grant, and more. According to Box Office Mojo (which you can find here) this had a worldwide gross of $205,460,387 doll hairs on a budget of 150,000,000 in cheddar. The exchange rate of doll hairs to cheddar is 1 to 1, by the way, and if you’re vegan or lactose intolerant you can substitute the cheddar for lettuce… moolah works too as there’s no actual dairy in it.
The reason I’m bringing up this film is because D&D:HAT 2 has a finished script but is currently being shopped around because Paramount-Skydance has already passed on it. According to Christopher Marc from The Playlist (find the article here), directors John Francis Daley and Johnathan Goldstein are hopeful that the movie will be picked up. The two spoke on The Playlist’s Disclosure Podcast
In a different article, also by Christopher Marc (here), Daley and Goldstein say that the reason Paramount-Skydance passed because of “financial reasons.” It’s a common belief that a big blockbuster needs to make twice or more of its budget back to be considered successful. Slashgear’s Osmond Chia does a breakdown of this belief which you can read here. So despite the fact that it did make more than it’s initial budget, that still wasn’t enough. It would have had to make at least 300,000,00 before it began to turn a profit.
Daley and Goldstein say that Hasbro still believes in the project, as do their producers, and are hopeful that they can make the numbers work and find a studio to pick it up. Daley also said that he believes that the movie would have done better if it wasn’t for timing. D&D:HAT came out less than a week before Illumination’s Super Mario Bros movie which went on to break records. It made 1.3 billion on an estimated budget of 100 million. Couple that with some controversy regarding D&D from Wizards of the Coast and it just wasn’t the best time for the film to release. For a full breakdown of the WotC licensing controversy, Reddit user Cpt_Woody420 does a great job (here).
Despite all that the film got a good reception. It currently sits with a 91 Tomatometer score and a 92 Popcornmeter score on Rotten Tomatoes, It has a 72 metascore score with a 7.5 user score on Metacritic, and a 7.2 out of 10 on IMDB. But for Paramount-Skydance, favorable reviews doesn’t make money. While a low box office gross may be fine, or even expected, for a smaller independent film, it’s not acceptable for one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. I do agree with John Daley though has I think it was bad timing but I also think it was the fact that we have a shoddy history of D&D movies.
There was a Dungeons & Dragons trilogy with the first film being released in the year 2000. That film was a box office bomb making only about 33 million on an estimated budget of 45 million according to Box Office Mojo. It had a made for TV sequel in 2005 that has a highest score of 4.6 out of 10 on IMDB. Then finally in 2011 a third straight to video film came out which has an even worse score of 4.4 on IMDB. I can’t forget to mention the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon which ran from 1983 to 1985 for 27 episodes and many nerds of my generation and even Gen X look back on it with fond nostalgia glasses.
Dungeons & Dragons was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1971 and published by their company TSR (Tactical Studies Rules). TSR eventually began to have financial problems and in 1996 was acquired by Wizards of the Coast, known for Magic: The Gathering and then in 1996 Wizards of the Coast became a subsidiary of Hasbro, which is how we find ourselves with the worlds biggest toy manufacturer shopping around the new D&D script.
Unfortunately as we heard from John Francis Daley and Johnathan Goldstein, the future of D&D:HAT 2 is uncertain. We can hope that another company will see what promise there is with this franchise, that despite the low box office performance, it was a well received movie. I would love to see the group together again on another adventure and I would love a trilogy out of this even more with some end of campaign level battle at the end of the third film. If we keep talking about this, maybe it will happen.