“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is a fantasy film based on the famous tabletop role-playing game.
So let’s find out some trivia and facts about the film.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a 2023 fantasy heist action comedy film
- It is directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley
- The pair co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Gilio
- It was based on a story by Chris McKay and Gilio
- The film is based on the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons
- It is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting
- And has no connections to the film trilogy released between 2000 and 2012
- The film stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant
- Production went through various phases in development since 2013
- Beginning with Warner Bros. Pictures after beating Hasbro and Universal Pictures in a lawsuit over the film rights to the tabletop role-playing game
- Before moving to Paramount Pictures
- Each incarnations had various writers and directors
- Goldstein and Daley were the final writers/directors
- They used elements from the previous attempt by director Chris McKay and screenwriter Michael Gilio
- Filming began in April 2021 in Iceland and later Northern Ireland
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 10, 2023
- It was released in the United States on March 31, 2023, by Paramount Pictures
- The film received positive reviews from critics
- In May 7, 2013, Warner Bros. Pictures and Courtney Solomon’s Sweetpea Entertainment announced a film based on Dungeons & Dragons with David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick writing the script and Roy Lee, Alan Zeman, and Solomon producing
- Two days later, Hasbro issued a lawsuit saying that they were co-producing a Dungeons & Dragons film at Universal Pictures with Chris Morgan writing and directing
- On August 3, 2015, after U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee urged Sweetpea Entertainment and Hasbro to settle the film rights case, the Warner Bros. film was set for pre-production with Hasbro
- On March 31, 2016, Rob Letterman was in negotiations to direct Johnson-McGoldrick’s script, with his role confirmed on May 13, 2016
- In April 2017, actor Joe Manganiello, an avid fan of Dungeons & Dragons, revealed that he had written a script with John Cassel for the project and was “talking to all the right parties” to make the film happen
- Upon completing the script, Manganiello worked in collaboration with Brad Peyton and Dwayne Johnson, who were both in negotiations to develop the film
- In December 2017, after varying degrees of progression, the film was moved by Hasbro to Paramount Pictures and was scheduled for a release date of July 23, 2021
- In February 2018, Paramount was in talks with both Chris McKay and Michael Gilio to direct and write the film, respectively
- In March 2019, it was revealed that Gilio had completed a first draft and studio executives expressed excitement for the film
- The studio began negotiations with various talent, as the casting process began
- On July 30, 2019, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley were in talks to direct
- Goldstein and Daley began meeting with Paramount following Daley talking about his career with a literary agent at a sports bar in Sherman Oaks during a game between the Chicago Cubs, which Daley is a fan of, and the Los Angeles Dodgers
- After saying to the agent that he and Goldstein had left directing duties on The Flash, the agent asked if they were looking for work
- The agent tipped off Paramount, who presented Goldstein and Daley with the script for Dungeons & Dragons
- By January 2020, Goldstein and Daley announced that they had co-written a new draft of the script
- Ultimately, Daley, Goldstein, and Gilio received screenplay credit, while McKay and Gilio received story credit
- Goldstein stated that “ours is a movie that doesn’t take itself with great seriousness, but it’s never a spoof. It honors the world of D&D and celebrates it but, hopefully, it gives the audience an engaging and fun ride”
- Daley commented that the film’s influences include The Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Lord of the Rings, and Indiana Jones, with the Indiana Jones structure evoking both a “dungeon crawl” and the heist film genre that they wanted to draw on
- Daley highlighted that the heist genre is familiar to the audience, which provides the framework for the “uninitiated” so that “they understand what our characters are setting out to do without being overwhelmed by lore or proper nouns”
- Daley also wanted the film to be accessible for those unfamiliar with the fantasy genre
- The Austin Chronicle highlighted “since the basis of most tabletop campaigns is a group of strangers coming together to complete a job, the thematic parallels between heist movies and fantasy roleplaying campaigns offer a shared language for newcomers”
- Goldstein commented that they use the sorcerer character in the film to address why magic can’t “solve all problems” – “it makes storytelling nearly impossible if you can solve any problem with a magical spell”
- Goldstein stated that when discussing the visual presentation of the film with Daley that they decided they didn’t want “two people standing there with their hands out and rays coming out of their hands”
- As a result, the film pulls directly from the magic system of Dungeons & Dragons with magic users “combining physical components and verbal spellcasting to show a variety of magical effects onscreen”
- Justice Smith, who plays the sorcerer, commented that he worked with the choreographer “to create unique gestures for each spell” with many of the spells incorporating actual sign language into the gestures
- On June 27, 2016, Ansel Elgort was in talks to star in Letterman’s iteration of the film
- In December 2020, Chris Pine was cast to star in the film
- Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Regé-Jean Page were added in February 2021
- Hugh Grant and Sophia Lillis would join the next month, with Grant cast as the antagonist
- In April, Chloe Coleman joined the ensemble cast
- In May, Jason Wong and Daisy Head joined the cast
- During post-production, Bradley Cooper was cast in a cameo role
- He filmed his part on blue screen and was inserted into preexisting footage shot with Rodriguez
- Lorne Balfe scored the film
- The soundtrack album in the film was released on March 31, 2023 by Mercury Classics Soundtrack & Score
- On March 19, Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez revealed that the track “l’Emprise” appearing on Mylène Farmer’s eponymous album will be the soundtrack in French-speaking countries
- In the United States and Canada, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was released alongside A Thousand and One and the wide expansion of A Good Person
- the film is projected to gross to $30 to 40 million from 3,850 theaters in its opening weekend
- The film made $5.6 million in advance previews in the week leading up to its release
- Including $4.1 million from Thursday previews
- On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 90% rating
- Based on 209 critics’ reviews
- With an average rating of 7.4/10
- The website’s consensus reads, “An infectiously good-spirited comedy with a solid emotional core, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves offers fun fantasy and adventure even if you don’t know your HP from your OP”
- Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 70 out of 100
- Based on 47 critics
- Indicating “generally favorable reviews”
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