The trailer looks good. But trailers always look good. I’ll wait to hear what people who’ve seen the whole movie think.
Right? I mean, it’s an owl and a bear, so two animals for one!
There’s another edition after 1st?! 
You hear rumors of such at the tavern.
Well, no, trailers don’t always look good. The fact that the trailer doesn’t suck is a bar to clear. It’s just not a very high bar to clear.
I feel like a true film adaptation of D&D needs occasional cutaways to the players gathered around a card table in the DM’s mom’s basement circa 1983, with the bard’s player trying to rules-lawyer the DM into letting them seduce a Beholder, the paladin’s player trying to help his disinterested new girlfriend roll a character and integrate her into the campaign, and a discussion over who’s paying for pizza and what toppings are going to be on the whole thing and which ones just on half.
If anything resembling that is in the final film, I’ll rate it a perfect 10.
I can see that could be a version (though I prefer a straight adventure myself.)
One could also do a ‘Jumanji’ rip-off where we start in the basement and then the players are magically transported to the game world…
you know Ive always wondered why they’ve never filmed the AD&d version of the lord of the rings and just filmed the 4 main Dragonlance books (aka “the war of the lance”)which is all anyone has ever wanted …
and if those are popular follow up with the raistlin series ,
Mainly because the technology to do them justice has only been around for 20 years or so, and D&D has only been cool for the past 5.
They did make that wretched animated version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, trying to merge traditional cut-rate animation with Playstation 1 quality CGI. Starring Kiefer Sutherland who presumably lost a bet.
If they ever did decide to make a half-decent adaptation, maybe it’s best that it took this long since it’d probably be better suited as a series anyway. Better to spread it over eight episodes on a streaming service than trying to cram it into a 2.5hr movie.
well, I was thinking each book be a separate movie or maybe season …
Yeah, I was suggesting that each book would make a better season than trying to cram each book into a standard length film. But that’s a fairly new treatment on this scale. You used to have broadcast mini- series a few times a year but these days anything can be made into a six hour episodic event. Plus, with streaming, it only needs to be as long as it needs to be; don’t need to chop for theater run time or stretch to fill a network schedule.
At that point, though, it’s not a D&D movie. It’s an adaptation of a series of books which themselves have nothing to do with the current popularity of the genre. Nobody driving the current wave of interest cares about Raistlin. Hell, neither do half the oldschool nerds who’ve been driving the consistent low-level interest of the last four decades.
And that’s kind of the problem with the idea of a “D&D movie.” What does that even mean? My D&D games are not your D&D games. Take a thousand groups playing Temple of Elemental Evil and you’ll have a thousand unique experiences. There’s nothing concrete to adapt. Honestly, most adventures are hyper generic in and of themselves - they kind of have to be in order to leave lots and lots room for players to insert their own drama and excitement.
So you could pivot away from a published adventure and try to do a movie based on a slice of plot from one of the major worlds (Forgotten Realms or Eberron or Ravenloft or whatever), but how many groups use any given setting against all the other groups using homebrew worlds or published worlds different from the one you’re adapting?
So you instead ditch the whole idea of adaptation and just make a fantasy movie sprinkled with enough classic monsters and spells (owlbears! gelatinous cubes!) to make it nominally D&D, and you end up with something generic and uninspired.
I watched the first episode of Vox Machina on Amazon and wasn’t at all impressed, but it’s doing well enough to get a second season. That’s probably the smartest move for adaptation since it’s based on Critical Role - something that has absolutely been driving current interest in the genre. But it’s still two steps removed from D&D - a series based on one specific group of players and their unique game. It’s not a “D&D show.” It’s a “Critical Role” show.
It’s a tough nut to crack, and probably why there have been hundreds of video games in the genre and so few movies or shows in the same space. Easier and safer to just make a fantasy movie and forget disappointing people by saying it’s going to be D&D and then not hitting everyone’s idea of what “D&D” actually means.
And, what’s more, there is (or, at least historically, was) an entire group of fans of the D&D-related novels (the Forgotten Realms novels, in particular) who never played D&D. Such fans would be thrilled to see, for example, a Drizzt movie, but would be more likely to care if such a movie was true to the novels, not the RPG system.
I half disagree. Dragonlance was based on an AD&D campaign played by Hickman and also created the modules that tracked the books and had an official sourcebook. Unlike Vox Machina, which was generic fantasy that’s only D&D-esque if you squint and know what to look for, a film based on the original Dragonlance trilogy would actually be a D&D movie. Characters largely act according to their class and according to the rules.
Buuuuutttt… as you mention, if would be a D&D movie based on a set of rules from the 70’s/80’s which is only tangentially connected to the game in its current form. Poor Raistlin; things might have gone so differently if he could have just spammed Fire Bolt cantrips.
A big part of that is the lack of real D&D stuff for, I assume, legal and licensing reasons. They never use D&D spell names or classes and characters act in ways best described as “legally distinct” from the 5e framework such as what’s obviously supposed to be Mage Hand working in impossible ways. Of course, my understanding of the CR show (never saw more than a little) is that the rules are more of a passing suggestion that sits in the shadow of “Rule of Cool” anyway.
Dragonlance (which are the books that got me into Fantasy in the first place) might have a resurgence of popularity with a new audience given a new trilogy by the original authors starts next month and a 5E source book is on its way. I would love to see a filmed version but I always preferred the Legends trilogy vs the Chronicles.
That’s definitely me. I’m an old D&D/AD&D guy and I have zero familiarity with Dragonlance other than being aware it existed. Never read the modules and the idea of reading novels based on AD&D seemed off-putting back in the day. I just assumed it was all hot, stinking garbage 
.
'course I have read and enjoy Erikson’s, Esslemont’s and Mieville’s stuff based on their role-playing campaigns and enjoyed all of them (well, for a certain value of enjoy with Mieville - maybe appreciated is a better word for him). So just unthinking bigotry on my part. But yeah, Dragonlance means nothing to me as an emotional touch point.
To be fair, most D&D novels are hot stinking garbage including most Dragonlance novels (a series that is extremely bloated and few are worth reading outside of two core trilogies). I’m not even sure that the core trilogies are “great” but they’re generally readable and enjoyable and “good”.
I don’t expect to ever see Dragonlance brought to the screen in a mainstream way and don’t especially care but I understand why it gets brought up. It’s a sweeping, epic, continent-spanning story with heroes and armies and intrigue and set pieces and characters that would probably look awesome brought to life the right way. It’s probably spawned some of the best pieces of D&D artwork (IMO, anyway). It’s an easy candidate for a proven story that is both very D&D and yet easily accessible for someone who knows nothing about D&D. If you wanted to tell a “serious” D&D story instead of the more tongue-in-cheek comedy adventure we’re getting in 2023, it would be the obvious route.
Sorry, but what? Critical Role is literally sponsored by Dungeons and Dragons. WotC has published multiple CR source books, and the shows are absolutely full of stuff that’s straight out of the source books, including stuff that’s specifically excluded from the open gaming license, like mind-flayers and beholders. They fought Vecna at the end of the first campaign.
I’ve never played 5th ed, so I don’t know how closely they follow the rules, but if they’re playing Mage Hand wrong, it’s absolutely not for “legal reasons.”
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, is basically that. It’s an indie film from about ten years ago. Really good, considering it’s budget was “all the pizza you can eat if you bring your own costume.”