This looks to be a Cafe Society thread, but in actuality it is mostly based upon the “political” issue about WotC and the “draft” OGL that was walked back/cornfielded/ never existed/ etc.
Dozens of poster on FB insisted they would boycott the film.
I got out of the habit of going to the Movies during Covid, but I think I am gonna go watch this film.
What do you think, and why?
Please note, this is NOT the place to continue the debate over WotC and the OGL issue, but of course you can say “Nope that OGL thing soured me on WotC forever, not gonna see the film.” or similar.
Yes I will. Not in cinemas, I’m over that I think, but when it’s out on streaming. I was cautiously optimistic, and now that it’s released a few trailers, more optimistic.
I am basing my decision on whether to see the film on whether I think it’s going to be a good film. So far, all of the indications are that it will be, and so I’m very likely to.
That said, I almost never see any film on opening weekend, so if it turns out that it’s bad after all, I might still change my mind.
They did something stupid, came to their senses, cancelled it and apologized. I’ll take the win. No point in kicking them when they’re down, and certainly no point in depriving myself of what looks like a good movie.
As far as I’m concerned the matter is closed. I’ll be watching the movie in the theater.
The trailer looks like some executive at Hasbro watched Thor: Ragnorak, immediately went out and purchased rights to the only other Led Zeppelin song they could recognize, and then hired the cheapest Chris they could get along with a bunch of aspiring screenwriters to essentially remake the story in their Wizards of the Coast-owned property. I think I’ll stick with the Deerstalker Pictures 1 For All webseries made by people who are actually cognizant of the tropes it is attempting to satirize.
WotC = Wizards of the Coast, the company which publishes D&D (and the card game Magic: The Gathering); it is a subsidiary of Hasbro.
OGL = Open Game License. It’s a concept which WotC has used for 20+ years, inspired by open source programming in computers, in which they grant other publishers and content creators the ability to use the D&D rules in their own products (thus, making their stuff compatible with D&D). Earlier this year, a major stink arose, when WotC indicated that they were going to tighten the rules on their OGL, including requiring royalty payments, and gaining rights to use content that others had made under the OGL.
It caused a lot of the content creators (and fans) a lot of angst and anger for a couple of weeks: many game designers announced that they would no longer be producing OGL content, and many fans announced that they would be boycotting D&D. It was, frankly, a money grab on the part of Hasbro (which they made worse, PR-wise, by attempting to cloak it in a desire to keep publishers from making racist, sexist, or otherwise vile material under the OGL), and after a couple of weeks, WotC and Hasbro realized how badly they had miscalculated, and backtracked on it all.
Probably, in one form or another, although the friends with whom I saw the first Dungeons & Dragons movie (it starred Jeremy Irons) have moved on figuratively, physically, and spiritually.
@kenobi_65: thank you for the clear exposition of the backstory. As I said, not my community. Mindful of our fine mod’s advice I’ll not say more on that.
Attitudinally I’d probably back @Alessan’s POV if I had one.
Big business does dumb stuff for $-related reasons fairly often. If one were serious about holding them to account for their greed, one would never buy anything they produce. Waiting until they pull a “gaffe” to get outraged just proves one wasn’t paying attention the rest of the time. If the movie proves to be good, go see it with a clear conscience. If not, skip it with a clear conscience.
