![]() ![]() ![]() “We shot in Northern Ireland, which is one of the greenest places on Earth,” Daley added. “We didn’t want it to be that gritty, grim, medieval look that you see so often,” Goldstein explained. Meanwhile, moviegoers tired of monochrome blockbusters will take great joy in the bright colors and lush landscapes of Dungeons & Dragons. “We saw ourselves as the Dungeon Masters of this movie,” Goldstein said, “so we had to decide what’s gonna be the most fun for the audience.” That means audiences will not find core gameplay mechanics like long rests represented in the movie, though Daley joked that there will be a director’s cut that’s “14 hours long that will have 12 hours of them taking naps.” But underneath that world building is a subjective and localized experience that offered the filmmakers a surprising amount of creative latitude. The world of Dungeons & Dragons can be overwhelming, spanning multiple decades and countless rulebooks and modules. “When the cast first arrived in Belfast, we played a game of Dungeons & Dragons with them to give them a sense of what it felt like to be in a party during a campaign,” Goldstein noted, “and also to give us a preview of what they might bring as they played as their characters.”įinding the right story and cast was crucial. While the duo did write with particular actors in mind – the part of the duplicitous Forge was written for Hugh Grant, and Daley describes Chris Pine as their “top choice” throughout the casting process for Edgin the Bard – new pieces of chemistry and characterization were found during early playthroughs of the game itself. “We saw ourselves as the Dungeon Masters of this movie.” – Jonathan GoldsteinĬasting was another way to make the world of Dungeons & Dragons accessible to audiences. “Everyone has at the very least seen a heist film,” Daley noted. “We thought that was a really interesting way into a story that people could sink their teeth into without necessarily any knowledge of the fantasy genre.” 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. “The one thing that we knew we wanted to preserve was the fact that it was a heist,” Daley explained. While several versions of the Dungeons & Dragons script existed before they came on board, the duo immediately gravitated toward the heist elements of earlier drafts. Equal parts ensemble comedy and fantasy adventure, Dungeons & Dragons is poised to be a celebration of the roleplaying franchise for fans and newcomers alike.īoth men came to the film knowing the game (Daley was introduced to it when playing gamer Sam Weir in Freaks and Geeks, while a young Goldstein wormed his way into campaigns run by his elder brother – “and since I was the younger brother, I was often killed off pretty quickly, in an unceremonious fashion”). That trend seems sure to continue with Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the new film from writers/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. The opening night slot at the South by Southwest Film and Television Festival has often celebrated movies that balance spectacle and story equally: films like Jordan Peele’s Us and the Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once, movies that earned awards and box office in equal measure. ![]()
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