The New ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Movie is called ‘Honor Among Thieves’
Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, and more star.
‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ will open in theaters on March 3rd, 2023.
Things have been very quiet on the ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ front despite a new movie having been in the works for a while.
Now, though, we finally know what the new movie will be called: ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’.
‘Dungeons and Dragons’, of course, is the game designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and first brought to shelves in 1974. It works by gathering a group of players who create characters – warriors, elves, dwarves, wizards etc. – and sending them on a fantasy quest run by a Dungeon Master.
They explore dangerous locales and battle monsters, all using dice to determine the outcome of clashes or other situations. Players earn experience points (or XP) to level up.
The game has a patchy history of screen adaptations. Many will warmly remember the 1980s cartoon series, which saw a group of kids swept to a fantasy land filled with wizards, dragons and warriors.
Audiences were less happy with the 2000 movie, directed by Courtney Solomon, with Jeremy Irons as a tyrant named Profion looking to overthrow an otherwise peaceful kingdom ruled by Thora Birch’s Empress Savina. It was a notorious flop, though it did generate a couple of sequels, 2005 TV Movie ‘Wrath of the Dragon God’ and 2012’s ‘The Book of Vile Darkness’, which went straight to home entertainment.
Thanks to the rise in popularity of all things geeky (not to mention a big use of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ by the kids of ‘Stranger Things’), Hasbro – which has been working with Paramount and other studios to mine the games company’s various properties – pushed more than the ‘Dungeons’ project back into development, including a planned, expansive TV universe under the purview of Rawson Marshall Thurber.
Photo of Rawson Marshall Thurber Courtesy of Twitter
Though Hasbro’s key deal is with Paramount these days, Warner Bros. had the ‘Dungeons’ rights for a while and, upon learning that Hasbro had partnered with Universal for a movie from ‘Fast & Furious’ scripting stalwart Chris Morgan, threw its weight behind a more obscure game created by Gary Gygax called ‘Chainmail’, hiring ‘Wrath of the Titans’/’Red Riding Hood’ writer David Leslie to adapt it. That got bogged down in a rights battle until Warners was able to work it out.
Nothing came of that effort, though, and Hasbro, under its Paramount deal, flashed the greenlight for a movie from John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the directors of ‘Game Night’.
The directors co-wrote the latest movie with and been busy making the new movie, working alongside co-writer Michael Gilio. The latter had been in talks to direct the movie at one point, as had ‘The Lego Batman’s Chris McKay, and the pair are credited with the movie’s story.
Quite what that plot is remains locked in a treasure chest for now, though a filing for the movie with the US Copyright office last year listed the following basic synopsis: “An ex-Harper turned thief escapes from prison with his partner, a female barbarian, and reunites with a no-talent wizard and a druid new to their team in an effort to rob the cheating conman who stole all their loot from the heist that landed them behind bars, and used it to install himself as the Lord of Neverwinter. Only the traitor is allied with a powerful Red Wizard who has something far more sinister in store.”
Whether that is the actual storyline remains to be seen, though we do at least know who is starring in the new movie – Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant are all part of the cast.
‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ will roll into theaters on March 3rd, 2023.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
