Here’s what the Dungeons & Dragons movie directors would do in a sequel

With Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in theaters and Critical Role’s animated collection The Legend of Vox Machina contemporary off its second season, it seems like D&D onscreen is having a significantly mainstream second. Is this simply the begin of a greater D&D display franchise? Is Honor Among Thieves headed for a sequel, a movie collection, or a bunch of spinoffs? Polygon requested writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein what type they’d wish to see future D&D tales take.

“I think stop-motion,” Daley says, with out hesitation. “Rankin/Bass style, a total throwback.”

Daley means it as a joke. But it isn’t the worst thought, given stop-motion animation’s current micro-boom: A brand new Netflix movie from Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick and Guillermo del Toro’s extraordinarily darkish, Oscar-nominated tackle Pinocchio each arrived late final 12 months, and 2023 will see a new Chicken Run sequel and two new Wes Anderson movies that can reportedly embrace stop-motion. Any type of animation is perhaps a good method for Dungeons & Dragons’ wealthy fantasy worlds. But Daley and Goldstein aren’t truly interested by subsequent steps fairly but.

Will Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves get a sequel?

Image: Paramount Pictures

“It was never our intention when we came on board this film to make a franchise,” Daley says. “I think that would cloud our ability to focus entirely on the film at hand. The cardinal mistake many studios make is to put the cart before the horse, where they start crafting a cinematic universe before they even make a good single film. So first and foremost for us was getting this right.”

That’s a refreshing perspective in a world the place studios hold forgetting to start out small and construct a fandom organically, as an alternative of attempting to kickstart a 10-year mega-blockbuster plan with each new movie. That mentioned, with Honor Among Thieves out, after all the directors are interested by the place they’d wish to see these characters go subsequent.

Goldstein says if that they had carte blanche to do something with the D&D world, they’d most likely follow the celebration they set up in Honor Among Thieves: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Sophia Lillis as an adventuring crew who forge some private connections over the course of the story.

“The good thing about a sequel is, you don’t have to spend much screen time introducing [the party],” he says. “The audience knows them, and you can jump into the plot more quickly. And obviously, we have great affection for both the actors and these roles that they play. But we’d want to introduce some new figures along the way, and certainly a lot of new monsters.”

“And new locations,” Daley provides.

“Yeah, you know, we did the Forgotten Realms for this one, partly because it’s kind of a recognizable medieval setting,” Goldstein says. “But there are so many worlds within D&D that we could explore.”

“Now that we’ve finished it, and we’re relying on the fates to decide if this thing is a success, we would absolutely love to continue to tell stories in this world,” Daley says. “We think it’s absolutely ripe with potential.”

What would Honor Among Thieves 2 seem like?

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Part of that potential, Daley says, is a core factor of Dungeons & Dragons that doesn’t come up in their movie: “I think if we were lucky enough to do another one of these, we would want to see our characters level up.” In Honor Among Thieves, Pine’s bard character Edgin by no means makes use of magic (for causes the directors defined to us for our bigger have a look at the movie’s selections), however Daley thinks in a sequel, he’d most likely add spells to his repertoire. “That would be kind of exciting to see,” he says.

Goldstein says that when the two males have been planning the movie — which lists them as co-writers alongside collaborator Michael Gilio, with a story by Gilio and Chris McKay — they requested Wizards of the Coast for “a list of the 30 biggest fan-favorite creatures” to present them concepts. “And then we had the freedom to select what we should feature.”

That explains Honor Among Thieves’ use of an owlbear, a displacer beast, and a mimic, amongst different creatures from previous D&D lore. But it leaves them with lots to cowl in future tales.

When is Drizzt getting a D&D movie?

Image: Wizards of the Coast

And then there’s considered one of fandom’s largest questions on Dungeons & Dragons display tales: When is fan-favorite character Drizzt Do’urden getting his personal movie or TV present? Could he flip up in an Honor Among Thieves sequel or spinoff?

“Drizzt did come up, actually, as we were figuring out what our first film was going to be,” Daley says. “But the general consensus was to not go there yet. That said, he’s definitely a popular character in the world, and one who could be exciting to explore.”

“How about a movie where Drizzt meets the ’80s characters?” Goldstein asks, referring to the Saturday morning cartoon characters from the Eighties, who function in a maze sequence in considered one of Honor Among Thieves’ geekiest references.

“And the ’80s characters are horribly maimed after their experience in the maze?” Daley laughs.

That appears even much less seemingly than a stop-motion D&D movie. But for Daley, this sort of imaginative toying with the potentialities of WOTC properties is a part of the enjoyable of a D&D story. “There are so many characters in this world,” he says. “It would be really fun either to have them join the group we’ve established, or do some sort of an offshoot of our film, to get into their backstories.”