Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley have discussed why they opted to make proper fantasy film set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons, rather than a Jumanji-esque film where real-life people find themselves trapped in a fantasy game.
Goldstein and Daley -- who previously co-wrote the 2017 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: Homecoming -- opened up about their approach to tackling D&D in a new interview with Total Film Magazine. "We wanted to create a movie that could stand on its own, even if you stripped away all the fantastical elements; a movie that could work in another genre," Goldstein said.
"Like how Homecoming was a John Hughes high-school film with superpowers, this started off as a heist movie gone wrong. That felt like a great campaign for a troupe of less-than-perfect characters to engage in. And then we just added all the accoutrements of the world of D&D," Goldstein continued. "It's so very Dungeons & Dragons [to be in the heist-movie genre]. It's the theme of many campaigns," Daley added.
'This Is Not Jumanji'
When Honor Among Thieves was first announced, some fans speculated that the film might use and actual Dungeons & Dragons game as a framing device -- or might even be about a group of D&D players who are magically transported to the realm of the popular tabletop role-playing game. The latter, of course, was the premise of the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon that aired on CBS. However, Honor Among Thieves' trailers have given no indication that the film would follow a similar premise, and Goldstein and Daley definitively put the kibosh on the idea of a meta approach during a recent panel at IGN Fan Fest.
"[T]his is not Jumanji," Daley said at the event. "We talked about it, but we made a decision that we did not want to break the fourth wall. There's so much fun to be had just in the world of D&D that we didn't have to bring it into our world and show kids playing." Goldstein further explained that the duo felt it would be "sort of limiting the absolute scope of this world if we were to sort of put it through the lens of a game being played."
Dungeons & Dragons Returns to the Big Screen
Goldstein and Daley directed Honor Among Thieves from a script they co-wrote with Michael Gilio, which was itself based on a story by Gilio and Chris McKay. The film is slated to premiere at SXSW on March 10 before receiving a wide release on March 31. It features an ensemble cast including Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis and Hugh Grant, among others.
D&D first got the big-screen treatment in 2000 with the release of director Courtney Solomon's Dungeons & Dragons. Director Gerry Lively subsequently helmed two direct-to-video sequels, Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God and Dungeons & Dragons 3: The Book of Vile Darkness, which released in 2005 and 2012, respectively. Despite being the franchise's fourth live-action feature film overall, Goldstein and Daley's Honor Among Thieves will be the first Dungeons & Dragons movie to get a theatrical release in over 20 years.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves opens in theaters on March 31.
Source: Total Film