MOVIE NEWS – The directors of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, talked about how their vision for the film influenced their decision to quit Ezra Miller’s The Flash.

Dungeons and Dragons has been the face of tabletop role-playing games for decades and has spawned numerous direct adaptations and inspired works in almost every medium and genre, from comic web series to dark fantasy novels. The latest big-screen adaptation announcement came from Paramount, which revealed that it was making a feature-length film based on the game. The Dungeons and Dragons project received its official title from Paramount in April 2022.

Daley and Goldstein, who ended up in the director’s chairs for the Dungeons and Dragons film, recently gave an interview to Variety in which they discussed the upcoming film, and The Flash came up. The pair faced problems while working on The Flash, a project they joined as writers and filmmakers until they left it, citing creative differences. Goldstein said: “If we feel that the powers-that-be are not excited about making the same movie as we are, then we’re not going to win that battle. And it’s better to give up in time and get out of there.” Soon after that, the two got the opportunity to helm the new Dungeons and Dragons project, which probably fits their ideas much better even after the change of direction. Due to the high profile of the project, the film will likely set the tone for future adaptations, including the live-action Dungeons and Dragons series coming to Paramount Plus.

The directing duo also talked about their vision for the Dungeons and Dragons film. “There is this prejudice that you have to overcome that this is not just for nerds,” Daley said. “There is something bigger and more cinematic.” The pair revealed that they originally envisioned the film as a more realistic thing focused on real-world players of the TTRPG, but were led in another direction by the release of another surprisingly good project with a similar framing: Jumanji. “The moment Jumanji came out, we said: No, we can’t do this again,” the pair said during the interview. “Besides, it does a bit of a disservice. It reduces D&D to just a game and I think there is so much that can be explored in that world. And it’s hard to care about a character that you know as an audience is being played by someone who is safely in their home.”

Source: Variety