WTF Happened to Dungeons & Dragons (2000)?

Next year, Paramount Pictures is going to try and turn Dungeons & Dragons into the next huge fantasy franchise. Indeed, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has it all – a huge budget, a cast of stars (including Chris Pine) and people behind the scenes who take it seriously. It’s a far cry from the first, disastrous attempt to turn the famous RPG game into a franchise, 2000’s mostly forgotten Dungeons & Dragons, which starred a scenery chewing Jeremy Irons as an evil mage. The cast mostly consisted of young actors, including Justin Whalin, Marlon Wayans and Thora Birch. Produced by New Line Cinema, it was very much in the vein of their Mortal Kombat movies, and fans of the iconic game, who were legion, were not impressed. The movie only grossed a measly $33 million, and the only follow-up it spawned was a made for TV sequel forgotten by time.

So what went wrong? In this episode of WTF Happened to this Movie, we dig into the RPG’s origins, the hype surrounding it, and the choice of Courtney Solomon to direct what everyone, I assumed, hoped would launch a franchise. We also look back at how this was a different time for fantasy films, with New Line’s own Lord of the Rings trilogy (which began only a year after this came out) showing everyone how lucrative a film based on a fantasy property could be – if done right. This, was definitively NOT done right. 

This episode of WTF Happened to this Movie is written and narrated by Dave Davis, edited by Paul Podeyn and produced by Ben Cantler. Is Dungeons & Dragons the movie as bad as we remember? Let us know in the comments!