That’s Gonna Be -2 CON Damage: Warner Bros. Just Acquired the Movie Rights to Dungeons & Dragons

Buckle up. One of hallowed bastions of nerddom with one of the worst records at making a related movie that is in any way watchable has just been optioned for another adaptation. That’s right. Warner Bros. wants to make a Dungeons & Dragons movie.

From Deadline the heralds come with news: Warner Bros. seeks gallant scribes to forge it a great movie production, or at least a half decent script. But it seems the heralds have been out paced by events, as the WB already intends to use a previously acquired script called Chainmail after a Gary Gygax created game that preceded D&D.

The studio is actually quite far along in the development of the project, as it will use a script by Wrath Of The Titans and Red Riding Hood scribe and Frank Darabont protege David Leslie Johnson. That script, Chainmail, was acquired last year as a free-standing project, based on an obscure game that was also hatched by D&D designer Gary Gygax before he and Dave Arneson launched D&D. It is being retro-fitted to fit the much bigger game creation. The film will be produced by The Lego Movie producer Roy Lee and Courtney Solomon. The latter actually directed a 2000 Dungeons & Dragons feature, a film that starred Jeremy Irons and did not do well.

So… that seems like a really, ah… promising creative pedigree. Just don’t ask me to elaborate on what it promises. I’d intended to make a joke here about the “silent archer” archetype, but lets face it, the most authentically D&D thing about this movie will probably be that it will contain… a dragon. Lets just watch the Doubleclicks and promise to make time for another session of our ongoing campaign soon.

(via Deadline.)

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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