Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves kicked off the SXSW film and television festival on Friday night in Austin with a laugh-filled premiere.
“We have seen our Gameyes of Thrones and lords of the rings and they’re great, but there’s not a lot of laughs. We wanted to show the fun,” he said. Dungeons and Dragons co-director Jonathan Goldstein of the fantasy genre from the stage of the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin.
Chris Pine, Regé-Jean Page, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis star in the Paramount and eOne film as a band of adventurers on a quest to recover a powerful relic, a journey that runs into trouble after it is found. they meet some nefarious characters. Hugh Grant, who did not attend Friday’s premiere, plays the group’s main foil, as an ally turned con man.
Goldstein and John Francis Daley — best known for directing under-the-radar comedies Game night — wrote and directed the long-in-development film.
Tabletop RPG fans will be delighted by the film’s gameplay references, from gelatinous cubes to owl bears. Goldstein and Daley are avowed D&D fans, and Daley plays D&D on screen as a child actor in the ’90s series. Geeks and Geeks. “Directing a movie is essentially like running a campaign,” Goldstein said during the post-screening question-and-answer session.
While on set, Pine said that he hadn’t played much before the film, but began playing with his family once he was cast as the film’s bard. “I got to see my dad play a warrior, which is very exciting. He is 82 years old,” he said, adding that the game is designed for actors. “It’s basically improv. Something happens and you say, ‘Yeah, let’s go.’”
But the biggest cheers and whoops of the film came with the graceful on-screen performance of Page, who plays the film’s resident paladin. “Can you talk about the decision to choose beautiful men?” asked an audience member to possibly the biggest laughs of the night. Daley responded, “We saw them as extensions of ourselves.”
While there was no explicit cliffhanger at the end of the film, the question of a sequel came up during the Q&A, to which Goldstein responded, “To be able to continue this journey with these amazing people would be a dream.” (Goldstein and Daley recently entered into a first-look agreement with the studio.)
It’s been a long road to the screen for Dungeons and Dragons. Hasbro’s role-playing game was previously adapted in 2000 by New Line for a film starring Jeremy Irons. In recent years, the property has been at the center of a legal battle over its film rights, with a 2015 deal appearing to have paved the way for Warner Bros. to make a movie that at one point had Ansel Elgort in talks. initials to star. However, the rights eventually went from Warner to Paramount.
Paramount was at SXSW last year, their first since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum two-handed. The lost City. That rom-com adventure earned an impressive nearly $200 million at the worldwide box office.
Dungeons and Dragons It will be released in theaters on March 31.
