Stranger Things may have reminded the general population that Dungeons and Dragons can make for some good entertainment source material, but Chris Pine is apparently set to bring the legendary role playing game to the silver screen.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Pine is set to star in a movie based on the pen and paper (and lots and lots of die) RPG from the guys who made another tabletop-based film.
Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley — the duo behind New Line’s sleeper hit Game Night— are set to direct the feature that is based on the popular role-playing fantasy game. Goldstein and Daley also wrote the latest version of the script, based on a previous draft by Michael Gilio.
Plot details are scarce, but you can probably guess there will be an orc or two involved once everything is said and done. And there are a lot of directions to go: Pine could be a super serious person set in a Dungeons and Dragons universe or star in a film that looks a bit more like the recent pair of Jumanji movies. Considering the Game Night influence the latter seems more likely, with characters thrust into a mystical world and learning to roll their way through it.
The source material is basically endless here: the role playing mechanics and vast lore of the franchise can be applied to anything as nerdy as the most technical and mythological dungeon crawl to a Rick and Morty-inspired universe. But as THR pointed out, the project has had a long road to get to Pine in the first place, as legal battles and other announced leads and issues have made this a project two decades in the making:
The role-playing game from Hasbro 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 settlement appearing to have paved the way for Warner Bros. to make a movie that at one time had Ansel Elgort in early talks to star. However, the rights eventually hit the trail for Paramount, which has a production and distribution deal with Hasbro.
As any experienced player can tell you, sometimes the best stories take a bit longer to play out than you’d like. Hopefully for Pine, all the players involved here stick around and see it through to the end.
[via THR]