Enlarge /. We hope that Wizards of the Coast will fit in with Chris Pine's casting in the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie and get him into an official set of rules.
Aurich Lawson / Getty Images / Wizards of the Coast
The next Dungeons & Dragons movie appears to be still alive – and has criticized its first major casting decision before planning to finally start filming early next year.
According to Deadline, the combined forces of Paramount Pictures and D&D owner Hasbro have landed Chris Pine (Wonder Woman, Star Trek) to star in the film. This follows reports from 2019 that the project had a solid writer-director duo annexed to it: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley who co-wrote the surprisingly solid dark comedy Game Night (which revolves around Hasbro board games, but far away) directed (family friendly) and co-writer of Ars-approved Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Freaks & Geeks plays D&D
If Daley's name is ringing a nerdy bell, it could be because one of his breakout roles – on NBC's short-lived, critically acclaimed Freaks & Geeks – featured one of the best TV recordings of all time for Dungeons & Dragons. In a time of pop culture when D&D references were usually derogatory or just a note, the D&D episode by Freaks & Geeks took extra care to make the game accurate and amusing – and it showed how ridiculous ideas are like "Carlos the Dwarf" fit perfectly into Wizards of the classic table series of the coast.
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This episode aired months before New Line Cinema brought a stinker of a movie called Dungeons & Dragons to cinemas worldwide – arguably to capitalize on the Lord of the Rings fever, if unsuccessfully. As Roger Ebert wrote in a December 2000 review, "Imagine a kingdom that half the time looks like a towering fantasy world of towers and towers, castles and drawbridges – and the other half like everyone in the wooded area Behind Sam & # 39; s Club is the Autobahn. "
On a purely series nerd level, the 2000 film didn't even bother leveraging decades of D&D lore and cannons. Instead, it invented a facsimile of the Alphatian Empire for its very strange story in which Jeremy Irons appeared as the great evil for some reason.
Whether Goldstein, Daley, and Pine are teaming up to deliver a nerd-perfect D&D rendition, or whether they're playing quick and easy with the source material, we're already optimistic enough to expect something better than what New Line gives this one 20 years ago. .. although we go ahead and request some kind of sweet beholder recovery, preferably in stop motion or puppet form, please.
