D&D: Wrath of the Dragon God Q&A
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Q: What makes D&D a good property to use as the basis for a movie? What are the primary benefits and pitfalls associated with doing so? Was it a goal to create a similar feeling to the tabletop game?
A: D&D is great property to use as the basis for a movie because there is so much material to start with and you have a built-in audience. So, most of the heavy lifting has already been done for you. The universe is fabulously imaginative and clearly defined by a very strict set of rules and regulations.
But here's the rub - it's a difficult property to use as the basis for a movie for the very same reasons. Sometimes the framework for the world of D&D doesn't adapt so easily to a dramatic narrative. This means that at some point, you will have to take some creative license, and in so doing, you risk losing that built-in audience because you're breaking or bending the rules they all have to follow.
So, the challenge was to anchor the movie within the rules of the game, and at the same time, make it accessible to fans of sci-fi / fantasy that don't know anything about D&D. To strike this balance, we would write what we thought worked, what we liked, and then run it by the creative team from Wizards to see if we were breaking the rules. If we were, it was back to the drawing board.
And yes, this was a highly desirable objective for everyone in the production from early on.
