D&D: Honor Among Thieves

[Whill]

I recently discovered that the new D&D movie was surprisingly available for free streaming for subscribers of Paramount+, only 2 weeks after its digital home video release, which was only slightly over a month since its theatrical release. Friday night I watched the movie without having to pay for it, the only way I was ever going to watch it. I ignored box office info and all movies reviews before seeing it, but yesterday I scanned some reviews and saw they were mixed.

The movie grossed only slightly over $200 million worldwide, significantly less than Solo and Shazam!. It's production budget was $150 million, but it is a general practice with big budget releases for promotion cost being at least 50% of a film's production budget, which would be $75 million. From what I've gathered the movie was heavily marketed, which means its promotion cost could be as much as its production budget, $150 million. Even with the conservative figure, it would have taken a box office gross of at least $225 million just to break even.

All this means means that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves technically bombed. I think the #1 reason for this is that Hasbro is an evil corporation and the controversy from the WotC OGL Scandal. But there are other factors...


The core party characters are as follows:

Human bard/fallen paladin (Chris Pine), the central protagonist of the story. He is not shown using magic, but his lute may be enchanted because he used it as a melee weapon a couple times and it didn't break after being smashed into metal-helmeted heads. He only sang a couple times in the movie but did play the traditional role of bard in some ways.

Human barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez). She always seemed a bit masculine to me and I feel she was perfectly cast for this film. She is always tough but has a sensitive side when it comes to the little girl she was a surrogate mother to and her halfling ex-husband played in a cameo by Bradley Cooper.

Half-Elf sorcerer (Justice Smith). This one is pointedly uncharismatic.

Tiefling druid (Sophia Lillis). This one can wild-shape into an owlbear.

Other important characters include a slowly-aging human paladin (Regé-Jean Page), a human rogue (Hugh Grant), a human wizard (Daisy Head), and the 14-year old daughter of the main character (Chloe Coleman). There is a big bad behind the scenes and I think he may be a lich wizard. I think all the characters were well cast.

The film seems unrelated to the previous D&D films. This one takes place in the land of Faerûn (in the Forgotten Realms setting). This is definitely a high fantasy setting where magic is very common. The movie was very heavily loaded with D&D races, monsters, spells, magic items, locations, and lore. It was cool to see Dragonborn and Tabaxi. But I didn't like that it seemed like everyone in the film was a PC class, like there were no regular people (0 level NPCs).

There is a lot here for D&D players to geek out on. I feel that the movie was made for D&D fanatics, which made it too niche for a general movie audience. I don't think it really worked to overload the film with D&D lore as if the audience already knows it all. And this is coming from someone who already knew a lot of it like owl bears, displacer beasts, and gelatinous cubes. It's almost like they had so much confidence in the movie that they expected it to leave noobs so thirsty to immerse themselves in D&D that they would run out of the theater to their nearest game store to immediately start investing in high-priced D&D products. (The movie lost $17-$92 million in the box office and they definitely aren't going to make it up by this movie being an extremely effective commercial for the D&D game.) This overuse of D&D lore without explanations for most of the film is likely a factor in the film's lack of success.

The movie also suffered from the overuse of flashbacks. It's like they took to heart that characters all have backstories written so they embraced that in the film structure. From the dialogue, it seemed like they actually filmed even more flashbacks that got cut.

All that said, I actually thought the movie was ok overall. It could have been better, but it definitely was far better than the original low budget D&D movie and the first TV/direct-to-video sequel that I saw in the aughts.

Did anyone else see it? What did you think?
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[ThrorII]

I saw it both in the theaters, and again on streaming a few weeks ago.

When I saw it in the theater, I thought the 1st half dragged a LOT, but it really kicked off once the party headed out to the old battlefield to 'Speak with Dead'. I felt it was sufficiently D&D 5e / Forgotten Realms to satisfy players and readers of novels AND not overly saturated to be accessible to the general public. Overall, I gave it a solid 6.7 to 7 of 10.

When it came on streaming (VUDU, for full disclosure), we watched it again. Maybe I'm less critical at home, or maybe I just adjusted my expectations, or maybe it just took a second viewing....either way, I REALLY liked it the second time. I'd give it a solid 7.5 to 8 of 10.

I thought it was fun, well made, and I got a decent handle on every main character.

I'm bummed that it did bomb at the boxoffice. I don't think enough people even knew about the WotC scandals, I think the IP is just not exciting enough to too many folks yet. I know it was #2 out of 100 for new movies streamed on VUDU when we watched it, so maybe it will get a sequel based on after-theater word of mouth.
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[Whill]

I disagree that is wasn't too overly saturated with D&D lore without in-film explanations for a general audience, but you do have a point. If the D&D IP is still niche, then the WotC scandals couldn't have been too big of a factor in its box office.

However I do still think it was a factor. Although WotC did take some of the sting out of their OGL drama by walking back the leaked plans for a harsher OGL and releasing the 5e game system as SRD before the film's release, the juggernaut movement of other publishers to divorce from the dependency on D&D game systems has continued to plow forward, and the #BoycottWotC movement and related hashtags were still big when the film was in the theaters. This was picked up on by some non-gamers. So the scandals may not have added up to quite the full difference between success and failure of the film in the box office, but I still think the box office did suffer a bit by the WotC's leak showing Hasbro's @$$.

Since the movie was at its base a decent film, a bigger factor than the scandals would be that the primary audience was gamers already immersed in D&D lore. Some broad strokes could have helped that, such as some narration or exposition somehow explaining that magic and monsters are common in this setting. It is a bit jarring. In the movie, D&D monsters were common in cities, not just out in the wilderness. I have seen a lot of un-initiated reactions to the films express that they were overwhelmed by the setting. I am far from a noob to D&D and I felt this way to an extent, so I can appreciate this reaction.

But for movies that I like, I do tend to enjoy them more the second time I see them, so perhaps I will also watch again, sometime when I can watch it for free again because I refuse to support Hasbro in any way. I know not everyone agrees with me so I posted this thread separate from the scandal thread. Players of Star Wars D6 are movie fans and RPG fans, and this is the biggest film ever made based on an RPG.
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[DougRed4]

I saw it in the theater and liked it (as did my girlfriend), and my son saw it separately and also really enjoyed it.

It's interesting that this Forbes article (nearly a month old) refers to it numerous times as a "hit".

Quoting from the article:

"Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is one of the year's biggest box office hits."

"With the critical and box office success of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, questions about a possible sequel are to be expected."

The numbers I've always heard was that a movie needs to make double its cost to break-even, so this clearly got nowhere near that amount. But then I don't know if it has other large markets around the world where it will still be released, either. Nor how much Hasbro makes off merchandising and ancillary products (I saw lots of merch at a Barnes & Noble, for instance).
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Whill]

That Forbes article is one I came across when researching for writing my May 28 post. Critical praise is subjective, but I can say that I have seen a lot of positive and negative reviews, so saying critical response is mixed would not be inaccurate. Maybe I've seen more positive than negative, but I haven't counted. Critics are bullsh!t anyway. Critics have trashed movies I've loved and praised movies I hated, so I hold little stock their opinions.

I've seen multiple opinions that the overuse of lore without explanation made the film too niche and other opinions that it didn't. I'm no noob to D&D and I felt the setting needed a little bit more exposition. It's assumptions felt a bit jarring to me, so I can really sympathize with the noobs who are WTH.

But as far as it being a financial hit, the proof is in the pudding. For movies that are heavily marketed, needing to gross double its production budget to break even is the norm, and like you said this movie fell far short from that. The article goes to show that someone can write whatever words they want. The article has demonstrably meaningless statements, like saying it is still in the top 10 films 6 weeks after release. It was exactly 10th and made very slightly over $1 million that week. Right now it is 12th for the year, and above it are four films that were released more recently.

The film has been released in all the major markets (55% of its gross was non-domestic), but it is most telling that the film was released for digital home sale only slightly over a month after its theatrical release. The studio gave up on the theater at that point. But financial success is really no indicator of quality to me either, because I have liked movies that bombed and disliked movies that grossed over $1 billion.

The directors say it was made to be a standalone movie and not to launch a franchise. That's good because it won't. There have been a comic book and novel tie-ins, but not much else. After seeing the film I visited my FLGS and asked about it. They said there have been zero game tie-ins, and they have not noticed any uptick in D&D sales. They have announced that D&D book prices are going up. I sincerely doubt there will be some huge backend payoff for the film. I went to Barnes & Nobles to look at the Ultimate Guide magazine, but it had no images of dragonborn and I did not buy it. I've heard that a TV series spin-off is in development, which makes sense. A lower cost sequel of sorts.

I overall liked Honor Among Thieves despite a few criticisms I have of it. As long as I can see it for free, I will see it again sometime.
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