Should they make a live action movie called Dragonlamce: Dragons of Autumn Twilight?

[JadedDM]

As much as I love Dragonlance, I wouldn't hold out any hopes for another movie. They don't even make any novels, sourcebooks or modules anymore. It is completely dead, and from what I've seen, WotC has no interest in reviving it--least not any time soon.

[Blackhawk748]

That depends. Would several characters have to be completely CGI with people possibly doing motion capture because this is a fantasy series, several scenes on a green screen, and scenes with a large, disposable CGI army? Because if they're using that much computer animation just make it an animated series but have a higher budget.

This is my thought, just make it animated. It would solve so, so many problems that would crop up. Just be sure to give it a sufficient budget

[JadedDM]

Also worth noting they have made an animated movie of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and it wasn't very well received.

[Forum Explorer]

Also worth noting they have made an animated movie of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and it wasn't very well received.

They did a bad job though. Anyways, while I don't have high hopes for a Dragonlance movie any time soon, they did make a Battleship movie, so I'm not ruling anything out anymore.

[Tom Kalbfus]

As much as I love Dragonlance, I wouldn't hold out any hopes for another movie. They don't even make any novels, sourcebooks or modules anymore. It is completely dead, and from what I've seen, WotC has no interest in reviving it--least not any time soon.

There is a lot of 3.5 stuff, and I'm thinking of running a campaign. The thing about games is you can play the old editions no matter how old they are. Anyway there is over 100 years of Dragonlance history.

[JadedDM]

They did a bad job though.

Which unfortunately doesn't mean anything to Hollywood. If a movie bombs, the takeaway is never 'we made a bad movie.' It's always, 'I guess people don't like x' (where 'x' is whatever the movie is about). Remember when Star Trek Enterprise did poorly and was cancelled, and the takeaway for studio execs wasn't "we made a bad show, let's do better next time" but rather, "Welp, guess nobody likes Star Trek anymore" and consequently, it took 12 years before we got another Star Trek TV series?

The point I'm making is, after the animated movie failed, I don't think people are going to be eager to make a new one. They're going to assume it will bomb, as well, even if it is better made.

There is a lot of 3.5 stuff

There is, and most of it's pretty great. But that sort of proves my point. Third edition has been dead for 12 years now. Dragonlance was never officially updated to 4E or 5E by WotC. For whatever reason (and I half wonder if it has anything to do with the animated movie bombing or not), WotC has not produced a single Dragonlance module, sourcebook or novel in 10 years. A fact that was made all the more glaring when WotC started teasing the idea of bringing back 'classic settings' and they turned out to be Ebberon and Magic the Gathering (and no offense to fans of either, but when people talk about 'classic settings' those aren't the ones that come to my mind).

I'd love it if Dragonlance returned, in any form, but it's just looking less and less likely as the years pass. I hang out at the official Dragonlance forums, and they're pretty much dead, too. Most people seem to have forgotten about it, and a good deal of younger D&D players were only kids when it was still active, so have no memories of it.

[Mechalich]

There is, and most of it's pretty great. But that sort of proves my point. Third edition has been dead for 12 years now. Dragonlance was never officially updated to 4E or 5E by WotC. For whatever reason (and I half wonder if it has anything to do with the animated movie bombing or not), WotC has not produced a single Dragonlance module, sourcebook or novel in 10 years. A fact that was made all the more glaring when WotC started teasing the idea of bringing back 'classic settings' and they turned out to be Ebberon and Magic the Gathering (and no offense to fans of either, but when people talk about 'classic settings' those aren't the ones that come to my mind).

In 2001 WotC licensed Sovereign Press - Margaret Weis' game company - to produce 3e Dragonlance material. When the license expired in 2007 it was not renewed. WotC never strongly supported Dragonlance as a property, possibly due to a history of conflicts between the setting's nominal creators and their then superiors at TSR in the late 80s and through the 90s.

I'd love it if Dragonlance returned, in any form, but it's just looking less and less likely as the years pass. I hang out at the official Dragonlance forums, and they're pretty much dead, too. Most people seem to have forgotten about it, and a good deal of younger D&D players were only kids when it was still active, so have no memories of it.

I'm somewhat surprised that no effort has been made to revitalize the novel line, which was always more impactful for the setting than its use in actual games, but it seems that for some reason the era of shared world novel production is hitting a low ebb for some reason (I don't know why, considering the cost of producing such things has never been lower) across the board and WotC is no longer interested in being a major fantasy book publisher.

[Tom Kalbfus]

In 2001 WotC licensed Sovereign Press - Margaret Weis' game company - to produce 3e Dragonlance material. When the license expired in 2007 it was not renewed. WotC never strongly supported Dragonlance as a property, possibly due to a history of conflicts between the setting's nominal creators and their then superiors at TSR in the late 80s and through the 90s.



I'm somewhat surprised that no effort has been made to revitalize the novel line, which was always more impactful for the setting than its use in actual games, but it seems that for some reason the era of shared world novel production is hitting a low ebb for some reason (I don't know why, considering the cost of producing such things has never been lower) across the board and WotC is no longer interested in being a major fantasy book publisher.

I don't see why there was a 4th or 5th edition of D&D, 3.5 always worked fine for me. 3.5 was versatile and still is! You can download copies of just about all the 3.5 books that were ever published, they fit in my tablet memory just fine, and when they are in this form, they don't weigh much as they physical hard covers do, and they don't cost as much either! I still have they physical hard covers, but they are a pain to lug around! My dragonlance books are all e-books now. I'm not sure if the 5th edition comes in e-book form. I did buy the 5th edition core rulebooks, I got two hardcover 5th edition D&D adventures, for some reason WotC likes to make adventures that take you from 1st to 20th level, I never understood why. In the old days, adventures were self-contained and only advanced characters 2 or 3 levels at a time, rather than being a whole campaign.

The two adventures I bought each cost about $50, and each of the core rulebooks cost $50, for a total purchase price of around $250! D&D didn't used to cost so much. I studied the 5th edition rules, and it seems to be simplified from the 3.5 edition, more geared towards the D&D setting and no equivalent to d20 Modern. 4th edition was more complicated, and less familiar to me, a lot of strange character classes, this kind of drove me to Pathfinder. Game designers like to change things a lot. I find there is nothing wrong with 3.5, nothing obsolete about it. You can shell out a lot of money to buy the 5th edition hardcovers, or if your a cheapskate. You can download the 3.5 e-books instead. I kind of like doing the later. There is so much more stuff for 3.5 than there is for 5th edition, its old stuff but there is alot of it! And when doing fantasy roleplaying, nothing much really changes over the decades.

Dragonlance is old, but many are familiar with it, particularly the Chronicals trilogy, since it lasted this long, I think it may be worth turning into a movie, just like the Lord of the Rings has been. The game companies are obsessed with making new stuff, because they like to publish and sell books and games. Once the market has been saturated with a particular product, they start writing the next product.

A lot of people have Dragonlance on their books shelves, it is one of the D&D classics. If they did a movie of it, it would be a new product, not an old book, people would buy tickets to see it, if done well! Not second rate. If the movie companies don't want to produce it, maybe a go fund me page could. They could get permission from Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman to produce 3 movies, I think the special effects required are old hat, they were available at the turn of the century whe Lord of the Rings was produced. A similar movie with similar special effect could be produced much more cheaply now, and that should be enough.

[JadedDM]

If the movie companies don't want to produce it, maybe a go fund me page could. They could get permission from Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman to produce 3 movies...

You'd need WotC's permission, actually. Hickman and Weis no longer hold the rights to Dragonlance, which is why they actually aren't able to write any more books unless WotC allows them to.

[Mechalich]

I don't see why there was a 4th or 5th edition of D&D, 3.5 always worked fine for me. 3.5 was versatile and still is!

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but if you're being serious, you are completely failing to understand the economic of gaming. The publishers will always move to introduce new editions (or entirely new games) as a means to move product. You can only sell any given person a single sourcebook once, so it's necessary to keep producing new sourcebooks in order to continue to make money off the fans.

If the movie companies don't want to produce it, maybe a go fund me page could.

You are vastly underestimating the cost of a modern fantasy production if you think go fund me or other crowdsourcing could support such an endeavor. The 2008 animated film was produced the way it was, with cheap old fashioned animation, for economic reasons as a quick nostalgia grab. A reasonable estimate for a Dragons of Autumn Twilight film would be 75-100 million dollars (plus half that again in marketing). You'd need 350+ million in world wide box office to try and make your money back and the support just isn't there.

[Tom Kalbfus]

You'd need WotC's permission, actually. Hickman and Weis no longer hold the rights to Dragonlance, which is why they actually aren't able to write any more books unless WotC allows them to.

Corporations don't write good books, people do.

[Forum Explorer]

I don't see why there was a 4th or 5th edition of D&D, 3.5 always worked fine for me. 3.5 was versatile and still is!

3.5 has...issues, shall we say? Versatile yeah, that was likely it's greatest strength. And if you had the system mastery to make it work, you could do some really cool stuff with it. If you didn't, well the game would rapidly become a slog of flipping through a half-dozen different books and needing a separate sheet to keep track of your different ongoing bonuses.

[Tom Kalbfus]

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but if you're being serious, you are completely failing to understand the economic of gaming. The publishers will always move to introduce new editions (or entirely new games) as a means to move product. You can only sell any given person a single sourcebook once, so it's necessary to keep producing new sourcebooks in order to continue to make money off the fans.



You are vastly underestimating the cost of a modern fantasy production if you think go fund me or other crowdsourcing could support such an endeavor. The 2008 animated film was produced the way it was, with cheap old fashioned animation, for economic reasons as a quick nostalgia grab. A reasonable estimate for a Dragons of Autumn Twilight film would be 75-100 million dollars (plus half that again in marketing). You'd need 350+ million in world wide box office to try and make your money back and the support just isn't there.

There are many ways you can produce this movie, just having a good story is not enough with movies. There was a series of Lord of the Rings cartoons which preceded the movies, the cartoons were not as good, the songs were kind of corny. If done right, a Dragonlance trilogy could be as profitable as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A good start would be to get someone like Peter Jackson to direct it for example. You have to invest your money in the right places and on the right things to get a quality product that sells tickets. You have to take risks to reap the rewards. Movies often tend to be formulaic, and that is why there are a lot of remakes and sequels. People are comfortable with things they already know. Corporations have shareholders that don't like to take risks. SpaceX on the otherhand is not a publicly held corporations. Committees and a board of directors is nomsubstitute for genius.

[Tom Kalbfus]

3.5 has...issues, shall we say? Versatile yeah, that was likely it's greatest strength. And if you had the system mastery to make it work, you could do some really cool stuff with it. If you didn't, well the game would rapidly become a slog of flipping through a half-dozen different books and needing a separate sheet to keep track of your different ongoing bonuses.

One thing I do like is that 3.5 treats PCs and NPCs, and other creatures the same, they have the same format, and their are formulaic rules for creating new monsters, while in 5th edition, there are different stat blocks for NPCs than for players. Only players have character classes, NPCs do notl they simply have statistics, so you can have an encounter with them and be done with it. 3.5 allows to play a monster in the manual as a PC, 5th edition makes that a lot harder, it is more seat of your pants. If you see an NPC stat block, you have to deduce what character class it was in order to work backwards and make a PC out of it. 3.5 doesn't give you that problem. 5th might be easier to learn and play, but it was made simpler to achieve that ease. If your a newbie, then 5th might be easier to learn, but its hard to unlearn stuff one has already learned, which is why I stick with 3.5.

[JadedDM]

Corporations don't write good books, people do.

True, but what does that have to do with anything?

[Forum Explorer]

One thing I do like is that 3.5 treats PCs and NPCs, and other creatures the same, they have the same format, and their are formulaic rules for creating new monsters, while in 5th edition, there are different stat blocks for NPCs than for players. Only players have character classes, NPCs do notl they simply have statistics, so you can have an encounter with them and be done with it. 3.5 allows to play a monster in the manual as a PC, 5th edition makes that a lot harder, it is more seat of your pants. If you see an NPC stat block, you have to deduce what character class it was in order to work backwards and make a PC out of it. 3.5 doesn't give you that problem. 5th might be easier to learn and play, but it was made simpler to achieve that ease. If your a newbie, then 5th might be easier to learn, but its hard to unlearn stuff one has already learned, which is why I stick with 3.5.

And I love that in 5th edition the heroes are unique and special as a result. Well okay, I love that the monsters feel unique and special. And I love that when it comes to creating homebrew monsters and stuff, I don't feel the need to keep it in the same system as the PCs.

Admittedly, yeah, it is a lot harder to play as a monster. Or to do something really weird. Or to break the game.

There's nothing wrong with sticking with 3.5. But as someone who had to DM 3.5 and continuously teach new people the game it was a nightmare. I was so happy to switch to 5e, and I'm never going back.

[Bartmanhomer]

Why are we even debating which D&D edition is better than the other and I think people write there own books, not the company itself. To be honest I'm all for a Dragonlance movie even though I never read nor play the game.

[Bohandas]

As a movie, not really. A high production mini series might work.

The fact is D&D movies have never held a good track record for movies. Let's not forget Wizards "Hail Mary" attempt with Book of Vile Darkness to generate interest in the brand by going to an "extreme" of sorts. And even with half nude women, that didn't help. Though apparently there is another D&D movie to be slated for 2021 coming out so we'll see how that one does.

I never understood why they don't ever just do a straight adaptation of an existing module. I'd totally watch a Temple of Elemental Evil movie, or an Age of Worms movie, or a Dark Queen of Krynn movie, or a Great Modron March movie or a Tomb of Horrors movie or a Baldur's Gate movie. But I won't watch the BS they keep making.

Also, in the 2000 D&D movie, why the heck did they replace the Orbs of Dragonkind with that scepter?

[TripleD]

I never understood why they don't ever just do a straight adaptation of an existing module. I'd totally watch a Temple of Elemental Evil movie, or an Age of Worms movie, or a Dark Queen of Krynn movie, or a Great Modron March movie or a Tomb of Horrors movie or a Baldur's Gate movie. But I won't watch the BS they keep making.

Also, in the 2000 D&D movie, why the heck did they replace the Orbs of Dragonkind with that scepter?

I’ve slowly come to terms with the fact that the Brazilian Car Commercial is the most faithful and competently directed adaption of any D&D setting we will ever get.

[Liquor Box]

At the same time, the Chronicles also have a bunch of shall we say, difficult, elements as holdovers from their 1980s production. Riverwind and Goldmoon are perhaps the most obvious, but you're also stuck with the challenge of trying to bring Tasselhoff to screen in a way that is both not horrifying in its own right and doesn't launch a thousand think pieces. Forum rules prevent any sort of detailed discussion of this issue, but suffice it to say that adaptation needs would be extensive for the novels.

I agree with you about the cost, but I don't see any reason why Riverwind, Goldmoon or Tas would be problematic in their unmodified form. Are you able to elaborate.

All of that is factual and none of that matters. If the Dragonlance series treated their gods as fantasy set pieces it wouldn't be a problem, but the story is very much about faith, religion, and other stuff that Hollywood isn't particularly comfortable tackling.

That's what I think the biggest obstacle is. The Dragonlance series has very strong opinions on what humanity's relationship with God should be, and its pretty blunt about it. The religious allegory is thick throughout the entire series, and gets more and more blatant as it moves along.

I don't see why this would be a problem either. Dragonlance isn;t nearly so much about faith etc as Narnia was.

My biggest problem with trying to turn it into a movie is that there are an endless stream of unrelated macguffins that they heroes ping pong between then abandon to try and turn a fetchquest into a reasonably plot would be troubling.

blue crystal staff
disks of mishakal
hammer of tharsis
dragon orbs
the everman

and it keeps going. Because it was a series of modules turned into a story, its not a very strong cohesive narrative.

So if you want to turn it into a movie you have to wipe that all out. Goldmoon starts with a staff. The staff leads not to "the disks of mishakal" and the return of clerical power, but to a dragon orb. The dragon orb(s) become the macguffin that matters. wipe the everman and the hammer and the disks all out, they are extraneous.

It has to be simplified to make it truly filmable and that simplification is going to cost people things they liked about it.

For example. We determine there are too many characters. We cut out riverwind as extraneous and keep Goldmoon. She is now the young woman on a holy quest. She replaces Elistan. Heck, she could replace Laurana (if you're willing to put her in the Tanis Kitiara Laurana Goldmoon love triangle. Now she's an actual female protaganist, who serves a purpose through the entire narrative and has a stronger role.

But that is a sizable modification. Lots of Laurana lovers out there are gonna **** themselves in anger.

I agree with this.

Drop the Everman, the Hammer, the Discs.

Merge Elistan, Riverwind and Laurana into Goldmoon, and drop Tika.

[Rodin]

I never understood why they don't ever just do a straight adaptation of an existing module. I'd totally watch a Temple of Elemental Evil movie, or an Age of Worms movie, or a Dark Queen of Krynn movie, or a Great Modron March movie or a Tomb of Horrors movie or a Baldur's Gate movie. But I won't watch the BS they keep making.

Also, in the 2000 D&D movie, why the heck did they replace the Orbs of Dragonkind with that scepter?

Tomb of Horrors would make for a great D&D-flavored horror movie. Start out with a large group of adventurers (8-10) and have the party dwindle steadily as they get deeper and deeper in, playing up the deaths for full shock value. A soul-stealing Lich is perfect Act 3 drama, and he's also a fake so you can have the classic "supposedly dead killer ambushes survivors" ending to a good horror movie.

[Saintheart]

There are many ways you can produce this movie, just having a good story is not enough with movies. There was a series of Lord of the Rings cartoons which preceded the movies, the cartoons were not as good, the songs were kind of corny. If done right, a Dragonlance trilogy could be as profitable as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A good start would be to get someone like Peter Jackson to direct it for example. You have to invest your money in the right places and on the right things to get a quality product that sells tickets. You have to take risks to reap the rewards. Movies often tend to be formulaic, and that is why there are a lot of remakes and sequels. People are comfortable with things they already know. Corporations have shareholders that don't like to take risks. SpaceX on the otherhand is not a publicly held corporations. Committees and a board of directors is nomsubstitute for genius.

I've bolded the important bit, because it has a specific name in pitching projects to investors, specifically, "brand recognition". In the fantasy genre, Lord of the Rings basically has the most of it, and had the most of it more or less since it was published. And they had quite literally been trying to make the Lord of the Rings as a film for fifty years* before Peter Jackson was given permission to spend $281 million on it, i.e. one of the most expensive film series in history. That's what it took to make three films of a series the average IQ-90 The Amazing Race filmgoer could understand and which was the foundation of the 'modern' fantasy genre. Even then, Disney got weak at the knees and handballed the entire series to New Line Cinema, under Harvey Weinstein.

Dragonlance doesn't have that brand recognition. Not now, not even back in the 1980s when it was at its height. Not the sort of brand recognition that inspires investors to stump up the hundreds of millions of dollars required to do it right -- because unfortunately, you can't do fantasy, and certainly not film fantasy, on a shoestring. (Conan the Barbarian was made for 20 million - 53 million in today's dollars. It looks it. Arnie's cro-magnon performance saves it. Ladyhawke cost 20 million - and was a failure, didn't make its budget back. Good old Krull cost 30 million in 1982, and had solid-ish effects for the time.) As said, Lord of the Rings was made for approximately $90 million per film. In present-day terms, that's $130 million per film - total of $390 million, 0.4 billion dollars. That sort of money requires an astonishingly good story, timeless, relatable, and Dragonlance, whilst a decent genre read, is not that.

Making matters worse is that even after spending that colossal sort of sum on a film it is certainly possible to spend that amount of money on fantasy and still come away with god-awful effects: witness Game of Thrones' final season, and in particular the Battle of Winterfell which was certainly showing its budgetary limits because they turned out all the lights during that episode. (And note again: Game of Thrones, a long, multi-volume series, was too big a risk for films. It was made as a TV series. After the books had been out for the better part of 20 years and still being in the public consciousness because Martin hasn't finished the damn series yet.) The Witcher's had a couple of (bad) Polish TV series, but it was only after they made roughly 3 very successful computer games out of it that it rated sufficient brand recognition for them to start casting Superman, er, Henry Cavill in a large-r budget TV adaptation.





*The first one to try was Forest J. Ackerman, that purveyor of schlock who basically took the fledgling genre of speculative fiction and turned it into what Harlan Ellison correctly and derisively called "skiffy". You can thank Manwe that one fell through. John Boorman got closest but his treatment featured Frodo bumping uglies with Galadriel, so again, a lucky near miss there. As with the space race, the Russians got there first in 1985 with their series, which as you can guess from the time period, didn't get a lot of play in the US.)

[russdm]

To be honest, it's going to require two movies at least to tell the story if you don't want to lose people and the momentum. Otherwise, the story drags and becomes difficult to follow or care about.

Villeneuve (However his name is spelled) is making a movie of Dune, and is making more than one movie apparently.

You first need a budget of the same as the Lord of the Rings movies. Second, you need writers like Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens that were committed to trying to make the story work, and mined even the appendices to try to make the trilogy function. Some would say that they failed.

Third, you need establish what is the main plot. The book is long and not great for a direct adaption. Plus there is more material than would fit in a single movie to really work.

The Quest in the book was:

Riverwind (prequelly) gets the blue crystal staff after leaving to impress goldmoon and her dad. He ends up in Jungle ruins place, and returns with the staff, all ill
the presentation of the staff causes trouble in goldmoon's tribe, she and riverwind get zapped to solace
Tanis comes home and meets with his friends, we meet Tika earlier, and now the gang is back, a god in disguise causes trouble
the gang escapes with goldmoon, riverwind, and staff, they discover that they need to bring the gods back or are working on that
they take the staff to haven another town, they encounter the dragon guys, then head off to bypass further encounters by trying another path/the path of the dead
The path of the dead ends with the party meeting forestmaster in darkon wood, learning about going back to riverwind's jungle ruins place
the gang travel across by flying horse, find the ruined village place, visit a swamp, encounter more dragon guys
find and enter the jungle ruins place, encounter dragon!!!, then go further into jungle ruins to meet gully dwarves, then encounter dragon again, then get disks, also lose and regain goldmoon, group moves to go back home

That would cover about 2-3 hours if you were to film it with any degree of accuracy, and you are about halfway through the book. So, already a single long movie run time has been reached. We are still missing the rest of the novel.

So, i would say that it would take at least two movies to make the novel in full. Otherwise you have to crunch everything down, which was possible in the Animated movie (which i own and watch, like) but it doesn't pause long enough to have you really care about anything, it simply moves on too quickly for that. They put in a little prologue for the story as well, like what lord of the ring movies did.

Dragonlance is also the most famous or discussed settings. Those are Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron. Those are settings most people know about and talk, if one goes by could be found in splatbooks and the like. Settings like Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Birthright, Mystara, Ravenloft are less known about and would require more material in the film to get it going in making you care.

To be honest, a movie following the Ravenloft story of Strahd would work better than a dragonlance one. Strahd's story has everything hollywood likes in films: violence, Sex opportunities, nudity opportunities, violence, sex & nudity opportunities. Plus, you have the battle with strahd which would include violence there.

So, maybe they won't make it since it would be hard to be profitable.

Frankly, a deeper truth is that D&D movies planned out by the company seem to fail. the first one failed, the second was not as bad, and third was failed hail mary effort. So, WotC not looking so good here