Dungeons & Dragons movie adds Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith to the cast. D&D began life in the 1970s as an obscure pastime for fans of fantasy stories and miniature wargaming, but later grew into the biggest of all fantasy role-playing games, a genre that quickly spread into other media including video gaming via titles like Final Fantasy.
But while the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons made its way into many other projects across various media over the years (not the least of these being George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series), a proper movie adaptation of the game proved a difficult thing to get off the ground. It wasn’t until 2000 that the first big screen version of the game’s player-crafted sword-and-sorcery world was made, but that Jeremy Irons-led movie proved to be a bomb and at any rate was quickly overshadowed in popular culture by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Two movies billed as sequels to the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons were later made but neither made a dent on the pop culture landscape either. Now in the wake of the massive success of Game of Thrones, a title that owes much to the spirit of D&D, a new Dungeons & Dragons movie is coming from Game Night directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.
Chris Pine was the first star reported to be joining the cast of this new Dungeons & Dragons effort from Paramount and eOne, and now he’s been joined by Rodriguez and Smith, as reported by THR.
Rodriguez of course is best known for playing Letty in the Fast & Furious franchise, a role she is set to reprise in the upcoming F9, which was just previewed in a big Super Bowl spot. Rodriguez also found her way into the Resident Evil franchise, and had a role in James Cameron’s original Avatar but apparently is one of the few prominent cast members not returning for any of the upcoming Avatar sequels. On television Rodriguez famously played cop-turned-castaway Ana Lucia on 26 episodes of ABC’s Lost.
Smith for his part may not have as extensive a resume as Rodriguez, but he’s made his mark in some big movies as well, appearing in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Pokémon Detective Pikachu. Along with Dungeons & Dragons, his list of upcoming projects includes Jurassic World: Dominion as well as the thriller The Voyeurs.
It remains to be seen specifically what roles Rodriguez and Smith will be playing in Dungeons & Dragons, but of course the field is wide open in that regard as D&D doesn’t have any actual named characters for anyone to play as in a book or video game adaptation. On the one hand this lack of canon works to adapt leaves a lot of room for creativity for anyone tackling a Dungeons & Dragons movie, as the only responsibility is to be faithful to the games’ spirit. On the other hand, not having pre-existing stories and characters to follow means having to come up with a wholly original tale, a task that proved utterly overwhelming to previous people who tried to bring D&D to life on the big screen.
Source: THR
