Dungeons & Dragons Movie Directors Reveal Tone of Movie

The directors of the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie have revealed just how serious the movie will be. Earlier today, The Hollywood Reporter posted an interview with Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the co-directors and co-screenwriters for the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie. The movie’s release date was pushed back to 2022 and Hollywood Reporter checked in on Goldstein and Daley to see how the COVID-19 pandemic had affected their pre-production process. During the interview, Hollywood Reporter’s Aaron Couch asked the pair if their vision of Dungeons & Dragons felt like a natural evolution from the humor they’ve put in past projects like Spider-Man: Homecoming and Game Night. “We want it to be fun,” Goldstein responded. “It’s not an out and out comedy, but it is an action-fantasy movie with a lot of comedic elements and characters we hope people will really get into and enjoy watching their adventures.”

“D&D is such a unique look at the fantasy genre where it is contemporary in terms of the people playing it and the way they speak to each other,” Daley added. “So we never wanted to spoof the genre of fantasy or take the piss out of it. But we did want to find another way into it that we hadn’t necessarily seen before. Just the format of Dungeons & Dragons is so interesting and fun and all about critical thinking and thinking on your feet and figuring out ways to make things work after they fall flat. There’s a lot of the spirit of that that we’re trying to inject into the movie itself.”

While Dungeons & Dragons is a “serious” game, the best moments around the table are often the comedic ones. Bad dice rolls or unexpected stumbles in the middle of complicated plans often lead to less serious moments, and it seems that Daley and Goldstein are trying to capture a bit of that energy in their movie. The pair have found success in blending levity and action in movies like Spider-Man: Homecoming, so hopefully this will lead to a Dungeons & Dragons movie that’s both satisfying for longtime fans and also enjoyable for mass consumption.

Dungeons & Dragons is set to be released on May 27, 2022.