Drizzt Do’urden, the legendary hero of dozen of Dungeons & Dragons novels, was not only supposed to appear in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, he was replaced by the movie’s breakout character. Early scripts for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves featured Drizzt Do’urden, a popular drow ranger who has starred in dozens of novels by R.A. Salvatore. In an exclusive interview with ComicBook.com, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves producer Jeremy Latcham explained how Drizzt was eventually replaced by Xenk, the paladin played by Regé-Jean Page.”The original plan was for the Xenk character to be Drizzt,” Latcham told ComicBook.com. “And Wizards [of the Coast] had wanted us to add Drizzt.”
Latcham explained that the role played by Xenk in the movie originally was to be filled by Drizzt, but that he was pulled due to an unnamed “controversy” that involved the character. (Based on the timing, it’s possible Latcham was referring to a 2020 statement released by Wizards of the Coast regarding changes to how drow are depicted in Dungeons & Dragons media.) But Latcham and directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein loved the role that Drizzt played in the script, so they created Xenk to fill his role in the movie.
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“There was some controversy around Drizzt, and we were like,’We might not want to be in middle of that controversy, so let’s take Drizzt out of the movie.’” Latcham said. “But we had kind of fallen in love with this idea of a character that shows up for an act. So why don’t we refine that and start to make him Xenk? Then [Goldstein and Daley] wrote up this Xenk backstory, and then we dovetailed that into the villain story, and then they came back with a draft that had Xenk in it, and everyone was happy. So that was the evolution there.”
Additionally, Latcham revealed that the large city in the Underdark was originally intended to be Menzoberranzan, Drizzt’s home city and a legendary city of the Underdark. “The city that we see right before the intellect devourer joke, that was intended to be Menzoberranzan,” Latcham said. “That was the original intention. I don’t know if we ended up leaving it that when we actually did our final internal map. There was some controversy about it based on where we were with Dolblunde, which was kind of a made-up place.”
Elsewhere in the interview, ComicBook.com asked about the decision to only include Xenk for one act in the movie and if there was any consideration to give him a greater role. “He was always intended to be a one act character,” Latcham said. “I think the guys had this sense that it would be fun if this dude just blows in from a fantasy movie that’s taking place around the corner, like Peter Jackson’s making a fantasy film around the corner and one of his heroes wanders into our movie. And he’s stoic and serious and confident and heroic and super handsome, with real armor and real sword and really competent at everything he does, and is a true fantasy hero. And we thought it’d be fun to have that blow into our movie for an act, and kind of change our characters and give them some real information and move the story forward, but then leave. And we liked the juxtaposition of that guy with our band of knuckleheads who are just not as good at being heroes.”
You can read Latcham’s full interview later this weekend on ComicBook.com.
