Red Notice Director Set to Helm Dungeons & Dragons TV Show

A new Dungeons & Dragons TV show will be headed by Red Notice’s Rawson Marshal Thurber. Deadline reports that Hasbro’s eOne division has closed a deal with Thurber, the director of the Netflix hit Red Notice, to “creatively oversee” a new television series based on the popular fantasy tabletop roleplaying game. Thurber will write and direct a pilot for the new TV show and will serve as the executive producer. Per Deadline, the new show will be the cornerstone of a wider D&D television universe and complement the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons live-action movie. The project is expected to have multiple buyers, with Netflix specifically named as a likely bidder given their connection to Thurber and the use of D&D in their hit series Stranger Things. 

In addition to Red Notice, Thurber was also the director of We’re the Millers and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. 

eOne has made developing Dungeons & Dragons a priority, in part because the game comes with a deep vault of existing lore that can be used as either a focus or a backdrop for multiple projects. The game itself involves players collaboratively telling a fantasy-themed story with the help of dice and characters who exponentially grow in power. Players can choose to have their game set in either a world of their own creation or a pre-existing “campaign setting,” a pre-built world with IP and characters owned by Hasbro. These campaign settings have also been the focus of dozens of video games, novels, and game adventures, with plenty of room for players (or TV show directors) to fit their own stories without disrupting existing lore. 

eOne has multiple movie and projects in the works for Dungeons & Dragons, including a live action movie starring Christopher Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Rege-Jean Page, and a TV show being developed by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad. It’s unclear how all these projects will fit together – the live-action movie appears to be set in the Forgotten Realms setting, but otherwise there are few details about how deep the project will dive into lore.