'Dungeons & Dragons' TV Series Will Feature "A Tinier Sliver" Of The D&D World, Writer Compares It To 'First Blood'

There are plans currently underway to turn the classic fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons into both a new feature film and a TV show, and we now have some more info on how the TV show is going to shake out. John Wick franchise writer Derek Kolstad is one of the folks working on the TV series, and according to Kolstad, even though the world of D&D is massive and expansive, the show will be more intimate and deal with "a tinier sliver of that world."

By stretching the world of Dungeons & Dragons across multiple platforms, Paramount and eOne might find a good way to strike the right balance. There's so much material to draw on that it needs room to breathe, and thankfully, that seems to be the exact approach going into the Dungeons & Dragons TV series.

John Wick franchise writer Derek Kolstad is tackling some of the scripts for the Dungeons & Dragons show, and speaking with Collider, Kolstad said that the series will only involve "a tinier sliver of that world," adding:

"In the first Star Wars, you heard about Jabba the Hutt and you don't see him until the third one because you earn at that point, and whatever the budget was for the third one compared to the first one, who cares, right? And I think in Dungeons and Dragons, who has this massive, dedicated community of acolytes, I don't want to suddenly throw everything on screen and say, 'Here's the buffet.' You'd much rather keep the story intimate. When you think of our favorite movies, I'd rather do the First Blood version. It's a guy in the woods being hunted. And it's very small, but you allude to the other things through conversation. You have your USS Indianapolis [in Jaws], you see something in the background. You hear a name that 3% of the audience is like, 'Ho ho, I think we're going to see him soon.' I think the thing is just to take a deep breath, to go into it slowly, and to just respect the world, and as you adapt, certain things need to change. But you better not touch the heart and soul of why people love this thing."

Kolstad added that he doesn't "want to go in the middle of the mythos. I want to come near the end where everything is canonical, it's biblical, it's happened. Or, it's about to happen. That way you can revisit certain sequences and storylines that everyone loved in the past through flashback, but where we go is new. The unique yet familiar of it all is why we return to the games we love."

I'm not a D&D player so I don't really have much attachment to the material, but I do like the sound of Kolstad's approach here. Less is more sometimes, and it's okay to embrace that! Besides, fans who want even more will get that via the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, which is being directed by Game Night filmmakers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, with Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Justice Smith on board to star.