'Game Night' Directors Roll The Dice On The 'Dungeons And Dragons' Movie

Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley already directed one movie centered around games, and now they're going to take a chance on another. The Game Night filmmakers have been summoned by Paramount to direct the Dungeons and Dragons movie. Goldstein and Daley were previously attached to direct The Flash for Warner Bros., but recently exited the project. Now they have their eyes set on a film adaptation of the fantasy role-playing game.

Hollywood has been trying to launch a campaign for a new Dungeons and Dragons movie since at least 2015. The adaptation of the popular game was originally at Warner Bros., only to venture forth on a quest to Paramount in 2017. By 2018, The Lego Batman Movie director Chris McKay was attached to helm the movie. But Mckay has since left, and now Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are in talks, per THR.

This won't be the first attempt at a D&D movie. In 2000, audiences were cursed with a live-action Dungeons & Dragons film starring Justin Whalin, Marlon Wayans, Thora Birch, and Jeremy Irons. The film was reviled by critics and audiences alike – but that didn't stop it from launching two different direct-to-VOD sequels: Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005) and Dungeons & Dragons 3: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012).

Dungeons and Dragons was launched in 1975 and originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and helped give birth to the role-playing game industry. Here's some background on the game via the official Dungeons and Dragons site:

The first Dungeons & Dragons game was played back when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson chose to personalize the massive battles of their fantasy wargames with the exploits of individual heroes. This inspiration became the first fantasy roleplaying game, in which players are characters in an ongoing fantasy story. This new kind of game has become immensely popular over the years, and D&D has grown to include many new ways to vividly experience worlds of heroic fantasy.

The core of D&D is storytelling. You and your friends tell a story together, guiding your heroes through quests for treasure, battles with deadly foes, daring rescues, courtly intrigue, and much more. You can also explore the world of Dungeons & Dragons through any of the novels written by its fantasy authors, as well as engaging board games and immersive video games. All of these stories are part of D&D.

While Dungeons and Dragons has been a popular game for years, its place in the pop-cultural landscape was heightened even higher thanks to its prevalence on the first season of Stranger Things.

So much of Dungeons and Dragons is based around the creativity of the players using their minds to conjure up entire worlds and adventures, and I just don't know how you turn that into a movie without going some sort of Jumanji route, in which kids playing Dungeons and Dragons are sucked into the game. Which is probably exactly what they're going to do, isn't it?