I said a couple of weeks ago that what Dragonlance needs to revive the IP is a successful adaptation. Apparently an effort to adapt it is being pursued as a show (the news dropped in late February). No one has picked it up yet and we can't say what kind of show it would be. My initial guess is an abomination like Witcher, Wheel of Time, Willow, or Rings of Power, but we can't exclude the possibility it will be something good (or at least adequate). Joe Manganiello is heading the project at the behest of WotC. Does the entertainment I got out of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves give me hope? No. The flaws in that film that I could overlook would ruin a television show. The writing would have to be much, much better, and the overall caliber of actors would have to improve. I also think an original story is the way to go, because adapting the classic trilogy is guaranteed to turn into the disasters I named above. If Honor loses money (which seems likely, see below), that makes pitching another D&D-based property that much harder, so we'll just have to keep our eyes open and see what happens.
It's interesting to hear that House of the Dragon is getting a reduced episode count for its second season (from 10 to 8) and that season three has not already been given the green light. One can try to find positives in fewer episodes, but the truth is it reflects the financial reality that the show wasn't a hit (it didn't flop, but it wasn't a smash either). HofD was not as loathsome as Rings of Power, but there was no explosion of merchandise or residual interest in Game of Thrones. Trying to succeed with a prequel to a show that failed was never going to be easy to begin with and it gets doubly hard when one of the stars of the first season (Paddy Constantine) isn't going to be in the next.
The Last of Us finale couldn't quite reach it's episode four peak with the finale (1,109 vs 1,011, about 9% lower). It's an increase over the episode six dip (15% over 943), but it couldn't recapture the buzz from the early season (matching in spirit it's Trends decline I went over previously). To provide some perspective, a forgettable teen drama (Outer Banks) crushed TLOU with its opener (2,214, more than double the peak) and plenty of other shows have peaked much, much higher. The hype around it reminds me of both Watchmen (2019) and Lovecraft Country (2020)--each the greatest show ever from HBO, which mysteriously never got second seasons (the latter was announced and then cancelled before going into production). We are getting a second season for TLOU and the showrunners have already announced it's going to be very different from The Last of Us Part II--a reminder of how badly that game flopped. I'm disappointed we won't see live action versions of all the sequel's stupidity--without towels, golf, and other silliness, there's nothing to interest me in what HBO has on offer.
I've had standalone articles on the Witcher 1 remake and Witcher 4 in progress for awhile, but on the snippet side of the news the Witcher project called Sirius has new information attached to it: the company announced it's changing it's original conception and essentially starting fresh. The rumour that's come with this news is that it's going to be a one-off Japanese-inspired take on The Witcher. Via the link above, Neon Knight goes over the rumour whose idea I don't find interesting (Geralt is already like a Samurai and CDPR just spent an entire game swimming in Japanese culture with Cyberpunk 2077). The other part of the rumour, that CDPR decided to scrap the MP part of the game, seems plasubile, but that's the most distinctive part of the project to begin with. I don't see how a move like this would help the game--turning Geralt into a Samurai is the least distinctive thing you could do with him.
For those who missed it, I posted my review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. To sum it up: it's a fun, dumb movie--better than I expected, but with plenty of room for improvement. In terms of the box office, the film is tracking for a better than expected opening weekend (bumping from 30-35 million to 35-40 domestically and hitting 37, 70 worldwide), but that still has it heading towards failure given its bloated 150 million budget. I suspect the fact that it looks like all the recent fantasy abominations (Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, Witcher, etc) has made casual fans skip it. That's the big problem the industry is facing, as the zeitgeist is flipping and the soft, largely imaginary market currently being pursued isn't big enough to support the industry.
Because I've been writing articles about a range of topics for a long time I get to see experts in one area express unrelated political opinions regularly. I don't mean generic expressions, but specific statements. What tends to come out of their mouths boggles the mind. There's an undercurrent of smug arrogance which neatly fits their economic bracket, and the content merely reflects headlines and whatever limited snippets of information they get spoon-fed by cable news.
This article was written by Peter Levi
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