Joe Manganiello's attempt to get Dragonlance on TV screens has been cancelled by WotC:
"Due to Hasbro's sale of the eOne studio [to Lionsgate in August] and the poor performance of a Dragonlance D&D adventure [Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen] and board game in 2022 [Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn], as reasons why the project was not proceeding."
Manganiello has talked about how much people in the industry liked his script and I believe that's true, but Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman also liked the script and both haven't written anything worth reading in decades (their new Dragonlance trilogy bombed just like everything else), so who knows how good his script was (it would absolutely follow the ESG/DEI approaches of Disney et al). Manganiello attempted to buy the IP, but after a WotC lawsuit to get it back from the authors they (or Hasbro) wasn't interested. A key point, and one I raised in 2022, is that WotC has been going backwards in terms of quality of products for years--low sales haven't just come from Dragonlance, as (rather like the MCU) these stretch back to 2019 (Radiant Citadel bombed particularly badly). Attempted tie-ins with Eberron, MAGIC: The Gathering, and Critical Role have failed to land unlike the initial updated versions of classics (Curse of Strahd etc). All this background is to say that Manganiello's project failed due to external factors from Hasbro and WotC themselves--I do think there's value in the IP, but not from its creators nor from nor IP owners at this point. Manganiello is in the wrong era to do this right.
It's worth adding that Hasbro is struggling financially and WotC isn't immune to this expecting a 3-5% decline this year (showing how detached Baldur's Gate 3's success has been). The hobby is fine, but WotC is struggling.
Starting with a rumour from Jeff Sneider (who has a good track record), we now know that Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) and Elden Henson (Foggy) will be brought back for the MCU's Daredevil series. This represents a complete about face from almost a year ago when THR made it clear the duo would not be returning. Before fans get excited, let's be clear about a few things.
1. This does not mean they have an important role in the show
1. This does not mean they have an important role in the show
2. Karen's story had already been botched by Netflix in season three (and I'd argue her love story in season two was also badly handled by the impact of the failed Elecktra plotline)
3. Season three in general distorted and broke Netflix Daredevil continuity, making it very hard to utilize it in a meaningful way (cf)
4. Given that the show will feature Kingpin, he's already been degraded by two terrible D+ shows (Hawkeye and Echo); fortunately, no one watched either of them, so there's room to ignore that continuity (D+ has been notorious for that, such as undercutting the entire Nick Fury arc in Secret Invasion)
5. There are signs the MCU is aware it has problems, but no sign it is addressing them meaningfully
I'm happy that Woll and Henson will get paycheques, but I am not expecting a return to form from the original season of Daredevil. Instead, I think these will be glorified cameos intended before making space for new, diverse & inclusive costars--this seems especially likely given that the show is trying to salvage as much as possible from the six episodes shot before the creative overall.
In other good news, it's clear there will be no season two for She-Hulk. It's also unclear where Tatiana Maslany's She-Hulk will appear next in the MCU (the next opportunity is Avengers 5, but whether she's on that team is unknown--speaking of that film, given the re-casting of Warlock for very different reasons, I'd expect Kang to remain the villain of the film and as-is).
The Rey movie, announced last April, was put on indefinite delay (at minimum post-2026). This came on the heels of some tone deaf comments from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy being circulated--these were not new comments, but ones that emerged with new attention coming to the film. Star Wars is in an even bigger mess than the MCU such that it's difficult to know what will happen with it. No live action film is currently filming, although The Mandalorian & Grogu still has a release date. The TV shows have all bombed, although there will be an Andor season two (a very cheap show to shoot so easier to push forward with). I think MCU fans can look at Star Wars and see the future unless something fundamentally changes at Disney (which is unlikely).
Netflix did something it rarely does last year, which is release it's streaming numbers (for the first half of 2023, January to June). As someone who hasn't watched anything on the platform in over a year the results (given buzz) include many surprises. Let's start with the top-five (keeping in mind that, unlike with broadcast TV, first seasons are often the most watched among shows on Netflix):
- The Night Agent (first season) 812k [FBI agent/spy thriller; Gabriel Basso starring]
- Ginny & Georgia (second season) 665k [family comedy/drama; Brianne Howey starring]
- The Glory (first season) 622k [South Korean revenge drama; Song Hye-kyo starring]
- Wednesday (first season) 507k [Addams Family IP/teen drama; Jenna Ortega starring]
- Queen Charlotte (Bridgerton) (first/only season with that lead) 503k [romance/sequel IP; Shonda Rhimes starring]
Four of the five are firsts and I'd never heard of the top three shows (although the first is based on a novel by Matthew Quirk). Night Agent is also unusual in that it's an original Netflix production whose viewership remained strong for a long time (whereas most shows start with a bang and fade off). The fifth entry is our first obvious ESG/DEI selection, although the Rhimes iteration was less successful than the original (625; 20% lower) or it's second season (656; 24% lower); that show trends heavily female (76% for season two, for instance). Keep in mind Wednesday debuted in November, so these are good holdover numbers for the teen drama.
Putting the top-viewed aside, let's look at some other interesting results:
- The Witcher: Blood Origin 65k [spinoff after season two]
- Cleopatra 35k ['documentary' from Jada Smith]
- Witcher (season three) 33k
In fairness to Witcher, it released at the end of June, so towards the end of the data set, however, the initial drop should be huge and instead it's a massive flop. Blood Origin's numbers are horrible, but the stink of the series hadn't achieved complete potency at that time (it's failure, combined with Henry Cavill's announced departure, clearly destroyed whatever viewership was left--no one I know watched either). There's not much left to be said about the horrendous Cleopatra (cf), but we can take heart in how badly it failed.
One story I missed that relates to the Bud Light controversy: yet another big company backpeddled on self-described woke marketing. Victoria Secret announced it was giving up on a 'woke' strategy due to loses, returning to what had worked before (this is exactly what Bud Light has done, but with initial public resistance). This is particularly amusing to me because its market is the exact opposite of the beer company--a predominantly working class male group on the one hand versus a middle/upper class female market on the other. In both cases the DEI/ESG approach did not work, even if I suspect VS customers would at least verbally support it.
This article was written by Peter Levi
