Dungeons & Dragons is a 2000 fantasy-adventure film directed by Courtney Solomon (in his feature directorial debut), and written by Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien. Based on the role-playing game of the same name, the plot follows an empress who wishes to get hold of a mythical rod that will help her fight an evil wizard, and enlists two thieves for help. The film stars Justin Whalin, Marlon Wayans, Thora Birch, Zoe McLellan, Kristen Wilson, Lee Arenberg, Bruce Payne and Jeremy Irons.
Filming took place on location at Sedlec Ossuary. Despite being a box office bomb, and a critical failure, a made-for-TV sequel, Wrath of the Dragon God, was released in 2005. It was not a direct continuation of the storyline of the previous film, though Bruce Payne's character, Damodar, makes a return. A third film, The Book of Vile Darkness, was shot in 2011 and released direct-to-DVD in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2012.
Plot Izmir's young Empress, Savina, rules with the power of a scepter that allows her to control gold dragons. When she wants to give rights to the common people, she's opposed by the Council of Mages, led by the evil Profion. They demand that she hand over the scepter. She refuses and, anticipating a conflict, both sides try to get their hands on the legendary Rod of Savrille, which would let them control red dragons.
Teenage thieves Ridley and Snails try to rob the Sumdall magic school. They're caught by a young apprentice named Marina, just as Profion's assistant Damodar attacks the library wizard to get his map to the Rod of Savrille. Marina, Ridley, and Snails manage to escape with the map, and join with a dwarf named Elwood.
They discover that to enter the tomb containing the Rod, they need a ruby key called the "Eye of the Dragon." Ridley finds it in a deadly maze in the thieves' guild in Antius, but Damodar arrives and captures Marina and the map before they can flee. The rest of the group escape, only to be captured by the elf Norda, a paladin who is working for the Empress. Realizing they are fighting for the same cause, they free Marina and get the map back, although Snails dies in the attempt.
They get the Rod of Savrille, although Damodar takes it from them and gives it to Profion. He and the other mages fight against the Empress, with dragons on both sides, until Ridley kills Damodar, and gets the Rod of Savrille back from Profion. Marina encourages Ridley to use the Rod to bring Profion down, but Ridley, realizing the Rod's power will corrupt him, refuses and destroys it. Then the Empress has a gold dragon kill Profion.
Ridley later visits the grave of Snails with Marina, Elwood, and Norda. When he places the Eye of the Dragon on the grave, the ruby starts to glow and Snails' name disappears. Norda tells Ridley to not question his gift and that "his friend awaits him", and the ruby transports the group somewhere else.
Cast
Dave Arneson, the co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, makes a cameo appearance in deleted scenes.
Development Background The earliest attempt at a feature-length adaptation of a Dungeons & Dragons property by the major film industry date to the early 1980s, as there was a strong interest in producing a film based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; Gary Gygax had several discussions with producers and agents about the idea, and a screenplay by James Goldman received eyeballs from major studios. However, nothing came about this due to conflicts between TSR and the studios. Dungeons & Dragons player Courtney Solomon, who had personal experience with the entertainment industry as a child because his mother was a production coordinator on television series filmed in Toronto, wanted to produce a film based on the game since 1990.
Negotiations and funding 1990–1997: TSR and studio deals
In 1990, Solomon contacted staff from Dungeons & Dragonss publisher, TSR, Inc., under the guise of working on a school economics project; they informed him about studios in the past failing to produce a film based on the game, due to having too little of an understanding of the RPG's X-factor. It took him 18 months to convince TSR to set up negotiations, but TSR finally agreed to it, because of his upfront royalty, being better than other studios the company worked with, according to vice president Ryan Dancey. Solomon obtained an option from TSR after writing a 30-page proposal showing how he would adapt the game and going through three months of "intense" broker dealing with the game publisher.
Solomon went on an 18-month-long trip across the world funding the film once a draft of the screenplay was completed, and most of the financing depended on foreign distribution rights. During the trip, he met a leading businessman in Asia named Allan Zeman, who viewed the 24-year-old as a "young, ambitious, artistic person" as well as a "convincing salesman" of a project based on an enterprise with a huge fanbase. In early 1992, Zeman and Solomon formed Sweetpea Entertainment to fund Dungeons & Dragons and sell it to other investors.
Originally, Solomon planned to have Dungeons & Dragons be a $100 million studio project with a big name in the director's chair; during development, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Renny Harlin, and Stan Winston were attached for directing the film at one point but dropped out. In addition to the script receiving positive coverage from the magazine Movieline, Premiere also announced the project in a 1995 issue when Winston was still signed on, revealing plot details such as a rogue lead, a magical dragon-controlling device, 14 creatures from the original game, and an effects-heavy final battle.
A majority of studios and directors loved the screenplay, but turned away due to a lack of recent successes in the big-budget fantasy genre and Justin Whalin's lack of star power. Solomon and the studios he encountered constantly conflicted with TSR, which wanted a direct-to-video release instead of the big-budget theatrical film the Canadian dreamed of. Cameron considered the project just before he did Titanic (1997), but the deal did not suffice due to TSR's failure to come up with a merchandising deal that appealed to 20th Century Fox, where Cameron worked. Potential deals with Paramount Pictures and Lightstorm Entertainment were also destroyed due to strong disagreements on how to finance the film. Solomon's amount of focus on getting the film green-lit caused the relationship with his girlfriend to break apart.
1997–1998: Joel Silver and Wizards of the Coast
Joel Silver, an executive producer most notable for action films such as the Die Hard movies, joined the Dungeon & Dragons project in April 1997, and the screenplay was finalized in June 1997. Silver came in with the vision to make it a television series instead of a film. Solomon thus tried to incorporate that plan in his project; however, TSR sold the rights of the original game property to Wizards of the Coast, and despite TSR leader Lorraine Williams telling Solomon Wizards would allow a TV series, that ultimately was not the case.
The plan changed to a $3.5 million direct-to-video film, as the $100 million budget appeared too risky and TSR's set filming deadline was nearing; what allowed for the change was technological advancements decreasing required effects money, and the availability of Prague as a shooting location, which had several medieval-era-looking places and thus lessened the need of costly studio sets. Solomon became director and started test shooting a three-minute scene battle in Los Angeles in August 1997. Silver was so roused by it that he stayed on the project as executive producer and thus increased the project's credibility to the point where investors raised up to $30 million. This now made the production a theatrical one and also saved the producers from legal action by Wizards of the Coast, who argued it was not a "real" film. Zeman put the money up for the project, in addition to Solomon and his grandfather Joe Smuckler co-signing a $25,000 bank loan, to begin pre-production on February 9, 1998.
Due to filming in a Czech Republic location, Dungeons & Dragons props and sets cost five times less than if shot in the United States. Although the final budget totaled to $35 million, the film was made with $21 million in cash during production, as there were several deferments in effects crew and actors' pay to meet its intended large scale. To maximize the quality of the film's effects with a limited budget, Solomon made equity deals between the effects houses involved so that less money was paid. At the time of its release, Dungeons & Dragons was the biggest-budget independent film ever produced.
Writing Solomon began writing the script in 1991 based on the rules of the second edition of the basic Dungeons & Dragons game; he planned Dungeons & Dragons to be a film trilogy, his goal being to create "the Star Wars of the fantasy genres" using the original trilogy as a template for the story arcs. Two Miramax script doctors, Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien, were interviewed to be additional writers in April 1992, thanks to an executive's connection with Solomon.
To give the writers an idea of the quality expected in the screenplay, Solomon first required them to view 1980s fantasy films he felt showed the bad state of the genre at the time, and then adventure productions like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Ben-Hur (1959). The first draft of the film took eighteen months to complete. Solomon claimed the final product is a collection of different scenes from 16 drafts.
Although the class of characters and rules of Dungeons & Dragons are brought over to the film, Solomon decided to create a generic setting only loosely based on one of the lesser-known game settings, Mystara; he felt using specific campaign settings heavily dependent on player interpretation would confuse viewers. He also had to risk the combat actions not reflecting how players would use them; for example, "somebody could be casting one of those spells and standing there for ten minutes until the spell is ready to go," explained Solomon. Spells were occasionally altered if their original descriptions were not "visual" enough to be present on screen; for instance, a Mind Flayer in the film controls another character by going inside him rather than controlling him from a distance. Another small creative liberty was the red dragons being more powerful than the gold dragons.
Casting
The cast of Dungeons & Dragons was a mixture of established film actors and up-and-comers in Hollywood. Most of the casting took place in London starting April 21, 1999, due to the Prague shooting location; this resulted in the inclusion of actors like the Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker and Richard O'Brien, whom Solomon cast with knowledge of his performance as Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), a film released the same year as the first Dungeons & Dragons game. A-list actors were mostly avoided for leads in order for the characters to look like "normal" players of a Dungeons & Dragons match.