New D&D movie is no dud | Filmaniacs

Garrett K. Jones

“Honor Among Thieve”, contributed by Collider

The last time a movie was made based off the “Dungeons and Dragons” IP and released to theaters was in 2000, a film starring Thora Birch (“American Beauty”) and Jeremy Irons (“Die Hard With a Vengeance”, “The Lion King”).

To be blunt, it was crap. The move was helmed by Courtney Solomon, who has directed and produced a number of films, most of which were schlocky b-minus-level horror and science fiction pieces.

The movie operated on a budget of $45 million and recouped $33.8 million dollars. Not only was it a commercial flop, it was almost universally panned by critics.

The digital effects were bad, even by standards of the day and while Irons spends the bulk of his screen time chewing the scenery and providing a manic performance of an evil wizard being evil for evil’s sake, it was not one of his strongest rolls.

A pair of direct to DVD “sequels” were released in 2005 and 2012, and the film franchise died there until Paramount licensed the film rights and rebooted it for 2023 alongside Hasbro - the game/toy company who now own the rights to the ever popular roleplaying game.