D&D movie gets director, still waiting for WHEEL OF TIME TV news

The new Dungeons and Dragons movie has a director. As reported last month, Goosebumps director Rob Letterman had been circling the project and has now sealed the deal, with an apparently impressive presentation to Warner Brothers which set out a vision for an entire shared universe of films. Although the current trend "cinematic universes" is causing groans in some quarters, D&D is uniquely suited for such treatment due to the game already extending across literally dozens of campaign worlds and even multiple universes, with approximately 500 novels and dozens of comics already set in the franchise, along with an animated series, animated movie and three previous (awful) live-action films.

The new D&D movie will be set in the Forgotten Realms world, specifically involving the Sword Coast city of Waterdeep and its Yawning Portal Inn. Not much more has been revealed, except that it sounds like this will be an original story not drawing on any of the dozens of bestselling novels set in the same universe. Warner Brothers and Hasbro want the movie in production yesterday so we may see the film in production before the end of the year for a potential 2018 release.

Meanwhile, there has been no further news about the Wheel of Time TV deal. The Robert Jordan Estate confirmed a few weeks ago that the legal difficulties between themselves and Red Eagle Entertainment had been cleared and that a TV company had picked up the television and full merchandising rights. Further rumours have since emerged indicating that the deal was for "eight figures" (so $10 million at least) and HBO were not involved. However, no further information has come to light. Apparently the formal announcement is now in the hands of the studio, and this may come imminently or several weeks further down the road. As usual, I will keep my ears to the ground on this one.