Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Edgin Darvis, a former member of the Harpers, is serving time in the prison of Revel's End for a heist gone wrong. Together with his barbarian partner, Holga Kilgore of the Tribe of the Elk, he breaks out of prison to try to reunite with his daughter, Kira, who is in the safe keeping of their former partner Forge Fizwilliam. Holga and Edgin discover that Forge is the new Lord of Neverwinter, something he accomplished with the aid of the evil Red Wizards of Thay, and has nefarious plans for the city.

Edgin and Kira recruit a former sorcerer ally of theirs, Simon, and set about assembling a team to break into Neverwinter during the Highsun Games, rescue Kira and find an artifact capable of resurrecting Edgin's slain wife. Each plan runs into new problems, but the gang have to find a way to win through to save Neverwinter.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, the first tabletop roleplaying game which allowed players to undertake stirring and dramatic adventures with nothing more than a couple of rulebooks and some dice. There have been various attempts to adapt D&D to the screen, resulting in some fifty video games, a 1980s animated series and four previous feature films, although only one of them made it to the cinema screen. It was not very good.

Honor Among Thieves is the latest attempt to make such a film and both immediately and comfortably becomes the best-in-class. It helps that the film uses the established world of the Forgotten Realms as its setting, with various cameo appearances by various creatures, spells and locations. It also helps that director-writers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Game Night) have gotten the assignment, making a film that's fully accessible to everyone who's never held a 20-sided dice or knows what a beholder is.

Instead, the film emerges as the finest slice of film fantasy since at least Stardust, if not the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The tone is somewhat light, with plenty of gags and moments of humour, but it does darken considerably whenever the evil Red Wizards of Thay appear. This tonal variation is handled well, making the film both entertaining but with moments of real stakes and dramatic tension. The film is aiming for the same kind of tone as Stardust and in the ballpark of The Princess Bride, and more or less nails that target. Those hoping for a gritty and darker film will be disappointed, but it feels like the creators have found a tone close to that of the D&D tabletop game.

The film dodges some of the balls of other recent, disappointing blockbusters. An extended post-production schedule has allowed for a good mix of live-action, prosthetics, physical locations and real stunts with CG enhancements, and only a few 100% CG scenes, and what there are are mostly very good. After some recent movies from the Marvel stable with very embarrassing CG, it's a relief to be able to say that the effects in this film do their job.

The actors are all on board with the tone, with the MVP being Hugh Grant. Grant adopts his typical British fop/cad accent and mannerisms to the material, but there are several moments in the film where Grant's character drops his facade and a much more ruthless character appears. It's fleeting, but hints at much greater character depth. The rest of the case do their jobs well: Chris Pine brings roguish charisma as the protagonist, Michelle Rodriguez delivers taciturn violence well, Sophia Lillis is the best owlbear you'll ever see on screen, Justice Smith manages to stay just on the right side of irritating and Regé-Jean Page is easily the best depiction of a paladin seen to date. None of them are fascinatingly deep characters, but they are a likeable bunch and it's easy to root for their success. The film even nails some of the brilliantly over-elaborate plans that D&D gaming groups can come up with if left loose with the rulebooks and a flexible Dungeon Master.

The film falters on occasion. It is slightly overlong and maybe a little too flabby, with maybe one extra setpiece than is strictly necessary. But each setpiece is quite good fun, and it's hard to suggest one to fully cut. It's possible the ancillary worldbuilding is not fully explored, such as why the Red Wizards think their plan would be tolerated by the other powers of the Sword Coast, but halting the movie for a ten-minute lecture on Faerûnian geopolitics would have likely not improved it much. It's really not that kind of film.

Honor Among Thieves (****½) gets the assignment and executes it well. This is a well-played, engaging slice of fun with some great D&D references and cameos for hardcore fans, but which is accessible to everyone. A great cast, excellent effects, a terrific score (from Lorne Balfe) and a fun, relaxed tone makes for an engaging, fun but not disposable movie. Assuming it makes a nice bit of change, I think we can expect this to be only the beginning of the D&D multiverse on screen. The film is on general release worldwide.

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GAME OF THRONES veteran to play iconic FORGOTTEN REALMS/DUNGEONS & DRAGONS villain

With the release of the full cast list for the Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves, it's been confirmed that Game of Thrones actor Ian Hanmore is playing the iconic role of Szass Tam, Zulkir of Necromancy in the Forgotten Realms world.

Hanmore played the character of Pyat Pree, one of the Warlocks of Qarth, in Season 2 of Game of Thrones, where he infamously kidnapped Daenerys' dragons but then came to a flaming end. Hanmore has been a stage and screen actor for more than thirty years, chalking up appearances in Doctor Who, Life on Mars, Shameless, Outlander and Carnival Row among many other performances.

Szass Tam is one of the oldest and most notable characters in the Forgotten Realms world. He was created by Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Realms, as a primary villain in that world and was first mentioned in a short story Greenwood penned in the late 1960s. He first appeared on-screen, as it were, in a short story Greenwood wrote in the late 1970s, around the time he started contributing to Dragon Magazine. Tam is mentioned in Dragon articles of the early 1980s and the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987) before getting a more prominent role in the sourcebooks Dreams of the Red Wizards (1988) and Spellbound (1995). In between he debuted in the novel Dragonwall (1990) in a cameo before getting an expanded role in Red Magic (1991). He would go on to appear in numerous Forgotten Realms novels up until Neverwinter (2011). He also made cameo appearances in the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights series of video games.

In the fiction, Tam is a Red Wizard of Thay, an ambitious organisation seeking to use magic to conquer the world. Tam rose through the ranks to become Zulkir of Necromancy, one of the eight rulers of Thay, and in the process converted himself into a lich, a powerful undead sorcerer. Tam is noted for labyrinth, ruthless schemes designed to further his own power or that of Thay (which he sees as the same thing). He is highly cunning, and also not above striking alliances with outsiders (which, oddly, he mostly honours) to achieve his objectives. Tam's weakness is his hatred of being constrained in power, sometimes by the other Zulkirs of Thay who see him as too dangerous and ambitious. This sometimes reaches comical ends, with a bold Thayan plan who increase its power being derailed by adventurers hired by Tam who simply did not want a political rival to achieve a success.

Tam is one of the most popular D&D villains of them all and Hanmore is an accomplished actor who should play the character well.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS to get two new novels to tie in with upcoming movie

Dungeons & Dragons is getting back into the novel market, at least tentatively, with two new novels commissioned to celebrate the release of the feature film Honor Among Thieves in March.

The two books are called The Druid's Call and The Road to Neverwinter, written by E.K. Johnston and Jaleigh Johnson respectively. Both books are set in the Forgotten Realms world, as is the movie, and will be set before the events of the film. The Druid's Call tightly focuses on the character of Doric, the tiefling druid we saw wildshifting into an owlbear in the trailer, whilst The Road to Neverwinter explores how the rest of party got together and headed for Neverwinter in the first place, and is a much more direct prequel to the film.

E.K. Johnston is a newcomer to the franchise, having previously written a series of stand-alone novels and contributing to the Star Wars setting with the novel Ahsoka (2016) and an additional trilogy. Jaleigh Johnson is a D&D and Forgotten Realms veteran, with five previous novels in the setting to her name: The Howling Delve (2007), Mistshore (2008), Unbroken Chain (2010), The Darker Road (2011) and Spider & Stone (2012).

More than two years ago, I noted the bizarre decision by Wizards of the Coast to terminate the extremely lucrative D&D fiction line several years earlier. Starting in 1984 and running until 2016, first TSR and then Wizards of the Coast published some 623 novels and short story anthologies set in the various Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings. These books shifted vastly in excess of 100 million copies (probably closer to 200 million) and made best-selling superstars of R.A. Salvatore and the team of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, whilst authors like Paul S. Kemp, Elaine Cunningham, Troy Denning and Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood did very well indeed. The novels were credited with bringing hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people into playing the D&D tabletop game.

However, Wizards of the Coasts' corporate overlords, Hasbro, were apparently always unhappy with running a publishing arm, despite it being an incredibly successful one, as it did not fit in with their core business model focusing on toys and games. After the launch of D&D 5th Edition in 2014, they decided to terminate the publishing business and switched instead to licensing their worlds to third-party publishers. But the cost of the licence was so extortionate that publishers felt it was not worth the effort of publishing authors even like Paul Kemp, Elaine Cunningham and Ed Greenwood, who were usually guaranteed at least a hundred thousand sales in hardcover and much more in paperback and ebook (and these are not chump figures at all). Only R.A. Salvatore seemed worthwhile, and between the end of 2016 and just a couple of months ago, the only D&D-branded novels still coming out were additions to Salvatore's Legends of Drizzt series, with two new trilogies being published. A couple of months ago, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman joined the party with the first book in a new Dragonlance trilogy.

Whether this is a limited marketing event solely related to the film coming out, or it might be the first signs of a wider publishing effort to bring more D&D novels to the shelves, remains to be seen.

The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS movie gets its first trailer

The first trailer has been released for the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves.

The trailer sees bard Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and barbarian warrior Holga Kilgor (Michelle Rodriguez) assembling a team to take on evil-doers. The rest of their party is rounded off by a paladin (Regé-Jean Page), half-elven sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and tiefling druid Dorig (Sophia Lillis), who specialises in transforming into an adorably murdery owlbear during combat. They have to face off against a number of foes, including the foppish Forge Fitzwilliam of Neverwinter (Hugh Grant), although they also have their work cut out facing down a displacer beast, a black dragon, a gelatinous cube and several evil sorcerers.

The movie is set in Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms world, specifically along the Sword Coast North with a focus on the city of Neverwinter (well-known from video games like Neverwinter Nights), and marks the first time the Realms - which have sold somewhere in the region of 100 million novels, over 10 million video games and several million RPG products - has ever been portrayed in live action. Reportedly we may see some cameos from major Forgotten Realms characters, so keep those eyes peeled for Elminster or Drizzt Do'Urden (who is also having his own live-action TV series developed back at Hasbro's production arm).

The film was written by Chris McKay and Michael Gilio, with Jonathan Goldstein and John Daley directing. The film hits cinemas on 3 March 2023, and looks like a cheesy fun time. It will have to go some to be worse than the four previous attempts to bring D&D to the screen, resulting in one dubious cinematic feature in 2000 (although worthwhile for Jeremy Irons' mind-boggling performance as the villain), two unwatchable straight-to-DVD attempts in the 2000s and a forgettable, animated Dragonlance film in 2007.

A first look at the characters from the upcoming DUNGEONS & DRAGONS / FORGOTTEN REALMS movie

Early visitors to the San Diego Comic-Con in California have gotten their first glimpse of the characters from the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie, set in the Forgotten Realms world.

SDCC has a "virtual experience" set up in the form of a D&D tavern, where people can go for a drink and be treated to visuals from the film, including a dragon flying by. These visuals include our first looks at the main cast from the film.

Relatively little is known about the movie, except that it is set in the Forgotten Realms, in the Sword Coast city of Neverwinter, and features an unspecified threat unleashed by Hugh Grant's villain, which a band of heroes (or hero-adjacent protagonists) have to deal with.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is set for release on 3 March 2023.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS movie gets title

The new Dungeons and Dragons live-action film has finally gotten a title. The film will be called Honor Among Thieves and will be released on 3 March, 2023.

The film stars Chris Pine, Justice Smith, Rege-Jean Page, Sophia Lillis, Michelle Rodriguez and Hugh Grant. The film is written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Relatively little is known about the movie, except it is set in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world and the city of Neverwinter will feature.