Just when you thought having TV shows based on Star Wars, Marvel, DC, The Lord of the Rings, Halo, and about 50 other major franchises wasn’t enough, one of the biggest and baddest is finally rolling its way into the mix. eOne just announced that Rawson Marshall Thurber, the writer and director behind Netflix’s smash hit Red Notice, will write and direct a pilot for an hour long drama based on Dungeons & Dragons. The show is being shopped to distributors with the aim of it being the first of a growing franchise.
“We don’t want it to just be one show,” Michael Lombardo, the President of Global Television for eOne told Deadline, which broke the story. “So we are building out, developing out a multi-pronged approach for television, a number of scripted shows and unscripted, and we hope to be taking this out to the marketplace early next year.” That was in November and, well, here we are. Thurber is on board.
Writers have been pitching on the series for some time, with news of John Wick co-creator Derek Kolstad being among them dropping last year. There’s no word on what Thurber is bringing that sold the company on him, but his obviously good relationship with Netflix and access to A-list talent couldn’t have hurt.
The show is likely to come on the heels of a Dungeons & Dragons movie from Paramount that recently finished shooting, starring Chris Pine and from Game Night writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. That’s scheduled for release March 2023. And if this show is really the start of a larger franchise with multiple spin-offs, you’d imagine it will somehow tie into, or at least be set, in the same world as the movie.
Also, it almost goes without saying that a Dungeons & Dragons TV show could absolutely work. The problem is the world is so rich and so full of different mythologies and characters, settling on just one thing is daunting. But if Thurber is on board, that decision has likely be made and now just need to be executed.
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