WELCOME!

HOW DO YOU BRING a 49-year-old popculture phenomenon to life on the big screen? How do you translate the world’s biggest fantasy role-playing game from an in-person tabletop experience to an in-theater moviegoing experience? And how do you do it in a way that delights existing players while not overwhelming casual moviegoers? These are a few of the questions that we set out to answer over three-years ago when we began our quest to bring Gary Gygax’s venerable Dungeons & Dragons game to cinemas.

The quest to give Dungeons & Dragons the blockbuster movie treatment didn’t start with us. A series of low-budget movies a few decades ago, storied near misses prior to that with young filmmakers like James Cameron and Sam Raimi (whatever happened to those guys!), and countless drafts of screenplays spread across several Hollywood studios in ever-changing rights deals are evidence of the efforts by so many that came before us.

But why? Why was so much time, money and effort expended trying to bring D&D to movie theaters? The answer is simple. Because D&D is the best. The world of Dungeons & Dragons is the most engaging and exciting fantasy world ever created. Because the classes, races, creatures, and settings that make up D&D are worthy of being realized in stunning widescreen cinematic splendor. Because the mythology and world-building are top-notch. And, most importantly, because the game of Dungeons & Dragons is a heck of a lot of fun.

But just because the game is awesome doesn’t mean the journey was easy. The act of actually getting the game to the big screen was a complicated journey that wound its way through two studios (oftentimes with changing leadership), intense collaboration with incredible brand partners at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast and a global pandemic. But every step of the way, the journey that our co-writers and directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein led us on brought us closer to bringing all of the heart, humor, and spectacle present in a game around the kitchen table with some dice and character sheets to the big screen.

Working hand-in-hand with Michael Ireland, Jon Gonda, and Meg Lewis at Paramount Pictures and Zev Foreman and Ashley Alexander at eOne, we had the fortunate honor of assembling an incredible cast—a handsome bard played by Chris Pine, a lovable barbarian portrayed by Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant at his most charming and roguish, Regé-Jean Page as a quintessentially-stoic paladin, Justice Smith as a half-elf sorcerer, and a tiefling druid portrayed

in all of her (sometimes controversial) owlbear-majesty by Sophia

Lillis.

The story being told was a simple one. A group of adventurers, nay thieves, set out to rob only to learn that they have a responsibility to do more and to do right. The story was about lost family and finding new family. And it was ultimately a story about redemption. The script was a blast from the first draft. Everyone who read it was moved by the beauty of the story, the depth of the characters, and the laugh-out-loud humor that arose from the friendships between our thieves turned heroes.

The cast and crew assembled in Northern Ireland in middle of global quarantine and spent months toiling in the dark, cold northern winter to carefully stitch every costume by hand, to painstakingly recreate iconic places like Neverwinter (that had only really ever existed in the imaginations of DMs) on an abandoned backlot, and to carefully design cinematic iterations of fabled monsters such as the gelatinous cube, the epic red dragon Themberchaud, displacer beasts (are there ever less than one or is there only one?), and a majestic aarakocra named Jarnathan. Working closely with the team at Wizards of the Coast led by Nathan Stewart and Jeremy Jarvis, we considered every detail and looked for the perfect way to bring legendary spells like Speak with Dead and Magic Missile to life through the magic of VFX and Practical Effects (special thanks to incredible corpses from the wizzes at Legacy Effects). It was a labor of love that employed hundreds of artists and artisans in Northern Ireland, England, and the USA as well as thousands more at visual effects houses like ILM and MPC.

And the result is a film that we hope captures everything that is so incredible about the game. John and Jonathan’s vision for this movie has been unwavering. And as producers, we have worked hand-in-hand with them to deliver on the vision that we all shared for this film. Will audiences respond? Will a new generation of kids pick up a copy of the legendary Monster Manual and dive in to create their own adventures? Only time will tell. But the quest has been one that made us laugh, made us cry, taught us a thing or two, and delighted us endlessly. We hope to see you at the movies.

Mike Cecchini EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Rosie Fletcher PRINT EDITOR

Chris Longo DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL & PARTNERSHIPS

ART

Lucy Quintanilla CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jessica Koynock ART DIRECTOR | Erin Foster DESIGNER

PRODUCTION

Kyle Christine Darnell PRODUCTION MANAGER

COPY

Richard Jordan SUB EDITOR | Sarah Litt COPY EDITOR

Nick Harley ASSISTANT PRINT EDITOR

ADVERTISING

Matthew Sullivan-Pond PUBLISHER

Colby Olson ADVERTISING ACCOUNT MANAGER

Vanessa Chouest ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

DENOFGEEK.COM

Mike Cecchini EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

John Saavedra MANAGING EDITOR

Rosie Fletcher UK EDITOR

EDITORIAL

Alec Bojalad TV EDITOR | Matthew Byrd GAMES EDITOR

David Crow SENIOR FILM EDITOR

Kirsten Howard NEWS AND FEATURES EDITOR

Louisa Mellor UK TV EDITOR

ART

Lucy Quintanilla CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jessica Koynock ART DIRECTOR

Chloe Lewis JUNIOR DESIGNER

AUDIENCE DEV & SOCIAL MEDIA

Elizabeth Donoghue

HEAD OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

Maznah Shehzad AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIST

Lee Parham SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR

And a very heartfelt and special thank you to our fellow Producer and former Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner, who didn’t get to see this film brought to life but without whom this film never would have existed.

PHOTO & VIDEO PRODUCTION

Nick Morgulis SENIOR VIDEO PRODUCER

Andrew Halley HEAD OF VIDEO PRODUCTION

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