Dungeons & Dragons will be adapted for television in a collaboration between Paramount Plus and Hasbro studio eOne, led by Red Notice director Rawson Marshall Thurber, according to a report from Deadline. The eOne studio, owned by Hasbro to create film and TV adaptations of its many properties, confirmed last February that the show was in early development.
Deadline said eOne shopped the show around in November and received interest from “multiple buyers,” but landed on Paramount Plus after “a competitive situation.” The two companies will partner to create the show; Thurber wrote the pilot and will direct the first episode. The partnership makes sense, as eOne and Paramount Pictures co-produced Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the feature film set to premiere March 31, directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.
The live-action Dungeons and Dragons Paramount Plus show could be eOne’s “largest-scope TV project ever,” Deadline said, with the potential to kick off a Dungeons and Dragons universe with “scripted and unscripted shows.”
Indeed, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have spoken before about bringing the D&D franchise to TV. A couple years back, the company said a TV show was pitched by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad; that live-action show was said to be centered on Drizzt Do’Urden, a character first explored in R.A. Salvatore’s novel The Crystal Shard. He’s since been featured in more than 30 novels and a few video games, including Dungeon & Dragons: Dark Alliance. That project, however, is separate from Paramount Plus’ project.
The Dungeons & Dragons franchise is a massive, sprawling hit with worlds and characters spanning novels, video games, and beyond. The original tabletop game lends itself to creativity as players form their own characters set in the franchise’s world. Actual play shows are already immensely popular on YouTube and elsewhere, with viewers invested in watching and listening to player-created stories unravel.