Dungeons & Dragons (film)

The earliest attempts by the major film industry at a feature-length adaptation of a Dungeons & Dragons property date to the early 1980s, as there was a strong interest in producing a film based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; Gary Gygax had several discussions with producers and agents about the idea, and a screenplay by James Goldman received eyeballs from major studios, but nothing came about this due to conflicts between TSR and the studios.[4] Dungeons & Dragons player Courtney Solomon, who had personal experience with the entertainment industry as a child because his mother was a production coordinator on television series filmed in Toronto, wanted to produce a film based on the game since 1990.[5]

Courtney Solomon received help from Hong Kong entrepreneur Allan Zeman to fund Dungeons & Dragons.

In 1990, Solomon contacted staff from Dungeons & Dragons's publisher, TSR, Inc., under the guise of working on a school economics project; they informed him about studios in the past failing to produce a film based on the game due to having too little of an understanding of the RPG's X-factor.[5] It took him 18 months to convince TSR to set up negotiations,[5] but TSR finally agreed to it because of his upfront royalty being better than other studios the company worked with, according to vice president Ryan Dancey.[6] Solomon obtained an option from TSR after writing a 30-page proposal showing how he would adapt the game and going through three months of "intense" broker dealing with the game publisher.[7]

Solomon went on an 18-month-long trip across the world funding the film once a draft of the screenplay was completed,[8] and most of the financing depended on foreign distribution rights.[9] During the trip, he met a leading businessman in Asia named Allan Zeman, who viewed the 24-year-old as a "young, ambitious, artistic person" as well as a "convincing salesman" of a project based on an enterprise with a huge fanbase.[10] In early 1992,[11] Zeman and Solomon formed Sweetpea Entertainment to fund Dungeons & Dragons and sell it to other investors.[10]

Originally, Solomon planned to have Dungeons & Dragons be a $100 million studio project with a big name in the director's chair; during development, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Renny Harlin, and Stan Winston were attached for directing the film at one point but dropped out.[10] In addition to the script receiving positive coverage from the magazine Movieline,[11] Premiere also announced the project in a 1995 issue when Winston was still signed on, revealing plot details such as a rogue lead, a magical dragon-controlling device, 14 creatures from the original game, and an effects-heavy final battle.[4]

A majority of studios and directors loved the screenplay, but turned away due to a recent history of big-budget box office failures in the fantasy genre, such as Willow (1988), Krull (1983), and Dragonheart (1996),[12] and Justin Whalin's lack of star power.[13] Solomon and the studios he encountered constantly conflicted with TSR, which wanted a direct-to-video release instead of the big-budget theatrical film the Canadian dreamed of.[12] Cameron considered the project just before he did Titantic (1997), but the deal didn't suffice due to TSR's failure to come up with a merchandising deal that appealed to 20th Century Fox, where Cameron worked.[12] Potential deals with Paramount Pictures and Lightstorm Entertainment were also destroyed due to strong disagreements on how to finance the film.[4] Solomon's amount of focus on getting the film green-lit caused the relationship with his girlfriend to break apart.[12]

Joel Silver's role as executive producer helped gain Dungeons & Dragons more investors.

Joel Silver, an executive producer most notable for action films such as the Die Hard movies, joined the Dungeon & Dragons project in April 1997, and the screenplay was finalized in June 1997.[4] Silver came in with the vision to make it a television series instead of a film.[12] Solomon thus tried to incorporate that plan in his project; however, TSR sold the rights of the original game property to Wizards of the Coast, and despite TSR leader Lorraine Williams telling Solomon Wizards would allow a TV series, that ultimately wasn't the case.[12] At this point, technological advancements decreased required effects money, Solomon discovered Prague which had several medieval-era-looking places and thus lessened the need of costly studio sets, the $100 million budget appeared too risky for buyers,[10] and TSR's set filming deadline was nearing.[12]

With the plan changed to a $3.5 million direct-to-video film,[12] Solomon became director[10] and started test shooting a three-minute scene battle in Los Angeles in August 1997;[4][14] Silver was so roused by it that he stayed on the project as executive producer and thus increased the project's credibility to the point where investors raised up to $30 million.[10][12] This now made the production a theatrical one and also saved the producers from legal action by Wizards of the Coast, who argued it wasn't a "real" film.[12] Zeman put the money up for the project,[10] in addition to Solomon and his grandfather Joe Smuckler co-signing a $25,000 bank loan,[15][16] to begin pre-production on February 9, 1998.[4]

Due to filming in a Czech Republic location, Dungeons & Dragons' props and sets cost five times less than if shot in the United States.[17] Although the final budget totaled to $35 million, the film was made with $21 million in cash during production, as there were several deferments in effects crew and actors' pay to meet its intended large scale.[15][18] To maximize the quality of the film's effects with a limited budget, Solomon made equity deals between the effects houses involved so that less money was paid.[17] At the time of its release, Dungeons & Dragons was the biggest-budget independent film ever produced.[10]

Solomon began writing the script in 1991 based on the rules of the second edition of the basic Dungeons & Dragons game; he planned Dungeons & Dragons to be a film trilogy,[18] his goal being to create "the Star Wars of the fantasy genres" using the original trilogy as a template for the story arcs.[8] Two Miramax script doctors, Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien, were interviewed to be additional writers in April 1992, thanks to an executive's connection with Solomon.[11]

To give the writers an idea of the quality expected in the screenplay, Solomon first required them to view 1980s fantasy films he felt showed the bad state of the genre at the time, and then adventure productions like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Ben-Hur (1959).[14] The first draft of the film took eighteen months to complete.[19] Solomon claimed the final product is a collection of different scenes from 16 drafts.[18]

Although the class of characters and rules of Dungeons & Dragons are brought over to the film, Solomon decided to create a generic setting only loosely based on one of the lesser-known game settings, Mystara;[20] he felt using specific campaign settings heavily dependent on player interpretation would confuse viewers.[8] He also had to risk the combat actions not reflecting how players would use them; for example, "somebody could be casting one of those spells and standing there for ten minutes until the spell is ready to go," explained Solomon.[15] Spells were occasionally altered if their original descriptions weren't "visual" enough to be present on screen; for instance, a Mind Flayer in the film controls another character by going inside him rather than controlling him from a distance.[20] Another small creative liberty was the red dragons being more powerful than the gold dragons.[21]

Dungeons & Dragons's London casting location opened the door for cameos by notable British actors such as Richard O'Brien (left) and Tom Baker (right)

The cast of Dungeons & Dragons was a mixture of established film actors and up-and-comers in Hollywood.[13] Most of the casting took place in London starting April 21, 1999, due to the Prague shooting location;[22] this resulted in the inclusion of actors like the Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker and Richard O'Brien, whom Solomon casted him with knowledge of his performance as Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), a film released the same year as the first Dungeons & Dragons game.[15] A-list actors were mostly avoided for leads in order for the characters to look like "normal" players of a Dungeons & Dragons match.[15]

For the part of Ridley, in particular, Solomon looked for "someone who wasn't a movie star but who could be."[13] Whalin, a Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman star who had disinterest in most fantasy films, became a part of the project due to a strong friendship between him and Solomon;[13] he was the only one to join the project before the start of pre-production, entering in December 1997, and had to reject several other acting offers to make himself available.[23] Thora Birch was cast for the project shortly after she finished filming American Beauty (1999) and before she became a breakthrough actress once it was released;[15] she chose to play the positive-minded empress Savina to get herself out of the somber psyche she put herself in for her role in American Beauty.[24] Birch, Whalin, and Kristen Wilson was cast before the start of principal photography.[22]

Mark Leahy, a producer who was involved in the writing for a year-and-a-half working on revisions of Solomon, Cartwright and Lilien's original script that were mostly rejected, was the one who conceived the cast being as ethnically diverse as possible; as he explained, "I thought this film had (and has) a chance to really be something special, and knowing that I hated the thought of a bunch of kids watching a great story in another world-where there are only white people."[25] Leahy originally wrote the elf Liana (later named Norda) to be a black elf, but after contention from his peers, he changed her race to Asian; she was a black elf in the final cut.[25] Leahy wrote what would become Snails as an African-American half-orc in his versions, although this was considered poor taste by his colleagues.[25] He also wrote all members of the mage empire to be Asians.[25]

Wilson, after reading the script, wanted to play Norda specifically due to the character's enigma; as she elaborated, "her position within the royal court world....the power that she has, certainly psychologically ..and she's a mystic...and then she's this incredible warrior. And she doesn't really let on too much.. but you can look in her eyes.. and you can see that she's not somebody to be trifled with."[26] In fact, she was so committed to being cast as the elf that when calling the casting director, Wilson demanded to meet Solomon in person and tell him, "I'm Norda."[27] The meeting happened, with Solomon and the other producers agreeing with Wilson.[27] The director claimed to have cast Wilson as Norda for the same reasons she liked the character: "She's serious and mysterious and very, very cool [...] But when you look at her she doesn't look like some sort of prosthetic elf, she looks like she's another race. When you see her in the film, she's got these wild eyes, this wild exotic look, and she looks like a Dark Elf, which is great, because it's what she's supposed to be."[28]

Lee Arenberg and Irons joined during filming,[29] with Irons the last actor to get on board;[30] he did so through the connection of Silver, who previously worked with him on Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995).[13] He initially rejected the opportunity as he was overseeing the renovation of a Ballydehob castle he purchased named Kilcoe.[30] However, Silver then sent a package to Irons made for him by Solomon, which included the script and sketches of the look of the film; this plus his desire to try out a commercial fantasy production and Solomon's decade-long tenacity to get the screenplay produced made Irons get on board during filming on July 14, 1999.[30]

The trickiest characters to cast were Elwood and Savina.[28] As Solomon explained the dwarf, "The way I saw the D&D; dwarf was not like a hobbit, they're sort of in-between a human and a hobbit. They're smaller than an elf, too, so it was hard finding somebody with the height requirements, but also somebody who's going to be bulky like a dwarf as well."[28] Arenberg was chosen to portray Elwood, although before he was cast American Job (1996) star Charlie Smith was a contender for the role.[29] The producers originally look for an actor under five feet, but Arenberg went in the audition room and told them, "I have a few more inches but a foot more talent than the other short people."[31] When looking for the empress Savina, according to Solomon, "that was one of the toughest characters to cast because I was looking to find somebody that young to play the role, because that's what that character called for, but I also needed somebody with a depth to her and understanding that's beyond her years."[28]

The Sedlec Ossuary was the interior for Profion's lair.

I was horrified, frightened and terrified, obviously, but after going through these different directors, and seeing these different visions, I felt like I had been so close to it for so long that I finally had to do it.

— Solomon on the feeling he had of having to direct the film on his own when shooting started.[12]

Shooting of Dungeons & Dragons took place from May 28 to the middle of August 1999 in Prague,[13][15] with a two-week rehearsal period that included eight days of a cast read-through at Solomon's apartment just before.[13][23] 2,000 extras were provided by Prague's casting agency Sagitarius,[31] with each battle consisting of around 35 stuntmen and five of the leads at most.[32] While working on Dungeons & Dragons, Snails actor Marlon Wayans was also filming Requiem for a Dream (2000), meaning he had to go back and forth from Prague to New York and deadlines for fight scenes involving the character became very strict.[18]

While real places were leased for sets, work of the film was also done at Barrandov Studios.[33] Dungeon & Dragons was the first feature-length film to use the Sedlec Ossuary, which serves as the interior for Profion's lair, as a location; the church was decorated by František Rint with 40,000 skeletons of people who died as the result of the Black Death.[17] Because the Czech Republic government considered it a special location due to the skulls bringing positive energy, they normally banned video companies it felt brought "bad connotations" to the skulls, mostly for music videos by metal groups.[17] The Magic Council meetings were filmed at the city's State Opera house, and Irons described them as the most difficult to shoot due to the amount of blue screen work and dialogue involved.[34] Other sites used for sets included Kacina Castle, Rabi Castle, Svaty Mikulas church, Lipnice Castle, the Alkazar Quarry, St. Nicholas' Cathedral, the Doksany Crypt, the Strahov Library and the Dejvice Sewers.[10][31]

Solomon tried to make Dungeons & Dragons unlike other big-budget films that focused the most on effects and not on plot, and was especially careful to make the battle scenes with the dragons not too "cheesy."[6] Producer Kia Jam described Solomon's method of directing and producing as different from how other major studios would create fantasy productions: "they never seem to get it right because I think they replace a true fantasy feel with exorbitant amounts of money in order to achieve it superficially. The feeling has to come from a central source and here that's Corey."[13] One major deviation from other fantasy films was the otherworldliness of the setting, whereas similar products would take place or be heavily inspired by the Middle Ages.[28]

At the same time, the director still went for a strong "wow factor" with the film, where "you have to be able to say 'wow' at least ten times in the first 30 minutes."[35] The two toughest scenes for the cast and crew to film were the maze scene and the concluding battle.[18][36] The battle is eleven minutes long, required more than 280 shots, and was filmed on a 360-degree panoramic blue screen stage due to it involving more than 150 computer-generated dragons; it was tough for the actors as they had to fight while imagining dragons were around them, and it was tough for the director because the actors could not interact with the dragons that would be imposed in post-production later.[18]

Despite playing a dwarf, Arenberg was a 5'8" actor, which meant he had to stoop his head, squat while still, move with his legs apart, and have extensive costuming in order to look short.[31][37] He described his role as the hardest he'd ever done, primarily due to having to perform actions scenes while wearing a red beard that "itched like crazy" and "about 50 pounds of clothing complete with padding."[38] When directing Wayans' improvisational method of acting, Solomon offered him the ability to perform three ad-libs in exchange for properly saying three lines in the script.[13] O'Brien also improvised lines, such as "oh, what a romantic notion" in a scene after Ridley goes through the Thieve's Maze; the line was scripted as "honor is for fools, my friend," but the actor dismissed it as "cliched swords-and-sworcery kind of dialog."[4]

Most of the stunts were performed by the main cast, including Justin Whalin.

Apart from Wayans, who played the game during his high school years,[14] and Arenberg who was a casual player,[18] none of the leads were familiar with the original game;[39] Jeremy Irons learned a bit about it from his sons who were fans,[30] and Whalin prepared for his role by watching Dungeons & Dragons games in person, but then "realized that it seemed to be mostly about arguing" and "just put my trust in the script."[13] While not a player, Wilson's knowledge of the game came from groups of her high school peers playing it: "I remembered stories that I heard about kids committing suicide, and all this other nutty stuff. But I didn't really know anything about it. I knew that it was a fantasy game ..a roleplaying game and THAT interested me."[26] When working on the battle sequences, Solomon and the actors had a strong emphasis on making sure they followed the rules of the original game.[18]

Solomon and the producers intended Dungeons & Dragons to be a "fun" film that would appeal to younger audiences and fans of the game, which explains the over-the-top performances by actors such as Irons;[15] however, the director also tried to push the PG-13 rating with the violence in the battle sequences.[21] In trying to make the fight scenes have as much realism as possible, Solomon and the choreographers not only used blood and gore, but also had the actors use real swords. Due to the long amount of time a fight scene would be choreographed and filmed, several "repeat blades" of swords were built and used; a total of six repeat blades were made for Damodar's sword, two of them broken during shooting.[40]

Most of the principal actors did the stunts themselves, with choreographer Graeme Crowther recalling only "two or three" times a double was required;[32] in fact, when shooting the Thief's Maze sequence on the film's last day of principal photography, Whalin intentionally wanted the first 300-pound steel axe as close as possible to him in the frame, which Solomon agreed.[37] Instances where Whalin was doubled by Theo Kypri consist mostly of acrobatic shots.[41] The actors' fighting styles varied from Ridley's "quick and dirty" yet "smooth" movements to Elwood's hardcore methods to Norda's artsy "fluid," art-like maneuvering, which Wilson attributed to her background in dancing.[27] Whalin's experience in taekwondo also aided in his fighting skills.[23]

Given that Dungeons & Dragons was filmed in Prague, some of the special effects work also took place there, with computer-generated work done in Britain and Germany.[33] The special effects team consisted of George Gibbs, Martin Astles, and Matthew O'Toole of Bob Keen's company Image Effects.[33] Given that the city's local sites were extremely cheap, with Solomon hyperbolizing that "sometimes our daily budget was like 15 US dollars," that made room for a high effects budget of $13 million.[18] However, the effects team had some difficulties. Most of the conception process involved members coming up with various concepts but never agreeing to final designs, meaning compromises had to be determined under deadlines during filming; Astles suggested more time could've been saved if the crew simply borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons books instead of trying to "cleverly expand" the game's universe.[42]

According to Gibbs, the workflow was made even more burdensome by the "communist" nature of the Czech Republic's film industry, especially for a big-scale fantasy film.[33] The country's recently passed importing laws prevented the makeup people from using the glue specifically designed for the elf ears, meaning the elf actors had to wear more incompatible adhesives.[42] There were also scheduling delays due to properties such as weapons and castle walls made by the Czech crew being poorly manufactured and having to be redone.[33]

Human-crafted special effects included the steel axes in the maze scene, the Corridor of Eyes made all out of stones, and the poly-glass crystals on the balustrade walls of the Magic school, the most challenging one being to reproduce the crystals into breakaway glass.[33] For creating the quicksand carpet, a water tank that made up two meters of the floor was used; it was filled with 6,000 liters of Quaker Oats (the only thickening substance available that did not sink to the ground) on a platform lifted up and down by a scissor lift.[42] There were issues the effects crew did not foresee with the use of the porridge, such as it bubbling away into the air as a reaction to a preservative used to keep it from being moldy.[42] With the carpet scene requiring three takes, Wayans described it as "probably the worst thing I've ever had to do in a movie. I grew up in the projects eating oatmeal, and I didn't want to ever eat it again, anyway. Now I really want to stay away from it."[43]

The computer effects were done by Station X and Blankety Blank.[10] Station X's founder, Grant Boucher, had experience in writing for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game and offered free advice to the production crew of the film despite not officially considered part of the production.[21] When filming began, Boucher predicted a total of around 200 shots with digital effects and 75 dragons in the film's climax.[29] After filming finished, Solomon claimed the number of shots with digital effects to be 550 and computer-generated settings and characters to be 15,[15] with more than 150 dragons in the climatic showdown.[18] Allen Crawford, a Station X animator, declared four months of computer effects work was spent on the movie's first minute.[31] There were also concepts originally planned to be practical effects but were computer-generated in the final edit; this included the gyroscope that holds the scepter, which was initially a machine-controlled device where all attempts for the motors to control it properly failed,[33] and Dexter the pocket dragon which was planned to be an animatronic dragon.[42]

For the dragons, the animators focused the most on their flying and diving cycles, using hawks and eagles as references, as well as their skin, where reptiles such as crocodiles were observed in producing the textures.[17] While the dragons were computer-generated, the fire they blew was done using practical effects, and to be digitally incorporated, the flame throwers were filmed outside during the night time and blown into a steel set hanging on its side.[33]

Justin Burnett was hired as Dungeons & Dungeons' composer, beginning with scoring the test sequence Solomon filmed to convince Silver to become executive producer;[44] the director ordered Burnett to create a John Williams-esque score, specifically in the style of Raiders of the Lost Ark,[45] which was a change of the rock orchestral rock style he used when composing for German television series.[44] It was the composer's third full-length film and his first to use live symphonic orchestra arrangements, with samples for percussion and a few ethnically-tinged instruments; with a "mock-up" score written in a digital sequencer, it was then performed by the Perth Symphony Orchestra in seven recording sessions engineered by Mal Luker.[44] Themes in the score include those for Savina, Profion, Damodar, Ridley and Marina's relationship, Ridley and Snails' friendship, and a "payoff" theme for Ridley inspired by Williams' one for Indiana Jones.[45]

The film opened at #5 at the North American box office making US$7,237,422 in its opening weekend.[55] The film would go on to gross $15,220,685 in the domestic box office, short of the film's $45 million budget, and with an international gross of $18,586,724, coming up with a worldwide total of $33,807,409.[56]

• Jones, Alan (December 2000a). "Dungeons & Dragons". Cinefantastique. Vol. 32 no. 4/5. pp. 24–26, 29–30.
• Jones, Alan (December 2000b). "Dungeons & Dragons: Special Effects". Cinefantastique. Vol. 32 no. 4/5. pp. 27–28.
• Jones, Alan (December 2000c). "Dungeons & Dragons: Jeremy Irons". Cinefantastique. Vol. 32 no. 4/5. pp. 30–31.