Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Overview

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a fantasy heist comedy directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. It premiered at South by Southwest on 10 March 2023 and opened in US theaters on 31 March. Chris Pine plays Edgin, a lute-playing bard. Michelle Rodriguez plays Holga, a barbarian, and Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Regé-Jean Page and Hugh Grant fill out a mismatched party of thieves, heroes and con artists in the Forgotten Realms. It cost about $150 million and grossed about $208 million worldwide. For many longtime players it was the first D&D film that felt like their own table: chaotic, generous, full of the game's monsters and running jokes.

Origins

D&D's screen history had been uneven. The 1983–85 animated series was loved by its viewers, but the live-action Dungeons & Dragons released by New Line in December 2000 was a critical disaster, and two low-budget sequels followed. In the 2010s a lawsuit over the film rights between Hasbro and Sweetpea Entertainment, the company behind the 2000 film, held up new development until it was settled in 2015. Warner Bros. worked on the project with several directors attached. In December 2017 Paramount took it over.

Goldstein and Daley, best known for Game Night, signed on to direct and rewrite in July 2019. They set the story in fifth edition's default world, the Forgotten Realms around Neverwinter, and filled it with material from the game. Filming took place in Northern Ireland and Iceland from April to August 2021.

The story

Edgin Darvis, a former Harper whose wife was murdered by followers of a Red Wizard of Thay, and his friend Holga Kilgore escape from prison in Icewind Dale. Their old partner, the rogue Forge Fitzwilliam (Grant), has made himself Lord of Neverwinter and turned Edgin's daughter Kira against him. Forge is guided by the Red Wizard Sofina (Daisy Head). Edgin puts together a crew: Simon (Smith), a sorcerer short on confidence; Doric (Lillis), a tiefling druid who changes into animals, most memorably an Owlbear; and, for one stretch, the paladin Xenk (Page), who is so earnest he is funny. Along the way they ask questions of the dead in a graveyard and escape a Gelatinous Cube in the Underdark. They are chased by an enormously fat red Dragon named Themberchaud, fight a displacer beast and a Mimic in the High Sun Games, and in the end stop a Thayan plot, directed by the Lich Szass Tam, to turn Neverwinter's crowd into an undead army. The heist is the frame. The real story is about a group of unlikely companions becoming a The party.

Reception & impact

Critics were mostly positive. On Rotten Tomatoes, 91 percent of 318 reviews were favorable, and some reviewers compared its tone to the best of The Princess Bride and the Marvel comedies. Players liked its accurate detail: spell names, a Hat of Disguise, a paladin's creed, and the cartoon heroes' cameo in the maze. Its box office was weaker. A worldwide gross of about $208 million on a $150 million budget made it a disappointment by blockbuster standards, and a planned live-action Paramount+ series was cancelled in May 2024. Plans for a sequel have remained uncertain.

Legacy

Honor Among Thieves arrived at a high point for D&D's public image, after Stranger Things, Critical Role and the success of Baldur's Gate 3, which Larian released later that year. It showed that faithfulness to the game's feel, not only to its names, could win over critics. Its tone, friendly to the player's in-jokes without talking down to newcomers, is part of the same shift that produced The Legend of Vox Machina: D&D presented on screen as an adventure among friends rather than as the menace of the Satanic Panic & D&D.