Trivia / Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $45 million. Box office, $33,807,409.
• Creator Killer: Courtney Solomon's directing career took a critical hit with this movie. He did not get another screen credit for five years, and has only directed twice since: with 2005's An American Haunting and 2013's Getaway.
• Deleted Scene: Found on the DVD, with commentary. Some were removed to plug plot holes.
  • Though there's also the scene of Ridley and Marina in the map, which was removed despite containing the setup for the entire story. Some very awkward exposition was shoved in afterwards instead.
  • There's an alternate deleted ending where Ridley, alone, says his goodbyes to Snails' grave, leaves the Dragon's Eye there, and walks away.
• Executive Meddling, Screwed by the Lawyers: First-time filmmaker Courtney Solomon tells a harrowing tale of meddling by TSR's owner (who rejected several famous directors, including James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola), by the threat of a lawsuit from Wizards of the Coast who were trying to reclaim the movie rights; the terms of the settlement required, among other things, that he use an old script that had been approved by TSR years ago instead of an updated version that he had wanted to use. Source.
• Follow the Leader:
  • This film is every Star Wars Cliché in the book, and apes mostly from The Phantom Menace, complete with its own Jar Jar Binks.
  • In the maze scene, it blatantly rips off the Indiana Jones films.
  • Apparently, since elves have pointy ears, they're Vulcans.
• Franchise Killer: Well, the tabletop game didn't suffer, but another film wouldn't come for another five years ... as a made-for-cable film. A new theatrical release had seemed impossible, though that has changed in recent years.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Marlon Wayans did a lot of ad-libbing. It got to the point where Courtney Solomon offered him three ad-libs per scene if he said his lines as scripted.
• Money, Dear Boy: Jeremy Irons rather famously took the role of Profion to pay for the refurbishment of a castle he had just bought (how appropriate). On the other hand he seems to be having a wonderful time playing an EVILLLL wizard. Certainly more fun than most viewers are having.
• No Stunt Double: Most of the principal actors did the stunts themselves, with choreographer Graeme Crowther recalling only "two or three" times a double was required. In fact, when shooting the Thief's Maze sequence on the film's last day of principal photography, Justin Whalin intentionally wanted the first 300-pound steel axe as close as possible to him in the frame, which Courtney Solomon agreed.
• Recursive Adaptation:
  • "The Sewers of Sumdall" adventure is included on the North American DVD as a printable PDF.
  • Wizards has created three tie-in adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game compatible with Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition: "The Antius Thieves’ Guild," "Damodar’s Refuge," and "Savrille’s Crypt," with a map for each adventure, and character sheets for Marina, Elwood, Ridley, and Snails.
  • Dave Arneson's On Location: Society of Sumdall and Izmer adapts some of the social classes into game terms.
  • Izmer was almost introduced as a tabletop game setting in a cancelled game module tie-in to the movie.
  • A Blackmoor source book would have placed the Empire of Izmer beyond the Great Mountains to the West of the Afridhi.
  • Dungeon magazine published a few adventures in the Izmer setting.
  • The Mystara website Vaults of Pandius goes with the idea that Izmer is based on the Mystara Empire of Alphatia, and has a custom setting for Izmer based on details from Alphatia, including Alphatia: The Izmer Campaign, The Empire of Izmer, Ridley Freeborn, Knight of Izmer, and Marina of Pretensa, Royal Wizard of Sumdall, Head Mistress of the Magic School of Izmer.
• Referenced by...: Suburban Knights features Paw Dugan doing a Profion impression.
• Running the Asylum: Courtney Solomon's credentials consisted of being a D&D fanboy and spending ten years trying to get a D&D movie made. The entirely new setting of Izmer was originally a setting Solomon created when he played D&D, though he claims the main reason why it was used instead of more popular settings like the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk was to avoid complaints of not including enough characters or lore from the source material (a decision that was directly endorsed by TSR and Wizards of the Coast), meaning it was mostly incidental self-indulgence.
• Saved from Development Hell: The movie was made after several attempts at a Dungeons & Dragons movie, with multiple different scripts. Different versions of a Dungeons & Dragons movie were pitched by Gary Gygax and Lorraine Williams years earlier.
• Star-Derailing Role: The failure of this film wrecked most of its younger stars' careers.
  • Thora Birch became famous during The '90s as a child actress with Patriot Games, Hocus Pocus, and Clear and Present Danger. American Beauty seemingly marked her transition into a successful adult actress, only for Dungeons & Dragons to snuff that chance at once. On top of this, her father, Jack, also contributed to her career's decline as he cost her roles with his on-set meddling, yet she refused to dismiss him. After D&D flopped, she starred in Ghost World and The Hole. The former was praised by critics and became a Cult Classic, but audiences stayed away. The latter saw theatrical release in the UK but went straight to DVD in the US and garnered mixed reviews. Neither earned more than $10 million globally. She has since found a new manager (to whom she is now married) but her acting career has stagnated: her most significant work since is a recurring role on The Walking Dead.
  • Zoe McLellan had an unremarkable career in television before she was cast in this film in a botched attempt at a Star-Making Role. While her film career hit a dead end, she did find more success on television when she was cast in JAG a year later. She remained on JAG all the way until it completed its run in 2005, transitioning quickly with Dirty Sexy Money two years later. However, that success was fleeting as her TV appearances after the latter ended were near exclusively guest parts. She did star in NCIS: New Orleans, but abruptly departed after two seasons. After a season-long stint on Designated Survivor and some made-for-TV films, she hasn't appeared in any projects since 2019.
  • Justin Whalin was best known at the time for replacing original actor Alex Vincent as Andy Barclay in Child's Play 3 and his supporting role as Jimmy Olsen in Lois & Clark. After D&D tanked, he starred in films that never saw a general release or otherwise went Direct to Video before he retired in 2009. Since then, he has become a social studies/drama teacher at a prep school in Los Angeles.
  • Marlon Wayans seemingly suffered from this film's failure the least, having in that same year starred in the critically acclaimed Requiem for a Dream and the commercially successful Scary Movie. He also co-wrote the latter film's script. However, his career soon died when he starred in and co-wrote White Chicks and Little Man with his brother Shawn. Most of his later releases (e.g., Norbit, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, A Haunted House, Fifty Shades of Black) were also skewered.
• Throw It In!: Richard O'Brien improvised lines, such as "Oh, what a romantic notion" in a scene after Ridley goes through the Thieves' Maze. The line was scripted as "Honor is for fools, my friend," but O'Brien dismissed it as "clichéd swords-and-sorcery kind of dialog."
• What Could Have Been: There were a lot of things that had to be cut because they didn't have the money to pull them off. Some of these unfinished scenes are on the DVD. Also, see Executive Meddling above.
  • Note that the most expensive cut scene actually contained the entire set-up for the main plot! Solomon was then forced to shoehorn in some awkward expository dialogue in the scene directly afterward.
  • Another cut scene featured a Creator Cameo by Dave Arneson (one of the original co-creators of D&D) playing one of a group of mages fighting a dragon.
  • Izmer was almost introduced as a tabletop game setting in a cancelled game module tie-in to the movie.
  • A Blackmoor source book would have placed the Empire of Izmer beyond the Great Mountains to the West of the Afridhi.
  • In a particularly bad example, one of the characters even having a name at all ended up as a part of this. In the film itself, the team flees from their enemies into a sewer, and when they emerge they suddenly have a dwarf in the party. This dwarf is never named on camera. He did give his name in the sewer scene, when they met him... but that ended up on the cutting room floor.
• Word of Saint Paul: A cancelled Blackmoor source book by Dave Arneson would have placed the Empire of Izmer beyond the Great Mountains to the West of the Afridhi as part of the shared Mystara setting.

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