Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves‘ first official trailer hit the internet today, giving roleplayers and moviegoers alike a first look at the CGI gelatinous cubes, mimics, and displacer beasts that our company of would-be heroes will contend with when the film hits theaters in March 2023. Hugh Grant, Michelle Rodriguez, Chris Pine, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Regé-Jean Page show up in a trailer that suggests a return to the swords and sorcery films of old, which makes sense considering the source material.
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Honor Among Thieves tells the story of a group of rogues who find themselves at the center of a cataclysmic event. After successfully stealing away an ancient artifact as part of a routine job, Chris Pine’s team discovers that they’ve accidentally delivered doomsday to their world. With Michelle Rodriguez offering up the muscle and Pine apparently offering skills on a lute, they must try to reverse their fate and save the fantasy realm.
Much of the trailer shows off Hollywood recreations of creatures and concepts that tabletop players have been imagining for decades. One of the standout scenes involves Sophia Lillis transforming back and forth into an owlbear, a creature that merges two Earthbound animals into one ferocious fantasy beast. Her character also teleports through walls at one point, solidifying her as a magic user in the film’s party.
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Dungeons & Dragons has been riding high in pop culture throughout the last few years, partially due to the rise of Twitch streams and communities making the game more accessible than ever. The game makers at Wizards of the Coast have also recently mixed it with its other most famous property, the trading card game Magic: The Gathering, to great results.
This is the second major stab at turning Hasbro’s popular tabletop RPG into a Hollywood franchise. The first, simply called Dungeons & Dragons, starred Marlon Wayans and Jeremy Irons in leading roles. The film came out in 2000 to critical disgust and audience disinterest, but that didn’t stop the production of two direct-to-video sequels. In the grand tradition of DTV cash-ins, these films had very little to do with the original, and this reboot will likely have little to do with it as well when it arrives in theaters.