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 Deadline report. eOne studio, owned by Hasbro to create film and television adaptations of its many properties, confirmed last February that the series is in its early stages.
Deadline said eOne made the rounds for the show in November and garnered interest from “several buyers,” but landed on Paramount Plus after “a competitive situation.” The two companies will join forces 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 Thievesthe feature film set to premiere March 31, directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.
The live-action Dungeons & Dragons Paramount Plus show could be eOne’s “largest TV project ever,” Deadline said, with the potential to launch a Dungeons & Dragons universe with “scripted and unscripted shows.”
Indeed, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have already talked about airing the D&D franchise on TV. A few years ago, the company said a TV show was featured by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad; this live broadcast would center on Drizzt Do’Urden, a character first explored in RA Salvatore’s novel The crystal shard. Since then, he has appeared in more than 30 novels and a few video games, including Dungeon & Dragons: Dark Alliance. This project, however, is separate from the 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 in the franchise world. Real game shows are already immensely popular on YouTube and elsewhere, with viewers investing in watching and listening to player-created stories.
