LOS ANGELES – It seems only fitting that the first movie based on the Dungeons & Dragons game began with a roll of the dice.
Eight years ago, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons took a chance on an unknown 21-year-old who'd worked in film production, but had never actually directed a movie. Now, TSR, the company Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax set up to develop, sell, and market the game, thinks it's got a critical hit on its hands, and not just in the D&D sense.
Until Courtney "Corey" Solomon proposed his project to TSR, the company had been protective of the D&D name, cautious about promoting a shoddy product to its 12 million fans.
"They were worried that if a movie comes out and it's not true to the game itself, then their audience would be disappointed for issuing a license to such a poor movie," said Solomon, the writer, director, and producer of the film.
TSR vice president Ryan Dancey says former president Lorraine Williams struck a deal with Solomon because he made a better up-front royalty offer than others had.
Solomon denies Dancey's royalty claim. He says he was cash poor himself when he approached Williams.
In 1997, Williams sold TSR to Wizards of the Coast, which created Magic: The Gathering. She now lives in Germany.
Regardless of what made TSR choose Solomon to do the movie, Dancey is pleased with the filmmaker's work.
"At the end of the day we were very pleased, more pleased than we had a right to be," said Dancey.
Solomon may be a first-time director, but he's not new to movies. He grew up in the Canadian film industry, where his mother was a production coordinator. He has worked on 20 film and television productions and was already a first assistant director by the age of 19. At 20, Solomon began to pursue his own film project, based on his teenage hobby, Dungeons & Dragons. It's been a nine-year effort.
Solomon did his best to keep the movie true to the game's rules. The cast consists of several adventurers on a quest together, just like a D&D party. All the character classes and races come straight from D&D rule books. The movie features two thieves, a mage, a dwarf, an elf, and a ranger. Spells in the movie all come right from the spellbooks game players use. There are a dozen spells and monsters, each taken right from the D&D guide books.
The two main characters, both thieves, are Norda and Ridley, played by Kristen Wilson and Justin Whalen, respectively. Wilson was most recently seen in Doctor Dolittle, playing the wife to Eddie Murphy's title character. Whalen is best known as Jimmy Olsen in the TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
The villain, Profion, is played by Jeremy Irons, best known for his Oscar-winning performance as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune. There are two notable cameos. The first is Richard O'Brien, the butler in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as the head of the thieves' guild, and the second is Tom Baker, best known as the title character in the Doctor Who TV series. Baker plays the leader of the elves, a curious choice since he is a towering six-foot-four. Solomon's solution: "He never stands up," he said.
The film was shot outside of Prague. Now it shifts to the editing room and special effects studio, before its October 2000 release. The US$30 million budget for the film is a pittance compared to $150 million monstrosities like Godzilla, Armageddon, and Wild Wild West that were derided for being all effects and no substance. Solomon was determined to avoid that trap.
"I always hate when I go to a great action film that has a ton of action and great effects, but there's no characters for you to latch on to," he said. "That's what I loved about Star Wars. It had great characters that you could get into."
Solomon is taking his time on the special effects work, which includes staging a battle between armies of gold and red dragons, because he wants it done right.
"I want to be careful with that scene, because I don't want it to look cheesy," he said.
Making the movie accessible to non-gamers is every bit as important as keeping it true to the spirit of the game, he said. "Even if you don't play D&D anymore, it should bring you back to the fun times you had when you were young," said Solomon. "And if you know nothing about D&D, then you're still watching a movie that you can get into."
