Dungeons & Dragons movie saves vs. legal trouble, gains script set in Forgotten Realms

A movie based on that titan of tabletop, Dungeons & Dragons, is moving ahead at Warner Bros., reports Variety.

After sorting through a rights dispute between Allspark Pictures and Sweetpea Entertainment, Warner Bros. is now in the clear. Allspark Pictures is a division of Hasbro Studios (a division of Hasbro, which produces the Dungeons & Dragons games), while Sweetpea Entertainment produced 2000's Dungeons & Dragons and 2005's Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God. Neither film was well received by critics and fans (Ed. note: or most people with eyeballs).

The solution is that both studios will produce the new flick, which already has a script set in Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms setting, familiar to many players and fantasy fans from R.A. Salvatore's novels as well as D&D games. David Leslie Johnson took writing duties on the project.

Despite the fact that Dungeons & Dragons is literally a storytelling engine, getting a decent film adaptation out of the license has historically been a game where almost everybody rolls 1s. If there's a ray of hope for Warner Bros.' latest effort, it's that one of the producers of The Lego Movie, Roy Lee, is involved. If Lego can get an Academy Award-nominated film to theaters, surely the time is right for Dungeons & Dragons to get a watchable film to theaters.