Deadline reports that Paramount+ has given a “Dungeons & Dragons” show a straight to series order, with the first season comprised of eight episodes. The pilot was written by “Red Notice” director Rawson Marshall Thurber, who is also directing the series’ premiere episode.
While the report doesn’t specify whether this series will be connected to the upcoming “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” movie starring Chris Pine as a bard, Deadline reports the series is meant to be eOne’s “largest-scope TV project ever,” with the hope that it will potentially launch a bigger “Dungeons & Dragons” cinematic universe spanning “multiple scripted and unscripted shows.”
You read that right, scripted and unscripted. It could very well be that they just mean talk shows that offer news and updates about other projects or explain the vast and complex lore of “Dungeons & Dragons,” but the likelier answer is that this means gameplay shows like “Critical Role,” with people playing a “Dungeons & Dragons” campaign. The thing is that the gameplay market for “D&D” is kind of saturated, between “Critical Role,” “The Adventure Zone” and so many more shows with three to four-hour-long episodes and campaigns that span hundreds of episodes.
Still, the mention of a cinematic universe means connectivity. What if you had a streaming gameplay “Dungeons & Dragons” series with the TV actors reprising their roles, and what happens in the game affects the show? Like, if the main actor fails a dice roll and their character dies in a very ridiculous way, so the next season has to completely change gears since that character’s arc was ended before its time? Now that would be interesting.