In their quest to build Hasbro a media empire, eOne has made a big move in securing director Rawson Marshall Thurber to spearhead their Dungeons & Dragons television series, according to Deadline. The Red Notice director will creatively oversee the adaptation of the wildly popular tabletop fantasy game from Wizards of the Coast alongside developing a pilot script and executive producing. The series has been on eOne's mind since they were bought by Hasbro, and it already has plenty of potential streamers interested.
eOne wants the show to be the beginning of a large D&D universe with Thurber brought in to set the tone for the series as an A-list powerhouse. This first series is set to be the anchor for the spin-offs and other series to follow. "We don’t want it to just be one show, so we are building out, developing out a multi-pronged approach for television, a number of scripted shows and unscripted, and we hope to be taking this out to the marketplace early next year," said eOne’s President of Global Television Michael Lombardo.
The big names don't stop at Thurber though. Collider previously spoke with John Wick creator Derek Kolstad who is set to write an as-of-yet unnamed live-action series. Between Thurber and Kolstad, eOne's Dungeons & Dragons universe should seem enticing to a lot of streamers, though Netflix sticks out as a prime target given the existing relationship with Thurber.
Thurber's Red Notice became Netflix's self-proclaimed most popular film yet, featuring three of the biggest stars of our time in Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot in an Oceans Eleven-style heist for the ages. Netflix went all in on the franchise, securing the three superstars and Thurber for two more films in the franchise, lining themselves up a massive blockbuster popcorn saga for the foreseeable future. Thurber also previously wrote and directed Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story as well as 2016's Central Intelligence with The Rock and Kevin Hart.
Dungeons & Dragons fans have had a lot to get excited about in terms of television and film projects surrounding the beloved RPG. Recently, The Legend of Vox Machina saw its release on Prime Video, which recounted the tale of the first campaign of the popular role-playing stream Critical Role. There's also a new eOne Dungeons & Dragons film coming from Paramount in March 2023 that wrapped filming back in August.