SAN DIEGO – The dream role-playing videogame “Dungeons & Dragons” is playing huge in popular culture, thanks to the mostrecent season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” and now Chris Pine and an all-star cast is bringing all the sword and sorcery to the huge screen.
The veryfirst significant panel of San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday – the veryfirst in-person version of the critical pop-culture convention in 3 years – showcased a veryfirst appearance at “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (in theaters March 3, 2023). Pine stars alongwith Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis and Hugh Grant, and the action-adventure movie is co-written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (“Game Night”).
“You puton’t grew up in Jersey without playing D&D,” stated Rodriguez, who plays a barbarian called Holga. Being in the film “brought back all these memories of being in a basement and goofing off with my buddies.”
In addition to the launching of the veryfirst trailer, a behind-the-scenes reel revealed cast and team shooting in Northern Island, a heap of magic and cool animals, and Pine bringing a sense of humor to the armor-plated phenomenon. Filmmakers debuted one clip showing Pine’s lute-playing Edgin, Rodriguez’s Holga and their group on a mission and having to dig up a lot of dead soldiers with blended results, while another had the heroes dealingwith an mad panther with wonderful arms, a harmful gelatinous cube and other monsters in a maze.
Daley, who’s been an devoted gamer of the videogame giventhat he was a 14-year-old star on the set of “Freaks and Geeks,” stated they desired the motionpicture to have camaraderie and “the sensation of playing the videogame.” The funny element “sets us apart from whatever else in the dream area.”
Grant pickedup a “Monty Python” ambiance in the script, and Pine enjoyed its “Spielbergian energy: open and light and resilient.”
Page, who co-stars as paladin Xenk, wentthrough a lot of training to be a warrior. “I got to swing a sword for a living,” he stated. Another benefit: “I had the finest (butt) of my life.” And Rodriguez acquired 10 pounds of muscle and consumed a lot of protein shakes to play Holga.
Pine’s 13-year-old nephew is a huge D&D fan however the star wasn’t: “It was unexpected I didn’t discover it till 42.” He was sentout a “treasure box” of videogame things and did a deep dive with his momsanddads and familymembers. “It was an incredible thing to see my entire household light up in that method.”
When it was brought up at the panel that Grant was a “D&D” fiend, Rodriguez quipped, “I think you combined it up with S&am