Paramount/eOne’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has become the latest Hollywood film to be granted access to China. The studio’s Weibo account posted the news early Monday local time, noting the adaptation of the iconic Hasbro role-playing game will debut March 31, day-and-date with North America.
Paramount on Friday revealed its 30-second Super Bowl commercial trailer for D&D. The action comedy stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head and Hugh Grant. The movie will debut with its world premiere March 10 at SXSW.
It centers on a band of unlikely adventurers who undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic. Things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.
Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley directed the script they wrote with Michael Gilio.
Producers are Jeremy Latcham, Brian Goldner and Nick Meyer. Denis L. Stewart, Goldstein, Daley, Pine, Zev Foreman and Greg Mooradian are executive producers.
When the first trailer premiered at Comic-Con last summer, Grant noted the film has “a Monty Python sensibility.”
Also at Comic-Con, Goldstein teased what fans can expect in the film that’s also in the Hasbro Wizards of the Coast game, “There are characters from the Lore as well which will provide a runway into multiple films.”
After a dearth of studio titles in 2022, Chinese authorities have recently ramped up approvals, notably greenlighting Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. The former released last week and generated an expectedly soft turnout given its initial run elsewhere began last November and amid the lingering Chinese New Year titles that have been dominating play. A better litmus test for the return of movies with Marvel characters will be Ant-Man 3 which kicks off this Friday (presales just began today in the market where, nevertheless, a host of local movies is also set to debut for Valentine’s Day).
Further on deck from Hollywood is Warner Bros/New Line/DC’s Shazam: Fury of the Gods day-and-date on March 17 and Focus’ Mrs Harris Goes to Paris also on March 31 (the latter began offshore rollout last summer).
Here’s the China poster for D&D: