If you're a fan of Dungeons & Dragons, you're in luck — I've gathered up some trivia you probably don't know about the new movie, Honor Among Thieves.
From the directors' geek and gameplay cred to how Bradley Cooper became involved, here are 17 behind-the-scenes facts to raise your intelligence score about the movie:
1.It's not the first Dungeons & Dragons movie.
The first one hit theaters in December of 2000 and starred Justin Whalin, Marlon Wayans, Thora Birch, and Jeremy Irons. Its two direct-to-DVD sequels were released in 2005 and 2012.
2.However, there's no connection between that trilogy and Honor Among Thieves.
The first film was loosely based on the campaign setting Mystara, while Honor Among Thieves is set in the Forgotten Realms.
3.The new film is also preceded by an animated series that ran for three seasons in the '80s.
4.Before Paramount acquired the rights in late 2017, Joe Manganielloco-wrote an early script.
5.John Francis Daley, one of the writers and directors, starred in Freaks and Geeks as Sam, who can be seen playing D&D in the series finale.
You might also recognize him from Waiting... and Bones.
6.Daley and his Honor Among Thieves co-writer, Jonathan Goldstein, have worked together before, penning a number of movies including Horrible Bosses and its sequel, Game Night, and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
7.Bradley Cooper had already seen the movie before filming his cameo.
8.
Daley, who'd worked with Cooper on Kitchen Confidential in 2005, told Variety, "We had thought about a really fun cameo for this part. It was sent to his agent, but I sent him a letter saying, like, 'It’d be fun to play again.' I got a text from him from a number I didn’t recognize saying, 'Yo, is this still John?' And I said, 'Who’s this?' Because I’ve gotten weird texts before from strangers. He said, 'BC from KC.' I’m like, 'What?' Kitchen Confidential!' I’m like, 'Oh, shit!'"
"I immediately called him. He had just seen the film. He called it a triumph, which almost made me cry, because it had been a real long process working on this thing. And he was like, 'I’m on board. Sign me up.'"
Regé-Jean Page, who plays Xenk, told ScreenRant, "It was chaotic. Folks are very, very quick and improvisational on this cast, and it's essentially an improv game, and so everyone's playing 'Yes, and...' And so you think of the wildest, craziest thing you can do, and then you have the privilege of having Chris Pine sit next to you, and he'll take that and run with it and blow it up and make it crazier. Michelle Rodriguez is on the other side, she blows it up, makes it even crazier than that.
10.Page himself did some improvising, specifically the moment where Xenk steps over a boulder to walk off into the sunset uninterrupted.
"You're hot all day," he revealed. "You can't sit down. The sweat goes nowhere — it just kind of hangs out. It becomes a scuba suit, just with your own juices."
Pine told SlashFilm, "I think originally he may have skewed a bit more roguish. Not in terms of the character, roguish in terms of kind of gruff and easily frustrated, let's say. I guess what I found in reading it was I found Edgin to be really bright and kind of buoyant."
13.Daisy Head, who plays Sofina, is the daughter of Anthony Head of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Merlin, and, more recently, Ted Lasso fame.
14.There are several pieces of prequel literature tied to the movie.
Sophia Lillis' character, Doric, is the main character of The Druid's Call, a young adult novel written by E.K. Johnston, while Jaleigh Johnson's adult novel The Road to Neverwinter centers Edgin.
Meanwhile, the graphic novel Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves—The Feast of the Moon, written by Jeremy Lambert and Ellen Boener and illustrated by Eduardo Ferigato and Guillermo Sanna, follows Edgin and his gang of thieves.
15.A D&D expert was on set to help make sure the rules were followed when possible.
"We had an adviser on set who knew all those rules inside and out, and she would lean in and tell us, 'OK, for this spell, technically you’d have to do this and this,'" Goldstein told Polygon. "So we would try to honor those things in every opportunity we had. But ultimately, the movie had to come first, so if it felt like we were deciding between a rule or a plot point we needed to move the action forward, we would err on the side of plot."
17.And lastly, even without their participation, Monty Pythoninspired the film quite a bit.
"Our favorite thing is mashing up genres and doing it in a way where you can be scared one moment (and) laughing the next," Goldstein said. "We never want to go too far where it becomes a spoof of fantasy films, but we also wanted to be able to pivot from something creepy and traditional fantasy to an absurd, almost Monty Python-type sequence."
Did you see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves yet? Share your thoughts in the comments!
