Directors and screenwriters John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein chatted about “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”
The movie officially opens in theaters on March 31. The synopsis is: A charming thief, Edgin (Chris Pine) and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.
The cast features Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head, and Hugh Grant. “We were very lucky to get that group of people,” Goldstein said about his all-star cast.
“The thing that is so special about them to me is the fact that none of them are alike. They are all so different and I think that’s what allows them to compliment each other,” Daley said.
Concept for the movie
On the concept for this screenplay, Daley said, “It was a script that had been kicking around for quite a while and we read it about four years ago, while a lot of it has changed since then, the one thing that we loved was the fact that it was a heist, and we just loved the idea of subverting your expectations of what a fantasy movie could be.”
Goldstein added, “We’ve seen so many dark and serious fantasy shows and movies and we thought there is another side to it, and that is perfectly represented when you play a game of ‘Dungeons & Dragons.’ It’s the fun, you are still saving the world, but you are having some laughs along the way.”
“We drew from a ton of influences both visually and story-wise, and we knew that we needed to really cover all of the bases in terms of who we were appealing to. We didn’t want this to be a film just for the diehard fans, we want it to be appealing to the people that have never played a game of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ so it was the challenge of signaling not only to the audience that this is something they are not expecting but it’s also something that is an easy entry point,” Daley said.
Lessons this movie taught them as filmmakers
“For me, I learned my tolerance level, and also you need to approach this like a marathon,” Daley said what this film taught him about himself. “You can’t kill yourself making it, it took a lot of sleepless nights, grey hairs and cups of Espresso to finally realize that,” Daley said.
“Similarly, it was an endurance test,” Goldstein said. “Our movies up until now were 40 days shoots. This one was an 80 day shoot. It is not just double the time, it’s the complexity. There were no easy days on this movie. It was a lot, and then, to know that you’ve done that is a great feeling because it was literally the hardest thing that I’ve ever done.”
“When you make it out on the other side is so gratifying because people are seeming to respond to all of the hard that we put into it, and that’s a really nice moment to absorb,” Daley said.
John Francis Daley: Using his actor’s hat as a director
As an actor, Daley is also known for his role as FBI criminal profiler Dr. Lance Sweets in the hit dramatic crime series “Bones.” When asked if his experience on that show helped him in co-writing or directing this movie, Daley responded, “Only in the ‘speak-to-the-dead scene because of all the ‘bones’ that we were dealing with there.”
.”As an actor, you do get a certain sense of what can overwhelm an actor as you are directing them so I try my actor’s hat on at all times. It’s a beautiful hat that has frills and feathers,” Daley said with a sweet laigh.
Daily motivations as filmmakers
On their daily motivations as filmmakers, Goldstein said, “Partly, it’s the movies that we grew up with. There is an all-consuming aspect of so many of the things that we loved as kids that we really tried to capture with this movie, which is heart and lack of cynicism.”
“We are trying to give the audience an experience that we remember having in our youths,” Goldstein added.
The digital age
On being filmmakers in the digital age, Daley said, “Anything that allows more people to see it, is better. I can’t stress enough that this film is designed for the theaters, first and foremost. It’s a communal experience, much like playing a ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ game. It is the best way to properly watch something that is so ambitious.”
“We spent a lot of time on the sound design of the movie too and no laptop or phone is going to capture that for you,” Goldstein added.
On the title of the current chapter of their lives, they said with a chuckle, “Waiting for ‘Dungeons & Dragons to Open.”
Most challenging part of making this film
They opened up about the most challenging part of their filmmaking experience for this project. “There were a lot of aspects that were challenging,” Goldstein admitted. “It was a very technical movie. In a lot of ways, you have so much between the visual and practical effects. Some of the sequences had to be shot over a number of weeks and in different locations.”
Daley continued, “The other challenge was contending with this pandemic which reared its ugly head about a year into our prep for the movie. After we finished writing the script and started our ‘soft prep,’ the pandemic happened and it shut things down but it also allowed us to spend more time on the script and a little more time preparing and strategizing how we were going to pull this off.”
It was a four-year endeavor for us and we are so excited to finally be able to unleash it to the world,” Daley further added.
Success
On their definition of the word success, Goldstein said, “Success is achieving what you set out to do in a way that makes people feel good. We tried to make a movie that really gives people a break from their daily lives. We wanted to create a whole world that you get a little window into here. If we’ve succeeded at that, and made people feel good for those two years, then I am good at that.”
“For me, success is knowing that I did what I set out to do regardless of how difficult it was or even how it is perceived,” Daley said.
Closing thoughts on the movie
“I want people to know that they don’t need to know anything about ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ to enjoy this movie. We very deliberately made it so that fans will see a lot in it that they recognize, but if people know nothing about ‘Dungeons & Dragons,’ there are no barriers to enjoying it,” Goldstein said.
“People don’t even need to like fantasy movies, this is very much a movie for everyone, even for people that hate fantasy because it’s so different in that regard,” he concluded.
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