movies/tv The next Fantasy epic franchise?

[Whirlwindmark 41]

When I say Epic fantasy I mean something World building and action packed as say LOTR.

With the 2020's coming up(and the Star Wars sequel trilogy an early finished) I think these three would benefit from the advancements in visual Effects and learning from past mistakes.

 

The Legend of Aang: Based on ATLA, had the potential to launch a trilogy, but was poorly executed, didn't help the fact that Bender is a Brit slang. Done right and with an actual Asian cast, I think it deserves another shot.

Dungeons and Dragons: This reboot has been in development for a while, there is a lot of lore to D@D that would make for a great franchise.

 

His Majesties Dragon: Think Master and Commander meets How to Train Your Dragon. Peter Jackson was going to direct it before doing the Hobbit triolgy. A dragon Air Force in the Napoleonic war, that has epic written all over it. 

[Mesme Rize 15,681]

I think out of all of these, Dungeons and Dragons has the best chance to really pull in an audience. The stories and the tabletop games have been around since the late 70s and i think old and new viewers would appreciate it. All they need, is a good team of actors, writers and producers, preferably people who understand the nature of DnD.

[Whirlwindmark 41]

9 minutes ago, Kaa said:

I think out of all of these, Dungeons and Dragons has the best chance to really pull in an audience. The stories and the tabletop games have been around since the late 70s and i think old and new viewers would appreciate it. All they need, is a good team of actors, writers and producers, preferably people who understand the nature of DnD.

I heard that the producers are looking to make this sorta Lord of the Rings mixed with Guardians of the Galaxy.

[Steel Accord 6,658]

Well you can't hold the word bender as being a form of slang against the franchise because it means something entirely different in the context of their world. On that note, while I don't expect it to happen anytime soon, I do think that Avatar has more than enough potential to make for a great fantasy film franchise. It's already this generation's Lord of the Rings in terms of impact and influence within the high fantasy genre. Just give it a better director (or more appropriately, a director better suited to the task) and hire Yuen Woo-Ping for the fight scenes.

On the other hand, I would love a Dungeons and Dragons movie. It would be deceptively tricky to pull off though because, well there's basically no story to adapt. Oh there's lore from top to bottom but DnD's story is whatever the DM and players want it to be in a number of different settings with different rules. So any story would have to mix in the "right kind" of monsters, magic, and what have you on top of just being a good movie. I have faith that it can work, the brand is there and ripe with material to work with, it would just take a good execution to build off of. Who knows though? In this world of "shared universe, different stories" DnD might actually be pretty ideal. You could make totally separate movies about different adventuring parties in different sub-genres. With DnD's cosmology, they don't even need to be in the same world. You could have a whacky, light-hearted fantasy comedy about a group of questing morons, a darker Game of Thrones-esque plot about Machiavells and agents preventing a war, or a straight laced heroic fantasy about an ecclectic group of do-gooders growing as a team as they fight a rising evil power. All the while flying the same banner and selling the game's flexibility of style and tone.

[cmarston1 5,951]

Out of the three, I would have to say that Dungeons and Dragons seems like the one most likely to become a big fantasy epic franchise.

The franchise has been around for a while and most people have probably heard of it, unlike His Majesties Dragon, which would mean brand name recognition could help a Dungeons and Dragon movie become financially successful.  Also given the popularity of Lord of the Rings even to this day as well as Game of Thrones, the type of setting you could get out of Dungeons and Dragons could prove to be profitable.

I would love for Avatar to get to that level in pop culture however given just how badly Nickelodeon screwed over Korra, as well as giving M Night Shyamalan  the rights to make that awful live action Last Airbender movie, I highly doubt the Avatar franchise would be given the necessary love and care needed to help it become the next fantasy epic movie franchise.  I also believe that the universe the series takes place in seems best fitted for animation, because unless you have an insanely high budget, element bending would look sloppy in live action, just ask Shyamalan.

The main issue for His Majesties Dragon would be that I don't think it is really well known.  I mean it is possible it could still be a success, just look at Guardians of the Galaxy, but than again that movie was a success because Marvel had already built in trust in its audience after making a bunch of movies already.

Edited October 27, 2017 by cmarston1