If you’ve been following the weekly box office updates, you may have noticed me making period statements about the underwhelming box office for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. This genuinely shocked me because it’s such a great, fun movie that manages to have action in equal measure. Its RT score is through the roof at 91%, too, so my hope was that it would manage to overperform internationally as evidence of need for a sequel.
Well, that’s unlikely to happen.
D&D is finishing off its theatrical run with a grand total of $207M worldwide, just $93M of that domestic. Ouch.
Paramount's DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HAT is tapping out domestically with $93M, $207M worldwide–on a $150M budget. Plus a big P/A spend. And sequels get more expensive.
Sadly for fans, we won't likely see another big screen adventure for 20 years. Hey, at least they rolled the dice. pic.twitter.com/cD8MIccYvY
— Exhibitor Relations Co. (@ERCboxoffice) May 25, 2023
Considering the $150M budget plus marketing costs, it’s unlikely the film did well enough for Paramount Pictures to greenlight a sequel.
So what went wrong? This is the second failed D&D movie, and it may be time to realize that the brand only appeals to a certain niche audience. The shame of it is that this movie very clearly was made to appeal to everyone. You don’t need to be familiar with the game at all to enjoy it, but the number of times I had people ask me if they needed to tells me Paramount did a poor job of making it clear.
