Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley have been on the trail promoting this week’s Apple spy comedy, Mayday (which is a lot of fun), and they’ve had a lot to say. Not just their upcoming reboot of the Star Trek franchise for Paramount, but also about their popular Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which the studio opened in 2023 to a disappointing box office.
Just last month, the duo said they had completed the script for a sequel, but Paramount was uninterested after the first film only made $205M on a $150M budget. Now, while appearing on The Discourse Podcast, they confirm Dungeons & Dragons 2 is being shopped around to other studios…
“Yeah, absolutely,” Goldstein said when asked about finding another financial backer. “I think Hasbro is a big believer in it, and if they can figure out a studio partner to make it work, they’ll want to proceed. As are our producers.”
Daley chimed in, “I mean, look, it’s something that is near and dear to our hearts in that we loved making the first one. We fell in love with the characters, and there’s so much potential in a sequel because the first act isn’t filled with exposition or introduction to this family that we’ve already become accustomed to. So you can kind of launch right into the story, which is really nice.”
At the same time, Daley admitted the financial realities might prevent the sequel from ever happening, “Yes, there are practical realities with the finance contingent, and who knows if it ever gets made, but we were proud of the sequel script and hope that at some point it does find a path.”
Daley also talked about the poor timing of the movie’s release, which was just days ahead of the record-breaking Super Mario Bros. Movie. There were other D&D licensing issues that caused some trouble behind-the-scenes. Frankly, I don’t think that stuff matters more than the fact that D&D has a loyal base of fans who aren’t necessarily moviegoers.
