Dungeons & Dragons (television series)

The unnamed Dungeons & Dragons series is a live-action series based on the Dungeons & Dragons franchise and currently in development. It is currently unnamed, with the working title of simply D&D.

Development
Concurrent with development of the Dungeons & Dragons movie, Hasbro's Entertainment One (eOne) studio began work on a Dungeons & Dragons series.

On January 15, 2021, Variety reported that screenwriter Derek Kolstad (John Wick, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) had been asked by eOne to write a pitch for a live-action Dungeons & Dragons series. Kolstad delivered a 'series bible' to eOne before March 24.

Michael Lombardo, President of Global Television for Hasbro's Entertainment One, in an interview with Deadline published on November 22, 2021, discussed the various Hasbro properties then being developed for television, including Dungeons & Dragons. He said "Our big focus right now is Dungeons & Dragons. When I initially sat with Darren [Throop] and Steve [Bertram], knowing that Dungeons is part of the Hasbro portfolio was incredibly exciting to me. It's a world and part of that is, its challenges are 'wow, where do you start?' We don't want it to just be one show so we are building out, developing out a multi-pronged approach for television, a number of scripted shows and unscripted, and we hope to be taking this out to the marketplace early next year." Asked if he was a fan, Lombardo replied "I was not a Dungeons & Dragons kid, and maybe I'm too old for it, but the people that played it, they continue to play it, it's so meaningful. They're so passionate about it, and we have had numerous discussions and a lot of interesting filmmakers, it's just finding the right team that has legs, that feels fresh in this moment. We have a big movie that's in post right now that will come out first so, we're trying to also navigate the brand more holistically so that the movie feels not apart from but connected somehow to a bigger universe."

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball, Red Notice) was hired to write, direct, and executive produce an hour-long opening episode for the Dungeons & Dragons series. A D&D player himself, Thurber commented on Twitter, "So deeply thrilled about this. Grew up playing the pnp version (lvl 13 lawful good paladin, holla!), enjoyed the heck outta @DDOUnlimited — learned to tell stories through (always) being the DM. Boyhood dreams do come true, ya'll. Can't wait to get cracking."

Story
The same day he delivered the series bible Kolstad was interviewed by Collider, published on March 24. It mentioned his deep reverence for fantasy, with favorites being Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and the D&D setting Dragonlance. Kolstad described his approach in detail, saying "I want to do a tinier sliver of that world. And it's been a joy." He explained in detail "In the first Star Wars, you heard about Jabba the Hutt and you don't see him until the third one because you earn at that point, and whatever the budget was for the third one compared to the first one, who cares, right? And I think in Dungeons and Dragons, who has this massive, dedicated community of acolytes, I don't want to suddenly throw everything on screen and say, 'Here's the buffet.' You'd much rather keep the story intimate. When you think of our favorite movies, I'd rather do the First Blood version. It's a guy in the woods being hunted. And it's very small, but you allude to the other things through conversation. You have your USS Indianapolis [in Jaws], you see something in the background. You hear a name that 3% of the audience is like, 'Ho ho, I think we're going to see him soon.' I think the thing is just to take a deep breath, to go into it slowly, and to just respect the world, and as you adapt, certain things need to change. But you better not touch the heart and soul of why people love this thing." He added "I stick with macro at this stage in the game, because this thing is such important IP, you have to be malleable. And so I'll stick to my guns when it comes to the characters and certain aspects of the world, but as to the story, by the time you start shooting, you throw away the bible going, 'Hey, it got us here, but now look where we are.' And you have to rebuild." In comparison to the Dungeons & Dragons movie, Kolstad was unconcerned about competition, saying "you want everything to succeed because that's only good for the franchise as a whole... if it's this massive spectacle at a quarter billion dollars that does well, great, because I want my show to exist in a little, little subset shadow of it." and "In TV, you get to pause. And let's be honest, our favorite episodes of our favorite series tend to be the one where they ran out of money, and it's two guys in a room. It's the bottle episode, and they talk, and they go deep, and they say, 'I am the man who knocks,' or whatever the classic line is that I can't remember right now from Breaking Bad. Those are your favorite moments. Action is action, and we'll get to that, and it will be cool, but when a guy says or does a certain thing, that's where TV has its strong point." Furthermore, Kolstad said the series will be "a serialized show, much like the old radio" with around six to ten episodes in the first season, without any limits on length so it can have "breathing room". Moreover, Kolstad felt that "the first episode of any series is the second most important because it's the second episode that gets its talons in you. Everyone will watch the pilot, but are you going to stick with it?" and said the first and second were the most planned out.

Regarding the story elements, Kolstad said in the Collider interview that he didn't "want to go in the middle of the mythos. I want to come near the end where everything is canonical, it's biblical, it's happened. Or, it's about to happen. That way you can revisit certain sequences and storylines that everyone loved in the past through flashback, but where we go is new. The unique yet familiar of it all is why we return to the games we love." He also certain canon characters are off limits, given shifting copyrights with the Dungeons & Dragons movie. He did mentioned he wanted to "go deeper and deeper into the Underdark."

A Wizards of the Coast press release on May 21, 2021, mentioned the series and movie; in saying the movie was not focused on Drizzt Do'Urden, it raised the possibility that the series might be; Comicbook.com confirmed this nebulous state, though it should be noted it is still equally likely not to be.