'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Filmmaker Interview | John Francis Daley & More
"Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" writers/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein as well as producer Jeremy Latcham joined CinemaBlend at San Diego Comic-Con 2022 to discuss their upcoming "Dungeons & Dragons" film, starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page and Hugh Grant. They chat about strong audience reactions to the film at test screenings, shooting during an actual volcanic eruption, and of course Chris Pine’s lute.
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00:00 Yeah, we shot a real erupting volcano in this movie.
00:03 What?
00:04 We went to Iceland.
00:05 Just lucky, you know.
00:06 What?
00:07 Shut up!
00:08 We shot a volcano.
00:19 Whenever I put a video of myself up on YouTube, I sit there and just refresh and refresh and
00:25 see if people are watching.
00:26 You guys dropped your trailer today.
00:27 Do you do anything like that at all?
00:29 We haven't had a chance because we've been doing all these interviews.
00:32 How's it doing?
00:33 I don't know, honestly.
00:34 I've been talking to you guys.
00:35 I've been refreshing it over and over again.
00:36 No, I mean, it seems to be very generally positive based on the moments that I get to
00:43 look at it, and that's really cool.
00:46 And just as gratifying was seeing the fans in Hall H respond to it with great enthusiasm,
00:51 and we were so excited to see that.
00:52 Tell me about that energy, because honestly, people going into this movie didn't really
00:55 know what it was going to be.
00:56 Right.
00:57 They didn't know.
00:58 I think that they have something in their heads, and we wanted very much to surprise
01:01 them with what this movie is, that it has more heart, more fun, more comedy, but the
01:07 same kind of big stakes and life and death things that you want from your campaign.
01:13 Yeah, it was crucial to us to kind of capture the tone of a great campaign, because that's
01:19 kind of what sets D&D apart from any other game, and it's just so unique and eccentric,
01:25 and that's definitely the most important thing to us.
01:28 Yeah, well, to that end, is that just something you strove for in the dialogue, and was it
01:32 tough to kind of nail that tone?
01:34 Look, we didn't want it to be contemporary, right?
01:37 We didn't want it to feel like these modern characters kind of thrust into this world.
01:42 We wanted it to be kind of true to the era and the genre, but that said, I think what
01:47 D&D allows for is this kind of freedom of expression and allowing people to talk more
01:52 colloquially depending on who they are, because there's certainly some characters that kind
01:57 of take it very seriously within the context of the film.
02:00 If the existing plan fails, I make a new plan.
02:02 So you make plans that fail.
02:04 No.
02:05 He also plays the loot.
02:06 Not relevant.
02:07 And also the fun of bringing a contemporary sensibility to the fantasy world and questioning
02:10 things the way he or I probably would if we were in that setting, like the scene, there's
02:16 a moment where Simon the sorcerer lays out this set of rules about this spell, and she's
02:21 like, "Doruk says, 'Why is it that way?'"
02:24 And he's like, "I don't know, just the way it is."
02:26 If I was there, I'd want to know, "Why are these rules so strict?"
02:32 The trailer really sells to me the scope of it, and Jeremy, I want you to be able to talk
02:36 to this too, because I wasn't expecting it to be told on that sort of grand scale.
02:41 Was that always the approach going into it?
02:42 I mean, you know, I only know how to produce one kind of movie, and they're the big kind.
02:49 I mean, that is really where I grew up in making movies.
02:53 In the 14 years I spent at Marvel, it's like, we make big movies.
02:58 And so when I had the opportunity to make this with these guys, it was like, "Well,
03:00 this is going to be huge, right?
03:01 We've got to make it really big."
03:03 It's like, I don't know, it makes it fun to have all the toys, to have all the scale,
03:10 to have the ability to play on that kind of a canvas.
03:13 And I think with a world like this that we're trying to bring to life, it has to be on that
03:18 kind of scale.
03:19 Because that's what's been existing in people's imaginations.
03:21 I think that's why this is the opportunity to have a great D&D movie right now.
03:25 We finally have the ability to make one.
03:27 We have the tools.
03:28 We have, between practical effects and visual effects, the ability to travel all over the
03:32 world with cameras and on helicopters and everything else, we can capture it.
03:36 Yeah, we shot a real erupting volcano in this movie.
03:40 What?
03:41 Yeah, we went to Iceland.
03:42 Just lucky, you know?
03:43 What?
03:44 You know, get out of here.
03:45 We shot the trailer of them riding by this volcano.
03:47 It was the erupting volcano in Iceland.
03:50 So you get one shot at that.
03:52 It's also dangerous.
03:54 No, I mean, like, you know, going along with what he said, we got a taste of being able
03:59 to build out and make a script that's that big when we were writing Spider-Man Homecoming.
04:05 But that was also, he was kind of a ground level superhero in that story.
04:09 And this is kind of a world that is so much more vast in many ways and so kind of foreign
04:15 to people because it doesn't take place in our world.
04:18 It really just allowed us to kind of see how much we could show, you know, without it getting
04:23 too big.
04:24 And it never did.
04:25 Like, it was always, you know, as big as it gets.
04:29 We built more sets on this movie than I think I've ever built on a film.
04:34 I think it was 120 sets or something.
04:35 Oh my God.
04:36 Yeah, it's a real, a huge amount of scenery.
04:37 We had an incredible production designer named Raymond Chan, and we just built massive sets
04:42 in these massive spaces in Northern Ireland, and the people in Northern Ireland were really
04:45 great to us and really inviting and gave us huge spaces.
04:48 But also using these great locations and then building into them or amplifying them with
04:52 CG and stuff.
04:53 I'm glad we pulled that off.
04:54 Figure it out over a drink?
04:55 Probably best.
04:56 It all does come down to the cast finding the chemistry and the way that they play off
05:02 of each other.
05:03 And like, you know, being thieves, they have this cavalier sort of attitude to it.
05:07 How did you get them to sort of perfect the rhythms of that dialogue?
05:11 Because I think it works really well just in what I've seen in the trailers.
05:14 We had the benefit of being able to do a lot of rehearsals, despite the fact that COVID
05:19 and all the quarantines that we were under, you know, made it a little bit prohibitive.
05:25 As much as we could, we wanted to capture that rhythm and chemistry with them.
05:28 And the scenes that had a lot of dialogue that incorporated all of our characters, we
05:32 made sure to rehearse.
05:34 In one case, we actually went to the location so they got familiar with their surroundings,
05:38 had them rehearse it, and then we shot there the next day.
05:40 It was really important to us that they have that kind of rhythm.
05:43 There's a real musicality, I think, to the dialogue and it's important that the actors
05:48 kind of know how to do it.
05:50 Yeah, for sure.
05:51 And Jonathan, you're talking about tears at the test screenings.
05:54 Where's the emotion coming from?
05:55 Well, I can't say.
05:56 Oh, come on!
05:57 But there are some pretty big events that happen that, you know, people are feeling
06:02 really invested and it's getting the response we were hoping for.
06:06 Yeah, I mean, it chalks up to basically caring about the characters, though.
06:09 Regardless of what happens to them, I think the fact that we had them kind of on the hook
06:15 by the end of the movie where they're so invested that it really does, it matters a lot that
06:20 you deeply care about your characters.
06:22 And that's why it's important to us that you never undermine their intentions or what they're
06:28 there to say with humor.
06:30 And that's the balance, right?
06:32 It's like you don't want the comedy to undermine the stakes.
06:35 We always, I mean, whatever the movie, whatever the genre, we always start with the people
06:38 in it, who are the characters, why do we care about them, why will we invest, whether it's
06:42 Spider-Man or this or Game Night.
06:43 You know, it's always about getting the, putting the hook in the audience for these people
06:48 because then they'll follow them wherever it goes.
06:50 And all of your cast have involvement in major franchises.
06:54 Michelle and Chris.
06:56 So what were you able to maybe ask them about, you know, just not guidance necessarily, but
07:01 just like in certain situations, like how, you know, how should we get through this?
07:05 Um, well, look, I mean, I think it was really helpful to us that they had this awareness
07:10 of these big franchise movies, the fact that they had done it before.
07:13 So it wasn't really so much of us like asking of them things or them like, you know, telling
07:20 us how it should be done.
07:21 It was really more just like the fact that they were able to fall into the positions
07:25 and know exactly what was needed of them in such a easy way.
07:30 Like I mean, Michelle, like she's done so many Fast and Furious movies.
07:33 She knows what like, what goes into this fight training and all the stuff that she had to
07:37 do in the film.
07:38 And so that made it really helpful.
07:39 And of course, Chris coming from a massive franchise himself, it was easy.
07:44 They're real pros.
07:45 They all showed up with the A game on.
07:48 It's a challenging movie from an acting standpoint, because a lot of the times a sequence was
07:52 so complicated, it had to be shot over several days in different locations.
07:55 Some of it on blue screen, some of it in a location and half the time they just had to
07:58 sort of trust that we knew what we were asking them to do and why.
08:03 And you don't feel that.
08:04 You don't feel like at any point the actor's like, I'm just going through the motions.
08:08 They all were really, really dedicated.
08:10 And I think like they were such, they all cared about it, you know, and I, you've seen
08:15 it before where an actor like is in something and it feels like a job.
08:19 And I think they all kind of loved the story so much that they all felt invested.
08:24 And it was really gratifying to watch them like dive in and really care.
08:28 And like, you know, we had access to D&D Beyond and like had to like send logins to everybody.
08:36 And like you would know who's doing their homework because I would get these pings like,
08:39 hey, so and so's logging into their D&D Beyond account and like, can you help them with this
08:42 and that?
08:43 And I was like, I love that.
08:44 I mean, you're waking me up at two in the morning, but I'm so happy that you're logging
08:48 into your D&D Beyond account.
08:50 Justice Smith, especially, like he took his role as a sorcerer very seriously and was
08:55 very invested in the rules of it, the hand choreography and the verbal and somatic component,
09:01 even the material component to these spells.
09:03 So he took it as seriously as like the biggest hardcore player.
09:07 And I think it, you can see it on screen.
09:09 Well, it's really fun because we have like a guy who's just creating languages for us,
09:12 right?
09:13 Because there's so much stuff that has to be said out loud.
09:14 So everyone's got language rehearsal with Brendan and we have a choreographer who just
09:18 is doing hand spells that had done.
09:20 And they all come from the biggest franchises.
09:22 Our language guy did all of the foreign languages and Game of Thrones, the hand movement woman
09:29 did all the Scarlet Witch and Marvel stuff.
09:31 So like, they were all like top of their field.
09:33 Yeah, I guess so.
09:34 And she just turned into a job.
09:35 It's incredible.
09:36 But they all wanted to learn like their disciplines.
09:38 We have the fight team, we have the hand team, we have the language team and everyone's like,
09:43 what do I need to do?
09:44 How do I dive into this more?
09:45 That's right.
09:46 And if anyone was confused about anything, we also made clear to them like exactly what
09:49 was going on in the story, what we tried to do because it's so dense and there's so much
09:53 going on.
09:54 We tried to continue to talk them through and make sure that they understand exactly
09:59 what is happening, especially when sometimes it's confusing and done out of order.
10:03 That's really funny.
10:04 I heard today while researching that the four main personalities from D&D are like based
10:09 on the Golden Girls.
10:10 We just heard that too, by the way.
10:12 We didn't even know that.
10:13 Okay, I've never heard this before either.
10:14 So I wasn't sure if you guys doing your heavy research for it.
10:17 I watched every episode of Golden Girls.
10:19 I love Golden Girls.
10:20 You get a ping, oh he's watching Golden Girls again.
10:24 2am in the morning.
10:25 2 o'clock in the morning.
10:26 All right, I'll get you out of here on this one.
10:28 The final shot of your teaser is very important.
10:30 It shows Chris playing the loot.
10:33 How much loot are we going to get in this movie?
10:34 A fair amount.
10:35 A fair amount.
10:36 We wrote a couple of original songs with the help of our composer, Warren Balfe, and he
10:41 gets to show his skills.
10:44 Just another thing Chris Pine is able to do well.
10:45 He's very charming and talented and just so, he's got the moves too.
10:50 Incredible dancer, yeah.
10:52 This movie is powered by charisma.
10:53 Oh, absolutely.
10:54 The charisma of the Bard is the only thing that will see us through.
10:58 Yeah, the only thing that rivals Chris's character's charisma is Forge Fitzwilliam, Hugh Grant's
11:03 character.
11:04 Oh god, I can imagine.
11:05 Can we talk about what his character is?
11:07 Sure.
11:08 Is it a mystery?
11:09 He is the Lord of Neverwinter.
11:10 Yeah, when we meet him, he's the Lord of Neverwinter.
11:13 He's a rogue.
11:14 He's a rogue.
11:15 He's a rogue.
11:16 And that's all there is to it.
11:17 That's all there is to it.
11:18 That's it.
11:19 And we'll learn more.
11:20 We'll never know anything else.
11:21 Alright, thank you guys.
11:22 I really appreciate it.
11:23 Yeah, not a problem.
11:23 (upbeat music)
11:26 (upbeat music)