Now that more than two decades have passed since the box office flop from 2000 starring Marlon Wayans and Jeremy Irons, Dungeons And Dragons is reigniting its hopes for Hollywood success – and this past December the latest effort in that arena took a massive step forward. It was officially announced that the developing reboot has cast Chris Pine as its lead, and while he stood alone in the cast for nearly two months, we now have news that the project has added a couple of colleagues.
Per The Wrap, the new Dungeons and Dragons movie has cast both Fast And Furious' Michelle Rodriguez and Detective Pikachu's Justice Smith in undisclosed roles. Jonathan Goldstein and Jonathan Francis Daley, best known for writing and directing the 2018 comedy Game Night, have both penned the script and are set to helm the action-adventure feature. Hasbro is a big force behind the production, producing the film through their in-house company Allspark Pictures – which is in the midst of developing a whole new wave of projects based on the brand's toys.
If it doesn't feel like it's been that long since you last saw Michelle Rodriguez, there's a fair chance that's because you watched the brand new Super Bowl trailer for F9 that debuted yesterday during the big NFL game. That film, which will mark her seventh appearance in the Fast And Furious franchise, will be hitting theaters presumably whenever theaters are fully ready to reopen (it's currently on the schedule for May 22), but she actually has a movie coming out before that. Nicholas Jarecki's Crisis, which tells multiple stories about the opiod crisis in America and co-stars Gary Oldman, Evangeline Lily, Greg Kinnear, Armie Hammer, and Kid Cudi, is scheduled to play in theaters at the end of this month and will be available on PVOD starting March 5.
For Justice Smith, it appears that Dungeons And Dragons could very well be his follow-up to Jurassic World: Dominion, which just wrapped filming last year following multiple delays due to the pandemic. The upcoming movie will see him reprise his role as Franklin Webb from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but it's unclear what his role in the plot will be. He also will presumably be involved in Detective Pikachu 2, which got the greenlight back in early 2019, but that project has not made many public strides forward since then.
With Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Justice Smith on board, Dungeons And Dragons is definitely starting to cook behind the scenes, and that probably means that it won't be too long until we hear about more additions to the cast and a start date for the production. Given the legacy and popularity of the game on which the project is based, there are high hopes that the project will be a proper tribute, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that we'll hear more good news soon.
