Ryan Reynolds in Talks to Tackle Live-Action Adaptation of '80s Video Game 'Dragon's Lair'

Pickle Dick

I thlammed by penith in the car door
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Feb 10, 2017
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...ive-action-film-80s-game-dragons-lair-1279270 (archive)

-Start-

Netflix has closed a deal to pick up the rights to the game after almost a year of negotiations.


Ryan Reynolds has found his next quest.

Reynolds is in talks to star in and produce a live-action feature adaptation of Dragon’s Lair, one of the most iconic arcade video games from the 1980s.


After almost a year of negotiations, Netflix has closed a deal to pick up the rights to the game. Roy Lee will produce via his Vertigo Entertainment with Trevor Engelson of Underground Films. Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and Jon Pomeroy are also producing. Reynolds will produce via his banner, Maximum Effort.

Dan and Kevin Hageman, who worked on The Lego Movie and most recently Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, will write the script.

Lair was, at one point, the most popular game in America. It hit the scene in 1983 and promised to revolutionize the arcade industry with its movie-style animation that hailed from Bluth, who would later go on to direct animated movies An American Tail and All Dogs Go to Heaven, and its envelope-pushing technology that used LaserDisc to advance the story. While the game’s high point faded as its style didn’t take off, it remains fondly remembered and even made an appearance in the '80s-set Stranger Things.

The plot of the video game is epic in scope: a knight named Dirk the Daring must rescue the fetching Princess Daphne from the clutches of the evil dragon known as Singe and the wizard Mordroc.

Lee was a producer on last year’s Stephen King adaptation, It Chapter Two, while his company worked on another King adaptation, Doctor Sleep. Engelson was a producer on Snowfall.

The Hagemans are currently the showrunners and exec producers of Nickelodeon's Star Trek animated series and wrote the upcoming animated feature The Croods 2, which features Reynolds as one of the voice stars. The brothers are repped by Underground and law firm Hansen Jacobson.

This marks the third project with Netflix for Reynolds, with the actor coming off the December unveiling of action movie 6 Underground and currently shooting Netflix's action movie Red Notice with Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson. It’s his second video game-themed feature; Reynolds next stars in Free Guy, which tells of a man who realizes he is a background character in a video game. The movie is currently scheduled to open in July, although the novel coronavirus crisis may postpone it.

Reynolds is also due to be seen this year in The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard with Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek, and heard in DreamWorks’ Croods 2, which opens December.

He is repped by WME and Sloane Offer.

-End-

No one's asked for this

Also Reynolds has been in way too many movies lately
 
I thought Don Bluth was trying to make an animated movie of Dragon's Lair?

At any rate this isn't a terrible idea, there's potential for a fun adventure comedy with this premise, but part of the fun of Dragon's Lair is seeing all the different ways Dirk the Daring can die, which I'm not sure how that's going to work in a movie unless they give Dirk Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time style time control powers or something.
 
Live action Dragon's Lair could work but Ryan Reynolds is simply too old to play the main character. Especially with the multitudes of various death scenes the game had and the movie needs to have as well.
 
They're going to make Daphne black i bet.

I thought Don Bluth was trying to make an animated movie of Dragon's Lair?

At any rate this isn't a terrible idea, there's potential for a fun adventure comedy with this premise, but part of the fun of Dragon's Lair is seeing all the different ways Dirk the Daring can die, which I'm not sure how that's going to work in a movie unless they give Dirk Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time style time control powers or something.
Medieval Groundhog day, every episode leads to death outside of the finale where he actually kills Singe.
 
I thought "Rescue the Princess" plotlines were, like, totally sexist now. Princess Daphne's whole role in the original game was to be eye candy that would entice the male players to keep pumping in quarters. Now she's probably going to get turned into some armored chick with a bo staff that's totally better at fighting than Dirk is.
 
There is absolutely no reason to make a movie out of this, it is a paper thin story and the game was unremarkable except for the technology used to let you 'play' a gorgeous Don Bluth animated film one QTE at a time. And it's very old and was never a big franchise so it doesn't even have the name recognition that the culture vampires in Hollywood crave. Kiwis under 30, have you even heard of this game?

I thought "Rescue the Princess" plotlines were, like, totally sexist now. Princess Daphne's whole role in the original game was to be eye candy that would entice the male players to keep pumping in quarters. Now she's probably going to get turned into some armored chick with a bo staff that's totally better at fighting than Dirk is.
This too, it would never fly in current year Hollywood unless they did a switcheroo and made Daphne a strong independent woman who saves herself while Dirk bumbles the fuck out; and even then they would get bad press in the lead up from the usual shit blog and morons on Twitter.
 
There is absolutely no reason to make a movie out of this, it is a paper thin story and the game was unremarkable except for the technology used to let you 'play' a gorgeous Don Bluth animated film one QTE at a time. And it's very old and was never a big franchise so it doesn't even have the name recognition that the culture vampires in Hollywood crave. Kiwis under 30, have you even heard of this game?
Dragon's Lair, Dragon's lair 2, and Space Ace have gotten releases on consoles and whatever the modern platform is at the time, ever since their inception after they became a success at the arcade.

The Switch and PS4 both have versions of the trilogy, as did the Wii, the PS3 and Xbox 360 had versions released for it, Dragon's Lair trilogy came to Blu-Ray, it was released on DVD, it was on the NES and SNES, it rivals Doom, Street Fighter 2, and Skyrim for how many times it's been re-released.

You can go to the apple and android store right now and get copies for your digital devices.

Let's also not forget that the PS2, Gamecube, and Original Xbox had the fourth game in the series "Return to The Lair".
 
Dragon's Lair, Dragon's lair 2, and Space Ace have gotten releases on consoles and whatever the modern platform is at the time, ever since their inception after they became a success at the arcade.

The Switch and PS4 both have versions of the trilogy, as did the Wii, the PS3 had versions released for it, Dragon's Lair trilogy came to blu-Ray, it was released on DVD, it was on the NES and SNES, it rivals Doom, Street Fighter 2, and Skyrim for how many times it's been re-released.
I didn't even know there was a Dragon's Lair 2 but I've heard of Space Ace.
 
I didn't even know there was a Dragon's Lair 2 but I've heard of Space Ace.
Yeah Time Warp is a bit harder than the original since it requires you to collect like 8 hidden items and you need more precise inputs because there's more blink and you miss it types of things. It doesn't randomize rooms like in the original, but you have to replay every section until you have all the secret items.

Stranger Things also featured Dragon's Lair in a few product placement scenes, so people are at least somewhat aware of it.

It's a One trick pony that's also an oddity of gaming that has persisted since 1983. It really has solidified itself as a mainstay for classic games even though when most people think of Classic games it's stuff from the 8 and 16 bit eras of consoles.
 
Why can't they just make an original fantasy movie?
There's like 20 people who remember this game, the IP does nothing for them.
If Blade Runner 2049 bombed, so will this unless it's very cheap.
 
Back