As it rolls the dice at the weekend box office, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is aiming to emerge victorious over last weekend’s champion “John Wick: Chapter 4.”
A natural 20 isn’t guaranteed, but Paramount and eOne’s adaptation of the popular role-playing game is hoping to collect $30 million to $40 million from 3,850 North American locations. It’ll be a close race for first place between that and the fourth “John Wick,” which topped the box office with $73.5 million and looks to add about $36 million in its sophomore outing.
Internationally, “Dungeons & Dragons” is opening in 58 markets, where it’s aiming for $25 million or more.
“Dungeons & Dragons” cost $150 million, not including marketing fees and a stop to premiere the film at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Even if its opening weekend isn’t one for the record books, box office analysts and rival studios believe the movie, which has received exceptional reviews, is primed to become a word-of-mouth hit. Inaugural ticket buyers may be hardcore D&D players, but it’s expected to appeal to broader audiences, who may not know much about the game, as it continues its run on the big screen.
Although it’s based on one of the most well-known fantasy games, there wasn’t a ton of optimism about a live-action “D&D” — prior to its positive reviews out of SXSW — after the ill-fated 2000 adaptation with Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch and Marlon Wayans. Moreover, gaming adaptations were at one time synonymous with box office failures. But the genre has experienced a turnaround as of late. Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” and its 2022 sequel, as well as Sony’s “Uncharted,” were unexpected successes, while Universal and Illumination’s “Super Mario Bros” (April 5) is expected to become one of the biggest movies of the year.
“Dungeons & Dragons” also looks to cap off a standout March at the box office, which has fielded opening weekend franchise records for “Scream,” “Creed” and “John Wick.” But the month hasn’t been without blemishes. “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” crashed and burned with $46 million in North America and $102 million globally to date. The Warner Bros. and DC comic book sequel cost $110 million.
Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (“Game Night”) directed the PG-13 “Dungeons and Dragons,” which centers on a charming thief (Chris Pine) and a band of unlikely adventurers (Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page among them) who undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic. But their mission goes dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Variety’s Peter Debruge called the film an “irresistible mash-up of everything it inspired.”
“‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ should be a major hit, because it knows how to tap into our nostalgia — not just for a game, but for the entire fantasy culture it helped to spawn,” he wrote in his review. “It’s the movie itself that’s role-playing.”