The Weekly Planet - Dungeons & Dragons (2000) - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

The first shot at a Dungeons & Dragons movie was not the 2023 entry Honor Amongst Thieves starring one Chris Pine. Unfortunately. There is in fact an earlier attempt from the year 2000 that takes aim at reinvention the fantasy genre by bringing to the big screen all the elements people know and love from D & D. Quests. Magic. Elves. A big porridge rug. The second Jimmy Olsen from Lois and Clark. It's not very good however despite getting two sequels. Direct to DVD. But still. Thanks for listening!SUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNHelp support the show and get early episodes ► https://bigsandwich.co/Patreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret. The other, a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca.

Welcome back, everybody, to Caravan of Garbage, etc. and so forth. Leave a like. Mason. Hello. As I was re-watching Dungeons & Dragons, the movie from the year 2000, Go on. I thought to myself, what is this? Slash, how did this happen?

And I must know. So the majority of my research into this was just trying to figure out how the fuck we got here with this. Because this got a cinema release in the year 2000. Yeah. And it looks like. Now it sounds like you're joking because often you'll do a joke. Sometimes I'll do a joke.

Sometimes I'll entitle my notes for a particular movie in a funny way. For example, today I've written Dungeons and Dragons because the movie's dumb and it dragged on quite a lot. And because of the dragons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good joke. But the thing that I said earlier about it being released in cinemas in the year 2000 is true,

but it looks like one of those full-motion video games from around that era. Or before. Or before even. Or you'd play Command & Conquer or Warcraft or something like that. Dark Forces 2 Jedi Nightgrey game. Exactly, and it's like the... This is the CD-ROM version, so there's full-motion video cutscenes.

It's just some people in some rubber costumes. They're like, they've cornered the fleet. Well luckily. Send our fleet. Send the fleet. So the good fleet. Yep. They mustn't get the gem of the whatevers. I'm Mark Hamill. I do these in the 90s.

No you're absolutely right. But here's how it happened okay. There were multiple attempts to make this in the 80s. It became like a kids TV show at one point, do you remember? I do. And that took the famously bad, and I don't like it, where they take real people and they put them into the fantastical world. I mean, not real people.

They're cartoon people. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think they did it through a carnival ride or something from memory. I can't remember. But I generally don't like that trope, but sometimes, you know, it works. I think the idea here, though, is, you know, you want to be completely immersed in it. You want to be immersed in that world, baby.

I mean, it doesn't work, but I get it. You want to be immersed in the most generic world there is, baby. I have so many Dungeons & Dragons questions for you, Mason. Well, as you know, but perhaps the viewers don't know, well, I haven't played Dungeons & Dragons in like 20 years, but I did play it back in the day you know a few for a couple years i think and you know i i enjoyed what i like about a lot of tabletop role-playing games not even playing it just like the worlds that they inhabit like you know you get the you get the source book

and it has you know the realm that it takes place in and all the various you know monsters and characters that inhabit the world and i'm just a big fan of that. There's been a bunch of Dungeons & Dragons novels, and I've read a few of those, and it's just a great world. Didn't put it in this, though, did they? Some things, maybe. Again, I have questions. Okay, we'll get to them later.

So the director of this, Courtney Solomon, his mother was a freelance production coordinator for movies and TV, so he spent a lot of his formative years on sets in the hometown of Toronto. Real, whatever the opposite of a latchkey kid is. That's true. Go to work with your parents, kid. Clapperboard kid. Let's call him a clapperboard kid.

I don't mind that at all. So what he did at 19 years old, and this is actually incredible, legitimately. He rung the offices of tsr who which is the home of dnd first of all brave none of us would any of us had the courage to do that no make a phone call if somebody picked up god what if they didn't pick up and you had to leave a voicemail think about what to put on there oh if anything i would have just waited until you know text messaging became a very common thing and I would have texted like, Hey, can I have the rights to Dungeons and Dragons?

No worries if not. Give me it. So he pretended to be an economics student. He was working on a project related to D&D. And a few months in, after striking up a rapport, he was like... That was a trick. That was a trick. He was like, listen, now that I've got my foot in the door,

can I pitch you my idea for a Dungeons and Dragons trilogy in the vein of Star Wars, but instead of X-Wings you've got dragons, and instead of compelling characters, you've got the second Jimmy Olsen. But also in the spirit of Phantom Menace Second Jimmy Olsen from Lawson Clark, not the second

Jimmy Olsen from just in general, just to clarify. Please go on. In the spirit of The Phantom Menace, how about we have some Senate committee meetings? It's very Phantom Menace, isn't it? Thora Birch just doing her best boring Queen Amidala impersonation. And you might be like, well, The Phantom Menace came out in 99 and this came out in the year 2000. How would they have time to rip it off in such a minute?

This movie took three weeks to make. Yeah, exactly. And also, this came out in December of 2000. I think that's too much time. Exactly, and the Phantom Menace trailers also came out like late 1998, so it's very possible. This guy would have been taking notes,

like, okay, boring stuff in the Senate, put that in check. Loving that. So they gave him the rights to make a movie. He bought them, though? Yeah. He didn't just get them for free? No.

Because what a coup if he got them for free. That would be incredible. If he got them for free, I'd be like, well, this is what you get. Okay, great. So we got some producers on board various times. Sorry, I should say potential producers, including Francis Ford Coppola. What? Is that one of your funny jokes, James?

No, no, this is real. Like when I said Dungeons and Dragons. No, it's not as funny as that joke, and it's not a joke. He also got James Cameron to maybe think about being a producer. This is some sort of whiz kid. Yeah. Wunderkind. I agree.

Do you think maybe the fact that he was a teenager who got these rights sort of gave him some juice in Hollywood? James Cameron's like, this guy sounds like a real go-getter. I wonder if he'd be interested in doing some dangerous underwater stunts. No? Well, I'm out. So Courtney Solomon, he recalls a lunch that he had with James Cameron and Lorraine Williams, who was the TSR boss at the time, and she apparently eyeballed James Cameron and Lorraine Williams, who was the TSR boss at the time. And she apparently eyeballed James Cameron and said, what are your qualifications to

direct to this film? And this was in like the mid to late 90s. This is post Terminator 2. Yeah. And he also wasn't even necessarily going to direct. He probably wasn't going to. But what a fucking insane thing to say. Yeah.

Like you, you don't check before you go into that meeting. You've got someone sitting across from you. That is best case scenario for somebody sitting right there. James, look, before we get into whether or not this movie is good, it's not. It's really bad. Imagine a world in which she hadn't said that and James Cameron, out of the goodness of his heart

and wanting to help out this teen kid, was like, yeah, I will direct Dungeons and Dragons. Imagine what a world we would be in now. Yeah. I think it would have changed everything, honestly. Epic fantasies all the time. Yeah. We would have been on Dungeons & Dragons 2 by now, probably.

The movie Eragon would probably be better. Right? We're on Dungeons & Dragons 4. We'll talk about it. I know, but I mean, Cameron would have, at this point, he would have been directing 2. 2 would have just come out. That'd be his passion project now.

So anyway, Joel Silver ended up producing, which is a great get also, because he, of course, was behind the Die Hard movies, the Matrix movies, the movie Swordfish, all classic movies in their own way. But the budget of this- But everybody has an off day, you know? I completely agree. But the budget of this was cut from $100 million to $36 million. You said $36.

No, it's $36 million. You've misspoken. $36 million. No, no, I didn't. I said $36 million. 36 dollars. No, it's 36 million. You've misspoken. 36 dollars. No, no, I didn't. I said 36 million. So, and the idea was that Solomon couldn't get anybody to agree who was going to direct. So he was just like, I'm going to do it. So.

Is that really what happened? That's apparently what happened. Or is it like, or is he like, no, I'm actually going to direct. Yeah, this is all a ruse. What I'm going to, in fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring that TSR lady in every meeting and get her to insult the new guy and then eventually we'll run out of directors and I'll have to do it. It's Solomon's time, baby.

It certainly is. But he has said since that he was saddled with an earlier bad script because Wizards of the Coast who bought TRS in between all of this. TSR. Sorry, who bought TSR. Have I been saying TRS? No, just then. Oh, but yes. Sorry, who bought TSR? Have I been saying TRS? No, just then. Oh, my God.

Who bought TSR around in the late 90s? They weren't on board with any of this and probably realised that this was a big disaster. He says that they wanted it to fail. So I guess they had script approval and they said, do this one. Anyways. Do you think it was kind of the producer's thing?

They wanted it to... They'll make a big bank if it failed? Maybe. Do you think it's going to happen for the next one that's coming up? Maybe. Oh, no. Yeah. So anyway, I guess one thing you could say about this universe,

and this is very purposeful, it's like Star Wars in the sense that you're kind of just dumped into it. Like there's a little bit of kind of like there's a wizard in it or whatever. I did feel a real sense of dumping when I watched this movie. But, you know, yeah, and it seems, you know, almost like people live in it because sometimes you'll see a market, sometimes you'll see a carpet or a room, and all of these things add up to, you know.

Some real environmental storytelling. There'll be a cup on a table and you're like, I bet somebody will drink out of that cup. Maybe they already have. Bloody hell. That's you in the cinemas. I did not say this in the cinemas. I think you did. Maybe I did. I don't remember. I don't remember the movies

that you saw in the year 2000. But here's the thing about the art direction of this movie. Absolute dog shit. What is it? The council chamber is a great example because there's like a velvet floor and like drapes and thora birch is standing on like a stone kind of ornate circle and there's like weird trim on everything and there's a set of stairs behind her which clearly aren't sitting flush with the wall yeah And sometimes it looks like a green screen,

but I don't know whether it is or it's just lit badly. Okay, but again, remember, James, this movie cost $36. Mason, was this a robbery? What do you mean? Like, did he just take the money? Did somebody take the money? Oh, I don't know. And then maybe they reused some sets from Hercules,

The Legendary Journeys. It's got some real Hercules, The Legendary Journey vibes, I'll tell you that much. Completely agree. And I'll tell you what, they also love in this movie, just CGI shots of castles and environments that also then don't connect to the follow-up shot. One of the early shots is, or I think

the first shot, it kind of zooms through a castle and whatever, and it goes through a keyhole, but then it just... And you were like, they could put a key in that! Maybe they already have. Bloody hell, it's amazing. It's environmental storytelling. I'm in the cinema. I'm just acknowledging that sometimes there's rooms in this.

Yeah, sure. I think that's important. That is important. We say good things. You have to say a good thing too. All right, maybe at some point I will. But yeah, it just hard cuts to just inside the room, and it doesn't zoom through.

It's just like, bang, we're here. Well, again, this is right in that pocket where CGI technology was a thing and people were like, well, we should use it because we have it. Yeah. And they shouldn't have. They should have waited 10 years.

Well, but here's the thing. And a lot of people have made this comparison. The Lord of the Rings, which I think the trailer of which played before this. Oh no. Because it's New Line, right? So there would have been some walkouts before the movie started or within the first couple of minutes.

Absolutely. Well within that 15 minutes and you get a refund policy. Okay, so it's because you saw the trailer for The Lord of the Rings. Okay, cool. Here's your money back. It's fine. It does explain the box office. But I also think that's kind of an unfair comparison

because a closer example of what this movie looks like would be like Dragonheart. Because Lord of the Rings was and is an anomaly. Nothing looks like that even now. It's very rare. But I'll give it this. Here's another compliment. It captures like that kind of dicking about

vibe of D&D except it's not fun. Like there's running about and snails is always screaming, stop it, and making noises. Stop it, Marlon Wayans. Stop it. It's really annoying, actually. Well, I haven't got a lot of thoughts about this.

Look, I don't think it does maintain the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons. Look, technically there are dungeons. Yeah. But there's also like a dungeon-like arena where you have to retrieve a big jewel or something except in both of these instances what happens is one guy goes into the dungeon and everybody else is just sitting around yeah which is james really reminiscent of the collaborative style of your tabletop role-playing game i lost when i played dungeons and dragons james i lost count of the

number of times when the dungeon master was like okay okay, you go into the dungeon. The rest of you guys just have to stay outside because of magic. Oh, do we get our own adventure outside? No. Can we go outside for a smoke? No, not in the game and not in real life either. Sitting here, you can't do anything. And mobile phones haven't been invented yet, so I don't know. Do a crossword.

Actually, crosswords don't exist in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, so don't do that. What could you do? Roll a dice? No. But not for anything? That would be too distracting. Okay, you're probably right, yeah.

I guess you could practice your dice rolling for later. Here's something, though. What a fascinating performance from Jeremy Irons. Right? Look, I have a note here, and it says, I think all the villainous actors were told to just absolutely devour as much scenery as possible yep i think all the heroes were just told to quip any chance they got and i think thora birch was told to not react to anything at all yeah that's probably

right but jeremy irons is just he's a cackling maniac i mean he has talked about you know working on this and how it was obviously garbage and whatever. But I think people were having fun when they were making it. At least some actors were. Exactly. I think, and I know in terms of classical acting, obviously that's not good probably. I don't know, is it?

But at least he's compelling. You're like, wow, he's doing it, isn't he? What's he going to do next? Is he going to scream? Is he going to laugh? Yeah. Is he going to wave a sword? Do a magic?

Put a big serpent in somebody's ears? Yeah, he'll do that. Is he going to put a serpent in a man's ears? Maybe. So you've got your little D&D party, like your mages and your whatever, and an elf, and the tallest dwarf I've ever seen. Is it dwarf? Yes.

The tallest dwarf I've ever seen. Oh, it's dwarf. And here's the thing, right? But they've just put the, really, there's three main characters, right? There's the main guy, there's snails. We never get an explanation for why he's called snails. Not even snail. It's not like he's slow.

I have that note. Why is it snails? Right? Did he eat a bunch of snails? He must have eaten a bunch of snails. And the mage lady. This is... As women,

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on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret. The other, a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever?

Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca.

That's sunrisechallenge.ca. In a way, we haven't really talked about the plot because it's irrelevant, but it's a real snobs versus slobs situation because the slobs are the regular people who just want a bit of equality and then the snobs are all the mages who are like, no! Except for Thoroughburt, she's like, they'd be cool. Yeah, she's not a mage though, really, is she? That's true, she's the queen or something.

But anyway, there's the three main characters and I guess somebody during the production of this was like, oh, I guess... Put an elf in. Yeah, I guess we've got to have an adventuring party, so I'll put during the production of this was like, oh, I guess... Put an elf in. Yeah, I guess we've got to have an adventuring party, so I'll put a dwarf and an elf in here. But they have nothing to do with it. They don't explain really why they're there

or their incentive for doing so. It's interesting that this guy clearly spent his entire adolescence wanting to have a Dungeons & Dragons movie made. But then when he got the rights, I guess he had like 45 minutes to get the script written. Well, again, it was the first earlier script. There was probably a better script, Mason.

Yeah, definitely, I think. And I think the stuff that kind of annoys me about this, like you know how he does a couple of tasks and he does a maze. The main guy. Yeah, the main guy. The second Jimmy Olsen from Lois and Clark. Yes. Who's fine, by the way.

I think everybody in this is fine. I think everybody in this is fine. Except for Jeremy Irons, who's exceptional. That's alright. So he goes into a maze and he's got to do a series of tasks. But it's just obstacles. Where's like a door opens and a fucking fire wolf comes

out or something? I don't know. Yes. Anything. say it's like a i think like a series of spikes moving towards him or whatever like this is it well look i was i think you want to ask me about the dungeons and dragons lore yeah i'm gonna do that now if we're gonna talk about that now like so this isn't set like if if you play dungeons and dragons you can play in a universe you create you can play in a universe you create. You can play in a sort of generic universe or you can purchase pre-built sort of universes. There's like Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk and Ravenloft

and all these kind of different realms with different characters and kind of sometimes different rules for magic and all that sort of stuff. And I guess if you wanted to acquire Dungeons & Dragons and the rights to one of these other campaign settings, that would cost more. So I guess it's cheaper to just make the generic one. But see, even if that's true, just the base Dungeons & Dragons level universe with the player's handbook and all that sort of stuff and the monster manual

just has so many incredible sort of spells and monsters and and adventures like a wolf that's on fire for example but none of that is in this yeah the only point in which in this movie besides the dragons there's there's dragons in this they're fine yeah the the only the only point in this movie where we see what i would consider a classic undeniably dungeons and dragons monster is at a point where the main guy and snails they do a little bit of sneaking around they've got to sneak into a place and so they they quietly sneak behind the back of a classic couple of dungeons and dragons monsters except the dungeons and dragon monster in question is a beholder which is canonically in

the dnd universe of super genius intelligence and also has 10 eyes on stalks that enable it to look in every direction at once yeah like you couldn't they throw a stone and it goes oh yeah yeah you couldn't pick a worse dungeons and dragons monster to quietly sneak behind the back of if you tried. Like it's – you couldn't do it. It wouldn't work. Yeah. And so it sort of surprises me that the guy who wanted to make this sort of fundamentally didn't get Dungeons & Dragons it seems.

You know what I mean? No, I know exactly what you mean. Plus all the eyes do lasers and stuff. That's exactly it. And I had some questions for you and I think I have one answer. So the Empire of Isma, which is what this is apparently, it's loosely based on the little-remembered original basic D&D setting of Mystara.

Okay, sure, sure. And the quote here from Courtney Solomon is, it seemed better to just do a generic campaign that had all the rules and all the creatures and the spells you would use in any campaign setting. But suspected i didn't know this that that's not true because my question to you was how much of this do you recognize like there's the flying meatball covered in snakes right the beholder yeah but how many of these like spells are specific to dnd or just generic they're all just generic i'm sure like there is a spell that shoots a rope and ties you up.

I'm sure that exists. Shooter ropey amos, it's called, in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Does dragon's blood, when it pours into water, does it catch fire? Is that something? Because I looked into it and apparently it's not. I don't think so, no.

Yeah, I had a question about snails. Is that a normal name? I don't I don't think so, no. Yeah. I had a question about snails. Like, is that a normal name? I don't know you can call your character anything. Yeah. You can be like big butt, two butts, his head's, look at two butts heads. Right, sure. And that's funny. That is funny.

That's the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons. And I guess my last question is, is the porridge rug, is that common? No, but I do have a note here that that says the trap carpet that turns into custard is the best effect in the movie as far as i'm concerned it's real it's all practical and it looked like a nice carpet they clearly they built the custard they put the custard in the pit or whatever and then they they did that thing you know when you get a get a cappuccino and you put the you put the chocolate powder on the top and make a little art they've done that with the carpet they've made it look like a real carpet and then Snail steps in it.

He's like, oh, I'm in custard. And he goes, eee. Eee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the guy who designed, like, all the mazes and traps and whatever. To answer your question, the custard carpet is on the cover of Mystara, the main source book. Okay.

And underneath it says, watch out for custard carpet. Look out. You have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. What's wild is the guy who designed all the trap sequences in like Raiders of the Lost Ark did these. Wow.

And I guess I can see those similarities. But it is just, again, generic kind of traps and fire and whatever, you know? Yeah. Anyways, the ending of this, where they're all standing on top of a tower screaming at each other. Except for Snails, who's killed which I felt again that is the funniest reaction I think I've seen to anything

just that drop to the knees yeah the main guy's like and then he just that casual just throw off the balcony but also and even at the time and especially upon a rewatch I'm like

that feels really tonally out of place for this movie this movie it should have been like he gets winged and he's like well i'm out of the i'm out of the movie i'll see you at the end or whatever but no he just he gets like all his bones broken and his head turned around he gets stabbed in the neck or whatever awful yeah awful stuff but don't worry because at the very end uh there's a cool biker costume that second jimmy olsen wears and then they leave the dragon eye on snails's grave but then they take the dragon eye and then the they're told that snails is alive and then they all zoom off and i don't know what the fuck any of that was supposed to be but snails is not

dead it turned out is in the sequel no we'll talk about it but again when they're all standing on the tower like that level of green screen is quite frankly inexcusable. And I'm not talking about the people who worked on it. I'm talking about any of the money and the way this was kind of clearly shot in a hurry. And it's just dreadful. There's a moment where the main guy and the snooty wizard lady who are going to have a kiss later,

they both say some spell words and they end up in a map. And they sort of turn to smoke and just go into the map. And it's just horrendous. Like in a round the twist or something. Like a super low-budget Australian TV series that you'd watch of an afternoon for kids. The Wayne Manifesto, for example. Yeah, it's that level of spellbinder spell,

but it's that level of special effect. I don't. Yeah. Astounding that, that, that, that made it to a theatrical release movie. But again,

you got to remember $36. That's all I have. You got to remember that. Yeah. I got like 50 cents a piece for those. And I guess credit to like, there being so many dragons on screen. Also the dragons,

um, nothing like the Ender Dragons. No. Technically, there was a red dragon and a gold dragon. Yeah, but the gold dragon looks brown. And as they're fighting, I don't know what the difference is. Because I watch the behind the scenes and it's like, well, we designed the red one to be more kind of pitbull-like

and the brown one's gold to be more sleek. I didn't get a sense of any of that. And also in dungeons and dragons like all the dragons are sort of very smart and like have individual names and personalities and they're all kind of you know legendary and they'll you know like and they all have stories told about it but this is just like yeah copy and paste some dragons and i guess we need some more red ones put some more red ones in completely great anyway mason they they let the blood rain from the sky which i think was my favorite quote from this.

Let's do some green trivia. All right, let's do it. What a dreadful situation this is. Green trivia, and of course, the guy who shouts Rodney. Now, when asked why he did this film, Jeremy... Why? That was at the red carpet. Jeremy Irons replied,

Are you kidding me? I just bought a castle. I had to pay for it somehow. Makes a lot of sense. Now, during this movie at around 42, 29, somebody says, I can't remember who. It wasn't snails because I wouldn't remember that. This is about Honor Among Thieves. Yeah, someone says Honor Amongst Thieves.

And I went, wow, epic foreshadowing. That's right. They say it twice, I think. I think they say Honor Among Thieves. That's at 22 minutes, roughly. And then honour amongst thieves later on. Something that you should know. Now, unusually, Mason, the particular shade of lipstick that Damodar,

which is the bald guy. With the snakes in his ears. Yeah, with the snakes in his ears. Damodar snakes ears. Rare example of nominative determinism. The lipstick that Damodar and Dar snake ears wore required a particular strain of seaweed that only when cultivated and harvested correctly

would give it the bluer hue required before application. Mason. So as a result of this and that situation, it actually led to the working title of this movie being Blue Harvest, which funnily enough was the working title for the original Star Wars. It was how far into that sentence was it before you realised what he was doing? For me, I didn't know at all.

Yeah, well, look, I didn't, for me it was not so much the words, it was just the little glint in your eyes that you got before you started the sentence. I'm glad no one else could see that. Anyway, box office, Budget of $36 million. Budget of $36 million. All right. Wikipedia, I think, says about 40, but I don't know about that. And the box office return on that was 33.8.

That's less. Agreed. Now, this was, though, good enough for two sort of connected, directed DVD sequels that feature the return of Damodar Snake Ears. Does it? Do they? Yeah. Whoa.

But the next one is set 100 years later. Okay. It's called Dungeons & Dragons, Wrath of the Dragon God. In a way, I'm glad I got the snakes in my ears because they gave me some sort of immortality, I guess. That's the opening line for the next one. We did watch it, didn't we? Yeah.

In preparation. That was in 2005, and then in 2012, we got Dungeons & Dragons 3, The Book of Vile Darkness. None of these are particularly well loved. I don't even – I was not even aware there was a third one. Yeah. So the future of this particular series – So there was actually a scuffle over the rights in 2013.

I don't want them. I don't want them either. Get them away from me. Last person to touch them has to keep them. Let's just throw them into the porridge thing. Quick, kick him over there. Maybe that possum will take him. And then they'll have to make a Dungeons and Dragons movie.

So there was a scuffle over the rights in 2013 after Sweet Pea Productions, which was Courtney Solomon's production house, announced another D&D movie. But Hasbro, who I guess acquired the license in between, issued a statement lawsuit two days later saying that they were actually making a D&D movie with Warner Brothers and Universal.

We're actually making them, actually. Yeah, that's right. They were making a D&D movie with Warner Brothers and Universal, and in 2015, it was encouraged that they settle this dispute. So basically, he gave the rights back for money, it seems. We'll give you the $3 million that this movie would have needed to break even, and then you have to go away forever. But yeah, then the rights jumped over to Paramount in 2017,

and here we are. There is so much that could be done here, and I know that because so much of media takes from Dungeons & Dragons. And I know you could also argue that Dungeons and Dragons borrows from Narnia and Lord of the Rings, et cetera, and so forth. But what a rich world of untapped potential. I agree. And look, at time of recording, the new Dungeons and Dragons movie is not out, but it does

seem, at least from the trailers, that they are leaning more heavily in towards the unique and interesting aspects of the Dungeons and Dragons universe with your monsters and your magics is there a fire was a wolf with its fire head on fire yep great it's my favorite animal yeah and then and then there's damodar snake ears back god i hope so my snake ears have allowed me to come into this universe boo in a way it's actually get Get out! I was just saying. Fuck off! For real, fuck off! More people should get snakes than there is. Get the fuck out! Okay, I'll go. Kill yourself!

Anyway, I was going to say, I think it's just, you know, and it seems we're actually going to get the classic adventuring party, which actually get to do their stuff. Yeah, it would truly have to be the most dreadful movie ever made to be worse than this. Yes.

But in a way I admire that this somehow happened. Anyways, this has been Caravan of Garbage. We do this every week. Do you want to know what we're doing next week, Mason? Yeah. Well,

here's a hint. Wow. Incredible, right? And you can actually say that early if you head over to big sandwich.co where the videos always go up there early, but it's not the only thing there. There's a bunch of exclusive stuff behind a paywall.

Bonus content. Bonus podcast. That's right. Movie commentaries. Early videos. That's right. And our podcast, The Weekly Planet, where we talk movies and comics and TV shows,

that normally comes out Monday, just choked with ads. But you can get it Sunday ad-free there. We are going to be covering the new D&D movie. And maybe some famous Australian boys make an appearance. It's not us. It's someone actually famous. But who's to say? I don't know if I can say that.

Name them. Auntie Donna. We'll ask them. Yeah. All right. Thanks for watching, everybody. Grab that gem, you guys. We'll see you next week.

Thank you to Ben and Lawrence for the edit. Thanks, you guys. FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship Thanks, guys.