Fantasy screenplay

[Heritage]

Hey, all! Just had to let you know about a project me and a friend are starting on.

Ever since I saw the laughable Dungeons & Dragons movie, I've wanted to see a film that showed fantasy the way roleplayers actually play - the screw-ups, the hare-brained schemes and the inter-party bickering. As much as I love the LOTR movies, I still feel something is missing.

Jean-Luc Goddard said the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie; bearing that in mind, my friend and I have started working on a fantasy screenplay that we hope to sell. It's about a young knight-protector (your basic paladin/templar type) who joins up with an adventuring company known as 'Raven's Crew', and sees that while these folks definintely do a lot of good, adventuring is primarily a business to them, and his values are very different from theirs, which are far more pragmatic.

The basic tone we're shooting for is closer to 'Pirates of the Carribean' than 'Return of the King', with rich, deeply flawed characters, stirring adventure, and a great deal of humor.

I'll keep you all posted as things go along - wish us luck!

[SnakeEyes]

Sounds interesting. Good luck! ::thumbsup

Don't forget to talk to WotC or the Tolkien Society (I think it's them who own Tolkiens copyrights now...) if you do sell it, otherwise you could be in trouble. ::crazy

I really looked forward to the DnD movie... why did they pick such an awful cast? If they'd picked people who could act, then the movie might have been saved... (note emphasis on might).

SnakeEyes

[Heritage]

Don't forget to talk to WotC or the Tolkien Society (I think it's them who own Tolkiens copyrights now...) if you do sell it, otherwise you could be in trouble.

I'm actually trying to go generic to the point of avoiding legal issues, if such a thing is possible in this litiginous era ::wink; no non-human races (also saves on cost for whoever produces and directs it), my own mythology and pantheons, none of the copywritten terms, and the spells will be our own.

The 'knight-protector' has no healing or magical abilites, so he's not a true paladin but more of an oathbound warrior, the two roguey types are refered to as an 'engineer' and 'acrobat', since that what their true professions are, and the cleric is a 'priest'. The two magic-users are a 'wild mage' (who's somewhere between an non-religious druid and a Bjornaer from Ars Magica) and a school-trained 'elemental mage', though we may call him a 'wizard', 'sorcerer', or 'conjurer' and laugh at WotC's attempts to copyright those terms.

The main reason to do this (other than saving money ::biggrin) is to not be bound by anyone's ulterior motives; showing heroes in a less-than-heroic light doesn't sell rulebooks, and the Tolkien estate has a certain image to preserve. Without these two organizations breathing down our necks, we can write the kind of story we want to tell.

I have no doubt the WotC would try some sort of legal action, but I'm hoping to show that by drawing on universal concepts demonstrated in several works of both fantasy fiction and roleplaying games that the story is not based on any one pre-existing system or world. Will the prospect of potential legal battles scare away buyers? Perhaps, but we're going to write it anyway, just to say we did ::thumbsup