page_title: Dungeons & Dragons (film)
section_title: 1990–1997: TSR and studio deals
hierarchical_section_title: Dungeons & Dragons (film) / Development / Negotiations and funding / 1990–1997: TSR and studio deals
caption_attribution_description: English: Allan Zeman at the Ocean Park Hong Kong
context_page_description: Dungeons & Dragons is a 2000 British-American action adventure fantasy film directed by Courtney Solomon, written by Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien, and based on the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Among the more notable features of the otherwise poorly received film are cameo appearances by Richard O'Brien and Tom Baker. Parts of the film were made on location at Sedlec Ossuary. In the film, it follows an empress who tries to get hold of a mythical rod that will help her fight an evil warlock and enlists two thieves for help.
  Despite its poor box office performance and critical failure, a made-for-TV sequel, Wrath of the Dragon God was released in 2005. It was not a direct continuation of the storyline of the previous film, though Bruce Payne's character, Damodar, makes a return. A third film, The Book of Vile Darkness, was shot in 2011 and direct-to-DVD released in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2012.
context_section_description: In 1990, Solomon contacted staff from Dungeons & Dragons's publisher, TSR, Inc., under the guise of working on a school economics project; they informed him about studios in the past failing to produce a film based on the game due to having too little of an understanding of the RPG's X-factor. It took him 18 months to convince TSR to set up negotiations, but TSR finally agreed to it because of his upfront royalty being better than other studios the company worked with, according to vice president Ryan Dancey. Solomon obtained an option from TSR after writing a 30-page proposal showing how he would adapt the game and going through three months of "intense" broker dealing with the game publisher.
  Solomon went on a 18-month-long trip across the world funding the film once a draft of the screenplay was completed, and most of the financing depended on foreign distribution rights. During the trip, he met a leading businessman in Asia named Allan Zeman, who viewed the 24-year-old as a "young, ambitious, artistic person" as well as a "convincing salesman" of a project based on an enterprise with a huge fanbase. In early 1992, Zeman and Solomon formed Sweetpea Entertainment to fund Dungeons & Dragons and sell it to other investors.
  Originally, Solomon planned to have Dungeons & Dragons be a $100 million studio project with a big name in the director's chair; during development, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Renny Harlin, and Stan Winston were attached for directing the film at one point but dropped out. In addition to the script receiving positive coverage from the magazine Movieline, Premiere also announced the project in a 1995 issue when Winston was still signed on, revealing plot details such as a rogue lead, a magical dragon-controlling device, 14 creatures from the original game, and an effects-heavy final battle.
  A majority of studios and directors loved the screenplay, but turned away due to a recent history of big-budget box office failures in the fantasy genre, such as Willow (1988), Krull (1983), and Dragonheart (1996), and Justin Whalin's lack of star power. Solomon and the studios he encountered constantly conflicted with TSR, which wanted a direct-to-video release instead of the big-budget theatrical film the Canadian dreamed of. Cameron considered the project just before he did Titantic (1997), but the deal didn't suffice due to TSR's failure to come up with a merchandising deal that appealed to 20th Century Fox, where Cameron worked. Potential deals with Paramount Pictures and Lightstorm Entertainment were also destroyed due to strong disagreements on how to finance the film. Solomon's amount of focus on getting the film green-lit caused the relationship with his girlfriend to break apart.
caption: Courtney Solomon received help from Hong Kong entrepreneur Allan Zeman to fund Dungeons & Dragons.
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