He’s romanced Wonder Woman (and will again very soon in Wonder Woman 1984!), and he’s played Captain Kirk in multiple Star Trek movies. He even played the dad in A Wrinkle in Time. Now, Chris Pine is set to conquer yet another one of nerddom’s mightiest peaks: Dungeons & Dragons.
The Hollywood Reporter says Pine is negotiating to star in Paramount and Hasbro/eOne’s new adaptation of the popular tabletop game, which is coming to the big screen courtesy of — appropriately enough — Game Night directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. The pair also handled the latest script rewrite for the project, which has been rolling around like a drunken 20-sided die since at least 2016, when Ansel Elgort was circling the lead.
We don’t have any clue about plot details at this stage, but with Pine now aboard, and Daley and Goldstein (who’ve proven themselves in the action-comedy realm; in addition to their hit Game Night, they were also among the writers on Spider-Man: Homecoming) leading the charge, we can kind of get a sense of what the tone of this new D&D film might be. (Was anyone a fan of the 2000 film starring Thora Birch and Jeremy Irons among others?)
With a heightened profile in the popular imagination thanks to Stranger Things — and, obviously, legions of fans of the game itself — we’re cautiously optimistic that this time, the film might actually happen.