Ravenloft joins a growing list of yet unrealized tabletop screen adaptations

Earlier this month, Deadline reported that yet another slice of Dungeons & Dragons’ high fantasy world might be adapted into a live-action television series. This latest pitch focuses on everyone’s favorite count/darklord/vampire, Strahd von Zarovich. Netflix has ordered what the streaming platform described as a prestige gothic horror drama with John August writing and a list of executive producers that includes Alfonso Cuarón, all working with Hasbro Entertainment. 

I say “might” above because the list of abandoned or stalled out projects from Hasbro Entertainment (formerly eOne) stretches back a full decade and several attempts to leverage the growing cultural cache of both D&D and Magic: The Gathering. That lists balloons further when you add Wizards of the Coast’s in-house actual play productions: their stewardship of Rivals of Waterdeep lasted about a year, and the D&D FAST Channel Adventures, which hosted Encounter Party and Faster Purple Worm (among others) at launch in 2023, has seemingly spun out or been aborted.

There’s not much to say about the untitled Ravenloft TV series beyond the PR copy promising to “tackle adventure through character-driven stories of dark magic and supernatural intrigue.” Cuarón as executive producer makes some sense for realizing Ravenloft’s campaign of psychological horror, corruption, and power dynamics, but the Golden Globe-winning director’s oeuvre tends towards more grounded storytelling — Roma (2018) and Disclaimer (2024) were his last film and television creations, respectively. It’s more informative to place the pitch alongside Hasbro’s other entertainment ambitions to see what, if anything, gives it a better chance to grace the light of a streaming platform’s algorithm.

The first high profile experiment tapped Joe and Anthony Russo directly after the release of Avengers: Endgame in 2019 to write and create an original animated series for Netflix with Brandon Routh voicing the white mana-aligned Planeswalker Gideon Jura. The Russo team departed over creative differences early on and were replaced by longtime Transformers writer-producer Jeff Kline. Deadline reported in September 2024 that Routh claimed the series was dead — much like Jura in MTG’s story — when in reality Hasbro had apparently scrapped all previous work, including Routh’s involvement, and returned to square one with Visions writer Terry Matalas now leading creative development. That was two years ago, and the project has sat quiet ever since.

An entirely different MTG adaptation is currently being developed in partnership with Legendary Entertainment with the goal of producing a “live-action film and television universe,” according to Deadline. No writers, directors, or producers are currently attached to the film (slated to release first) or TV series, instead sold to us only through executive speech that aligns with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks’ vision for MTG the trading card game: fandom activation.

“We pride ourselves on being thoughtful caretakers of singular, beloved IP, and no property better fits that description than Magic: The Gathering,” said Mary Parent, Legendary’s chairman of worldwide production. “Alongside the fantastic Hasbro team, we look forward to creating a multimedia universe that thrills longstanding fans and creates a broad wave of new ones.”

D&D’s turn toward the silver screen had been percolating since 2016 and finally took an initial shape as Honor Among Thieves (2023) from directors and screenwriters Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, along with Michael Gilio. According to The Playlist, Goldstein and Daley have a finished script for a sequel film but cannot yet find a publisher willing to swallow a budget likely higher than Honor Among Thieves’ $150 million. The fate of any more live-action D&D films relies solely on its creators’ enthusiasm, for now.

Hasbro’s plans for television earnestly began in January 2021 with a pitch for a D&D streaming series penned by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad. Early reports hinted at a story focused on the Underdark realm and its most storied denizen, Drizzt Do’Urden. Kolstad fell off the project at some undisclosed point (a clear trend at this point) and was replaced by Dodgeball and Red Notice director Rawson Marshall Thurber in 2023, with Paramount+ slated to host eight initial episodes. Drew Crevello (WeCrashed) was recruited to run the show in April 2023. Despite the meteoric success of Baldur’s Gate 3 (and Honor Among Thieves), Paramount+ dropped the project in May 2024 and left Hasbro to shop for another home. 

Since then, Stranger Things executive producer Shawn Levy was attached to the streaming series, it was officially named The Forgotten Realms, and then it was then pronounced dead. That last bit was only reported last week as a footnote in the Deadline story about Ravenloft’s adaptation, an inauspicious mark against Strahd’s chances to actually appear next to Bridgerton and Squid Games.

The last television initiative, and the one with the most mustard, is an adaptation of Baldur’s Gate 3 being developed for HBO with Craig Mazin as writer, executive producer, and showrunner. Deadline reported in February of this year that one-time Wizards of the Coast employee and D&D game designer Chris Perkins (now at Darrington Press) will serve as a consultant. Work will not move forward on this show, which will follow immediately after the culmination of the video games’ narrative, until Mazin has wrapped filming on the third and final season of The Last of Us.

Television and film seem nearly impossible to create, nowadays. Every piece of media released into the world is either the work of colossal dedication (or burnout) from artists or colossal money (weighed against tax writeoffs) from the corporate interests who control distribution methods, usually both. The only lasting success stories in the tabletop RPG realm come from Critical Role’s The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein animated series, which arguably leaned on its casts’ professional associations and the strength of its intellectual property to raise more than $11 million in crowdfunding. Both probably mollified Amazon Prime’s hesitancy to take risks. 

Hasbro suffers from a terminal case of eyes bigger than its stomach. We can criticize the wisdom of continuously wading into precarious enterprises — such as publishing video games — but the ultimate success or failure of projects lies beyond the toy company’s control. That includes a live-action portrayal of Barovia and Castle Ravenloft.