Netflix Is Making A ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ TV Series

Netflix is planning to roll for initiative. The streaming service is taking a big swing in the fantasy genre with The Forgotten Realms, a live-action series based on the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. The series comes from Shawn Levy, director of Deadpool & Wolverine, and Drew Crevello (WeCrashed), who wrote the pilot and will serve as showrunner.

Dungeons & Dragons, filled with elves, orcs, and all sorts of mythical creatures, is bigger than it has ever been right now. D&D-based video game Baldur’s Gate 3 sold 15 million copies last year and is the first game to win Game of the Year at all five major game award ceremonies. The 2023 fantasy heist comedy film Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, starring Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez, grossed over $200 million at the box office in 2023. Netflix is hoping that this series will be successful enough to launch a D&D cinematic universe.

Given the title of the series, it’s safe to assume the show will take place in the iconic fantasy land created at the start of the D&D series. Most D&D-related media, like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, and Honor Among Thieves, take place in the Forgotten Realms, so Levy and Crevello have plenty of source material to work with.

Executives at Hasbro, who own the rights to D&D, feel Netflix is a natural home for the first-ever Dungeons & Dragons series given that Netflix’s Stranger Things is partially responsible for the fantasy role-playing game’s current cultural resurgence. (Levy took interest in the D&D series because he is also director/producer on Stranger Things.)

There is currently no timetable as to when The Forgotten Realms will launch.