Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has taken its first turn at the box office.
The new Paramount and eOne movie grossed a strong $5.6 million in previews this week, including $4.1 million in Thursday evening shows and the rest from special screenings earlier in the week. The adventure epic expands into a total of 3,855 locations Friday morning, including a plethora of premium-format screens.
Directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, Dungeons & Dragons is based on Hasbro’s influential role-playing game and features a star-packed cast led by Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head and Hugh Grant. The film reunites Game Night helmers Goldstein and Daley, who directed from a script they wrote with Michael Gilio.
Tracking suggests the movie will open to a somewhat subdued $30 million domestically, but many box office analysts believe that number will come in higher thanks to stellar reviews and strong early audience reaction commending the movie’s smart sense of adventure and jovial spirit.
Paramount and eOne, which is owned by Hasbro, co-produced and co-financed the big-budget fantasy pic, which cost a reported $150 million to make before marketing. The film also launches in more than 50 markets overseas, including the U.K., where eOne is distributing.
Dungeons & Dragons is based on the seminal tabletop game first published in 1974. The game went on to inspire books, TV shows, video games and movies — including New Line’s ill-fated 2000 pic — among other media. If all goes well, Honor Among Thieves will launch a new movie franchise for Paramount and eOne. And either way, it expands the overall D&D universe for Hasbro.
Adapting games (be they video games or tabletop games) for the big screen has always been tricky, but there have been notable success stories of late in the video game space, including Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog franchise and Sony’s Uncharted, which debuted last year to $44 million.
Dungeons & Dragons, which made its world premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin earlier this month, hopes to win the weekend box office race. To do so, however, means bumping off Lionsgate’s John Wick: Chapter 4, which debuted to a rousing $73.8 million last weekend and could earn $30 million or more in its sophomore outing.
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