Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves didn’t make its expected money in the box office. It barely topped $200 million with Hasbro taking an impairment charge of $25 million (that’s not necessarily a loss, but a lack of hitting the expected revenue) in Q2 2023. That was the release quarter of the film.
But, it’s highly rated, exploded the interest in D&D and has been a streaming stalwart on Paramount+ and Netflix in international markets. In fact, last year it was top 15 for Paramount’s now-profitable streaming service and top 25 for Netflix, while not being available in the United States — until later this month.
If, like me, you want another film or even a series, Honor Among Thieves doing well on Netflix is vital. The D&D documentary and various series projects are stuck — the doc was originally announced for a 50th anniversary release while the only pre-production series was dumped by Paramount. The supposed Baldur’s Gate 3 x Netflix project hasn’t gone from rumor to announcement yet.
There’s a chance that Netflix wants to see if Honor Among Thieves does well in the US as a kind of trial balloon to see if they should pick up the pre-production Rawson Marshall Thurber D&D series that’s currently being shopped.
Netflix has a Magic: The Gathering series coming, which is different from the just announced Legendary MtG movie and series. Hasbro’s current movie/series rights philosophy is to not bond with a single production company nor a single a platform, but to spread their various properties to the highest bidder — they are also reducing their own investments, withdrawing from the costs of production nearly totally.
There is one concern to have about Honor Among Thieves being able to succeed on Netflix. Currently the most similar series and movies aren’t good.
That should change rapidly once the algorithm starts seeing who is watching the movie. And yes, these suggestions are individual, but as someone who has rewatched several D&D adjacent projects on Netflix I would expect to see Shadow & Bone, Merlin, BBC’s Robin Hood and several other witchy series. Instead, there’s these selections.
Top photo is from the Thieves Gallery, the NPC stat blocks for the main characters in the film, which all include damage boosts similar to the 2025 Monster Manual.
Every year I publish a look back at my favorite writing, podcast and video appearances for the year. This helps me remember what I’ve done, re-up things to people who discovered me late in the year and when attempting to freelance it gives me a handy spot to find work to share with editors and other hiring managers.
Dungeons & Dragons
The most popular story in the history of Full Moon Storytelling is no longer about sports. My essay on how to use third places to amplify verisimilitude surpassed the sports and cultures essay and then lapped it, twice in just a year. This helped boost Full Moon Storytelling to have 74% more views than last year. Alos, in 2023 FMS had more total views and visitors than the total of either from its founding in 2014 to 2022. Federating via WordPress helped contribute to that growth as well.
D&D: Honor Among Thieves had an interesting release to judge as a success or not. Opening week was fine, but not great. The falloff was significant, and yet there are many reasons to think that there will be a sequel. It was a massive success when it came to marketing D&D and is one of the most streamed movies of 2023. My fascination with the mainstreaming of the hobby by Hollywood is one of my favorite writings.
Ended the year as the 8th most popular movie to purchase on Google, Rakuten and Amazon.
It spent 246 days in Google’s top 10 most purchased movies & shows again globally. That’s basically every day it was available.
On Paramount+, its primary streaming platform, it spent 228 days in the top 10 globally good for 9th overall. It spent the last weekend of 2023 in 6th worldwide and 4th in the USA on P+
On iTunes it finished 12th, with 224 days in the top 10.
In most Asia it was streamed on HBO Max. It spent 83 days in the top 10 globally for HBO movies, despite only being available in limited markets.
In much of Latin America it was on Star+. It finished 11th among movies on that platform, spending 46 days in the top 10.
Backgrounds continue to be my specialty. The most popular released this year was the Weaver, working its way into the top 5 all time.
During a vacation I saw roads with funky names and decided they can inspire D&D and other fantasy settings. You too can find inspiration in normal places.
Why do I keep a d20 in my pocket? Because it gives me a sense of belonging.
I sponsored two soccer teams. Our Flag Means Offside FC and What We Do On The Sidelines FC had opposite records on the field, but they’re both #1 in my heart. I’m already sponsored a spring 2024 team. I can’t wait to see the new jersey.
Sounders and other soccer
Back in 2008 I founded Sounder at Heart. In 2019 I left to work for Tacoma Defiance and Reign FC, rejoining SaH in late 2020. This year the current Managing Editor, Jeremiah Oshan took the site independent. As part of that effort I now write the twice-weekly newsletter now called the Ship’s Log.
I also help maintain the Depth Chart and cover Defiance.
Risk Intelligence
For Factal I also help with a newsletter — Benchmarker. Similar to the SaH newsletter, the open rates are climbing, click-through rates are climbing and distribution is growing. Mostly, my job there is to help people within Global Security, Business Continuity, Resilience and Crisis find our free resources (and then our paid service). The work we do there helps keep people alive and business operating. You can read more about that in our annual recap.
People outside of security and continuity fields will enjoy things I don’t do — the Factal Forecast and The Debrief. The Forecast is our editors’ look at the planned news of the next week. The Debrief dives deep into an issue that isn’t on the front page of US media, but needs attention.
Giant Freaking Robot says that Netflix is in talks to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to the screen. They don’t know if it would be a movie or a series yet, but the series makes more sense considering the amount of content in the video game.
There’s also a long simmering rumor that once Joe Manganiello gets done with he and his brother’s D&D documentary he’ll resume pitching his long-sought Dragonlance series. Manganiello is helping push the previous efforts at the doc over the line, there will be archival footage of many of the early particulars plus modern interviews with those in the current culture.
Yes, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast let a lot of people go this week. The weakness of their position may be why Giant Freaking Robot has the exclusive about the deal. It’s a way to get funds for the struggling company fast.
Additionally, on Plex and Freevee there are three recently new D&D shows. On D&D Adventures you can watch a Heroes Feast (D&D cooking), Faster Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! (D&D comedy where everyone dies) and Encounter Party (an edited actual play). The Free Ad-Supported Television channel also has the original D&D cartoon, DesiQuest and Rivals of Waterdeep.
While chatting about Wish, Chris Pine suggested that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves 2 is possibly/maybe going to happen. It wasn’t a strong statement, but it’s also the strongest since the co-writer/director duo were talking before the writers and actors strikes.
“I’ve heard some rumors about it,” he tells us of a potential follow-up. “But I don’t know anything yet. But I feel pretty confident that it may happen.” When we ask if he’d be happy to return, Pine responds: “Absolutely.”
Because a large part of that falling short was due to the compacted nature of releases that have meant a majority of films missed their targets this year. Releases are stacked up next to each other due to how the covid-19 pandemic reduced available theater openings for two years.
Because the TV shows ordered, TV in development (Kolstad) and the documentary would be boosted by the greater attention that major films still get over prestige television. There would be synchronicity, and unlike Marvel, Star Wars there isn’t yet danger of being overwhelmed with barely connected interoperable plots.
Because if they act quickly the main cast are available (a small benefit of the pauses due to the strikes). Pine has only 1 project (he’s said Star Trek IV v2 is dead). Rodriguez has 1 project, Regé-Jean Page has 1 project, Justice Smith has 4 projects. Sophia Lillis has 1 project. Chloe Coleman has 1 project. The cast that advocated for school D&D and grandparents D&D and just playing D&D in general is available now. That won’t be true for long.
That last point may be the most important. Long tails are rare in the current media environment. Many studios give up on “failures” rather than wait. The path to cancellation is quick. But Paramount and Hasbro haven’t given up on Dungeons & Dragons. It sits there on Paramount+ getting attention as one of the best found family films ever, a highly rated fantasy and it continues to help earn renewals at Paramount+ globally.
So yes, I agree with Gizmodo on this point — released D&D 2, you cowards.
tl;dr – I’ve become a horse-race style observer of the D&D movie because I see the numbers as a proxy for acceptance of a hobby that remains just on the edge of pop culture.
It is inarguable that the D&D movie didn’t turn a profit at the box office. It was pulled from theaters after earning ~208 million dollars. Production costs were reported to be ~$150 million, some of that budget was higher due to filming during the early stages of the pandemic and across four nations (Iceland, Ireland, England and the U.S.A). Those costs were supposedly split evenly between Paramount and Hasbro, but Hasbro only held distribution rites in the U.K. and Canada due to their ownership of eOne at the time.
Paramount reported in Q1 that they spent at most $62 million on advertising the movie (that number is bundled with another film). Hasbro never revealed their ad spend, but did take a $25 million impairment due to the film not hitting theater expectations.
It is a highly rated film. And some would consider those box office numbers a failure or a flop. I have spent way too much time in certain corners of the internet arguing how it wasn’t flop or failure.
But my evidence isn’t raw dollar numbers. So why do I argue?
Part of it is because I’m a marketer that loves D&D. One piece of guidance I use is the massive increase in search around the movie.
Red is D&D the game. Blue is D&D the movie. The first blue spike is when the movie’s name was released. The second blue spike is the Super Bowl ad. The third is the release buildup. All are echoed more strongly in the game’s search results.
Search results don’t directly connect to purchasing. They are merely an indicator. But that indicator is strong, very strong. No other event in modern D&D has the spike creation that Honor Among Thieves did.
Also, a ton of people are still watching D&D: Honor Among Thieves. It’s been available in the United States via Paramount+ for more than three months. From its release week on streaming it has been a top ten movie every week.
D&D: Honor Among Thieves was #9 heading into this weekend.
Just prior to the current weekend it finally released in the U.K. and Ireland. It is number one on Paramount+ in both markets. When it was released in Canada on Netflix, it was number two for most of the first week. It releases on Amazon Prime globally on August 25.
It ranks when bigger box offices successes don’t.
Some streaming isn’t captured. For example, I just watched it on Alaska Airlines. It was the third listed movie in the New Movies section, again ahead of much more popular films.
For 35 days it was number one or two on iTunes. In the 110 days it has been available there are only seven days it is not in the top 10.
On Google Play it had a 44 day run at #1. Once on general release it has never dropped below 7th.
On Amazon it wasn’t quite as popular, but the D&D movie was still strong.
On less popular services it still did well, on Rakuten it just leapt to number one last week, for example.
How does a movie that fell a bit, but not a lot, short of financial success metrics (pre-March 2020 people would use a doubling of production+marketing, now the 1.5 is more common) do this well in the modern environment?
How did D&D: The Brand (not the game) have a 74% increase in revenue when the movie was a failure? Probably because of licensed goods. There are a lot of them. I bought the Healing Potion mints for example.
Why do I argue with people about this?
Again, I’m a marketer.
But I’m also a nerd who had his D&D books knocked out of his hands walking the halls of high school. I had a parent think that the game was the path to Satan. The moral outrage and general jocks v. nerds aspect of my relationship to the game came up a lot when I was interviewed for “Hero’s Feast: Finding Community through Dungeons and Dragons.”
I’m lucky enough to see, and help, my other main hobby grow in popularity. Soccer in America is mainstream. It’s popular enough in the Seattle area that a hobby website can go independent and fully employ at least one person.
And yes, there are similar successes in D&D. Critical Role is the largest of those. They aren’t alone. These are still often niche cases, and not an indicator of mainstream acceptance, as much as there can be a mainstream in a world where every hobby and interest has its own channel.
Honor Among Thieves was an opening for something like the mainstreaming of comics. It may not have gotten there. It might have. There’s still a D&D TV show in the works, as part Hasbro Entertainment and in cooperation with Paramount.
Paramount and Hasbro also keep expanding where D&D: Honor Among Thieves is available. That’s uncommon with niche properties. The Peripheral was just cancelled. Willow was cancelled. It’s easy to cancel shows and movies that aren’t massively popular.
Streaming continues to sort itself out. Paramount was late to the game. They are moving ahead of older streaming platforms because of their original movies and their deep catalog of TV.
And I guess that means D&D: Honor Among Thieves judgement as a financial success is a lot more like a campaign than a one-shot. There was no overnight hit, just a consistent leveling up and growth over the past six months as the fans of the game keep watching, keep showing others the movie and keep powering the growth of D&D to heights that us 1980s basement dwellers thought was just a dream.
