Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith join eagerly-awaited Dungeons and Dragons movie
Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith. (Getty images)
Michelle Rodriguez and Justice Smith will join Chris Pine in a movie adaptation of the renowned tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons.
The movie is set to be directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the duo who co-directed Game Night and co-wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming. The former starred Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as a married gamer couple. Goldstein and Daley have also written the script based on an earlier draft by Michael Gilio.
Pine (Star Trek, Wonder Woman) has been previously confirmed to star in the Dungeons and Dragons movie and will be joined by Rodriguez (Fast and Furious) and Smith (Detective Pikachu, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), although plot details are thin on the ground. The franchise, which began in the 1970s, formed the basis for many fantasy video games and remains popular in its own right today.
The film is currently set for release in May 2022, following delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This will mark the first feature film release based on the Wizards of the Coast owned property since 2000’s underwhelmingly received Dungeons and Dragons film starring Jeremy Irons. Hasbro/eOne and Paramount are jointly producing and financing, with Hasbro planning films on other toy franchises My Little Pony and Mr. Potato Head.
Rodriguez came out as bisexual in a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly, stating: “I’ve gone both ways. I do as I please.” She’s set to star in the Fast and Furious sequel F9, for which a teaser trailer was released during the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Smith, meanwhile, came out as queer in an Instagram post last year. Posting an image from a Black Lives Matter protest in New Orleans, he shared that he and Queen Sugar actor Nicholas Ashe are a couple.
“We chanted ‘Black Trans Lives Matter’ ‘Black Queer Lives Matter’ ‘All Black Lives Matter’,” says the post. “As a Black queer man myself, I was disappointed to see certain people eager to say Black Lives Matter, but hold their tongue when trans/queer was added.”
