Behind the scenes on the new Dungeons and Dragons blockbuster: ‘It’s a beacon for all the secret D&D players’

Dungeons & Dragons does not have a great track record in the world of film. The first attempt to bring D&D to the big screen, in 2000, picked up eight Stinkers Bad Movie Award nominations; in 2010, Empire readers voted the film the 39^th worst of all time. The two films that followed, in 2005 and 2012, skipped the cinema entirely and went straight to DVD.

It’s not a promising start, but the latest attempt at creating a movie blockbuster version of the massively popular fantasty role-playing game throws the kitchen sink at it: there are special effects galore, Hugh Grant playing a roguish villain, Bridgerton star Regé-Jean Page as a noble Paladin and actual recognisable D&D mechanics at play.