‘We didn’t mean to unleash the greatest evil the world has ever known,” says Chris Pine’s voiceover. “But we’re gonna fix it.” In the forthcoming movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, Pine plays Edgin, a lutenist bard who, according to the blurb, leads a band of medieval misfits with special powers who undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry. Their enemy is played by Hugh Grant, hopefully channelling his villain from Paddington 2.
The release of the Dungeons & Dragons movie, next March, will be the culmination of a story more improbable than anything spawned by a Hollywood hack. As Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) approaches its half-century, the game, first played in a Wisconsin basement by a handful of geeks, is the most successful and popular role-playing game in the world, with a fanbase extending to the likes of Stephen King, Drew Barrymore, Dwayne Johnson, Elon Musk and, yes, Michael Gove.
