It looks like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves succeeds with its d20 box office check, rolling a $38 million opening weekend.
The big screen live-action fantasy film based on the tabletop roleplaying game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson made a solid debut. The marketing push from Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro included product tie-ins, such as a Secret Lair limited edition set for Magic: The Gathering to supplements and rules featured in D&D Beyond.
But are the opening weekend numbers enough to qualify Honor Among Thieves as a success? Will it level up to sequels and spinoffs, as initially planned? Check out the details revealed so far.
According to Box Office Mojo, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves made a domestic box office gross of $38,500,000.
Weekend Box Office Estimates: #DnDMovie $38.5M #JohnWick4 $28.2M #HisOnlySon $5.5M https://t.co/Ene6OQnFrV pic.twitter.com/sDWHzyA05W
— Box Office Mojo (@boxofficemojo) April 2, 2023
Adding on the international haul of $33,000,000, the big screen fantasy adventure based on the D&D IP has a solid $71,500,000 opening weekend take. That is a respectable box office result, particularly when compared to the domestic opening of Shazam! Fury of the Gods hitting only $30,111,158.
With its opening weekend, Honor Among Thieves brings down the mighty John Wick: Chapter 4, which had been dominating the theaters since debuting last March 24, 2023. But the fourth entry in the John Wick hyper-action franchise still made $28.2 million, bringing its total worldwide box office up to $244,878,306. Plus, John Wick 4 still had a better opening domestic weekend result of $73,817,950.
But is it successful enough? With a $150 million estimated production budget, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves still has a ways to go before it can be considered profitable. Hasbro and Paramount Pictures would most certainly have been looking for a bigger opening weekend result. Note that Creed 3 had a $58 million opening while Scream VI opened with $44 million. And both of these recent films had a much lower budget than the D&D movie.
Could this be a result of the earlier reported boycott by Dungeons & Dragons fans due to the Open Gaming License controversy? The OGL 1.1 issue left a very bitter taste to fans and third party creators for the world’s most popular tabletop roleplaying game, so it’s not unlikely that this is part of the continued fallout from that fiasco.
While it might not be the box office home run that Hasbro and Paramount was hoping for, the film is highly rated with both critics and audience scores. Good word of mouth can see an upswing in the second weekend numbers. But it’s going to have tough competition coming in with the Super Mario Bros. Movie arriving soon.
In any case, how Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ultimately reaches its final box office tally will be significant in setting up the future of the franchise. How it performs will most certainly affect the planned spinoff series being developed for Paramount+.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves stars Chris Pine, Hugh Grant, Michelle Rodriguez, Sophia Lillis, Justice Smith, Regé-Jean Page, Daisy Head, and Chloe Coleman. The fantasy adventure is currently running in theaters worldwide.
