Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Nearly Included Two More D&D Character Races
During a new golden age of fantasy films and television shows, "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" somehow managed to stand out from the crowd and deliver something fresh and unique. This is a movie that knows what to take seriously (the characters' motivations) and what not to take so seriously (everything else). The film beautifully captures the chaos, mistakes, selfishness, and comedy of a tabletop RPG session, one with hilarious cameos and a great Chris Pine performance.
"Dungeons & Dragons" is also a surprisingly great-looking movie, with a fantastic mix of VFX and practical effects for the variety of creatures in the film. We have not only essential "Dungeons & Dragons" creatures like, well, a dragon, but there's also a gelatinous cube and more esoteric creatures like the displacer beast, intellect devourer, and a mimic. What's more, there are plenty of practical suits in the film, including a dragonborn performed via puppetry and motion capture, a baby tabaxi, and an aarakocra.
Yes, it's hardcore nerd stuff, because this is a film with great attention to detail. That includes the various fantasy races on display, including Faerûn, orcs, and halflings. There is so much going on in the film, and so many creatures on film, it's hard to think about what more the filmmakers could have included. And yet, we almost got two more "Dungeons & Dragons" races in "Honor Among Thieves."
Speaking with ScreenRant, producer Jeremy Latcham said they planned to portray both a tortle and a grippli. So why didn't they make it in? Latcham cited the studio's cost concerns, "And they're like, 'Oh, how much is this joke gonna cost? We can't afford another really expensive joke.'"
Oh, what could have been!
Tortles are, well, not far off from what they sound like, a race of intelligent turtle creatures from "Dungeons & Dragons." They are very much literal tortoises, only they gave thumbs. According to Latcham, they initially wanted to include a tortle in the scene where Pine's Edgin the bard and Michelle Rodriguez' Holga the barbarian escape from prison and steal some horses. Apparently, the plan was to build a practical tortle that would chase after the two thieves to try and get back his horse. "And it was going to be this very slow moving chase scene with a tortle just trying to get by," Latcham said. Sadly, the joke was just too expensive, and it would slow down the movie significantly, so it was scrapped.
As for the grippli, those are amphibian humanoids (basically tree frog people). Though Latcham didn't specify where the grippli would be in the movie, he said that the plan was to build a "fully realized" practical suit. "There was no talk of doing this grippli CG," the producer said. "If we're doing a grippli, it's gonna be a puppet, could be a guy, could be puppeteered. Hands being moved by rods and all this stuff." Once again, the cost of building a practical puppet for what would essentially be just a joke proved too high and the idea was scrapped.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely we'll get to see these two creatures appear in a potential sequel. Though "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" overperformed in its opening weekend, but has grossed just over $200 million worldwide against a budget of $150 million, meaning it's probably not going to turn much of a profit. That's a shame, because this was a legitimately great movie with potential for so much more. Maybe VOD and home media will help boost the revenue? We'll have to wait and see.