The live-action Dungeons & Dragons TV series just made its saving throw. The long-in-the-works series has landed at Netflix. Deadline reports that the series will now be called The Forgotten Realms, a meaningful title to any D&D enthusiast.

The series was originally earmarked for Paramount+, which has a cozy relationship with D&D owners Hasbro; Paramount holds the movie rights for their Transformers and G.I. Joe franchises, among others. That series was to have been spearheaded by Rawson Marshall Thurber, of Dodgeball and Red Notice fame. However, amid Hasbro‘s shedding of its eOne subsidiary and turmoil at Paramount, that series did not move forward. The new incarnation of the series, The Forgotten Realms, will be executive produced by Shawn Levy, helmer of last year’s box-office-busting Deadpool and Wolverine. Levy is a natural choice for the series, given that his other Netflix series, Stranger Things, is rife with D&D references and has helped introduce it to a new generation. It will be written and showrun by Drew Crevello, who co-created the Jared Leto/Anne Hathaway miniseries WeCrashed.

What Is ‘Forgotten Realms’?

Forgotten Realms was created by Canadian writer and game designer Ed Greenwood, before Dungeons & Dragons even existed. He began writing stories about the setting in the official D&D magazine, Dragon, in the 1970s, before selling the property to D&D‘s then-owners in 1986. It has since become one of the most popular settings in the world of D&D. It is more open-ended than some D&D settings, like Dragonlance. Some of the more notable characters in the setting include the dark elf Drizzt Do’Urden, the star of a popular series of novels by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore, the barbarian Wulfgar, and the wizard Elminster. Many of the most popular D&D spin-offs are also set in the Forgotten Realms, including the Baldur’s Gate series of video games and the 2023 film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

There have been a number of attempts to expand the D&D franchise into the realm of live action. It first hit the big screen in 2000 with a critically derided film starring Thora Birch, Marlon Wayans, and an extremely hammy Jeremy Irons; it flopped at the box office, but did spawn two direct to video sequels. Honor Among Thieves was better received, but brought in middling grosses in theaters.

Netflix‘s The Forgotten Realms series is in development; no casting or release date have yet been announced.

via Collider