In the current blockbuster economy, the screenplay is the cheapest thing a franchise owns. That is the quiet lesson buried inside Jonathan Goldstein’s admission that a “Dungeons & Dragons” sequel already exists on the page and still cannot find a path to production — not because the story is missing, but because the arithmetic around it no longer adds up.

Speaking at Comic-Con, Goldstein — who co-wrote and co-directed 2023’s “Honor Among Thieves” alongside John Francis Daley — said the pair were hired to write the follow-up and delivered a finished draft. “We actually wrote a sequel to Dungeons & Dragons. We were hired to write it,” he said, before adding the caveat that has become the headline: “I don’t know that it will see the light of day for a number of financial reasons.” As Deadline first reported his remarks, he put it bluntly — “They’re expensive movies to make.”

The context is a case study in how the theatrical middle has collapsed. “Honor Among Thieves” cost a reported $151 million, earned warm reviews and a genuinely devoted fanbase, and grossed roughly $205 million worldwide. A decade ago those numbers would have made a sequel automatic. In today’s math, where a tentpole must clear well past twice its budget once marketing is folded in, a $205 million result reads as a shortfall rather than a hit — and Paramount, which financed the film with Entertainment One, has shown no appetite to double down.

Goldstein’s frustration is really an argument about what studios now reward. “It’d be great fun to do it. We love that cast, and we think we wrote something that fans would like,” he said — a pitch resting on goodwill, ensemble chemistry from Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Sophia Lillis and Justice Smith, and a brand with a built-in tabletop audience. In an earlier era that package sells itself. Right now none of it clears the capital-risk conversation, and a completed script sits on the wrong side of the ledger.

The reveal also quietly reframes the wider screen universe the 2023 film was meant to anchor. Honor Among Thieves arrived positioned as the opening move of a Dungeons & Dragons franchise; three years on, the follow-up it was designed to set up is written, cast-ready and shelved, with no greenlight and no timeline attached.

For a property whose entire fantasy is the roll of the dice, the irony lands clean: the campaign is written, the party is assembled, and the only player refusing to take a seat at the table is the one holding the money.

Tags: ip-strategy, box-office, Paramount Pictures, Dungeons & Dragons, Jonathan Goldstein

Goldstein has a finished ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ sequel — and no studio math that greenlights it

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