The sequel to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves exists on paper and nowhere else, and the reason why is the most honest thing anyone has said about the movie in three years.
Jonathan Goldstein, who co-wrote and co-directed the 2023 film with John Francis Daley, revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that the duo was hired to write a follow-up and delivered one.
It has not been made, and by Goldstein’s own account, it may never be.
“We actually wrote a sequel to Dungeons & Dragons. We were hired to write it,” Goldstein told ScreenRant. “I don’t know that it will see the light of day for a number of financial reasons. They’re expensive movies to make, but it’d be great fun to do it. We love that cast, and we think we wrote something that fans would like.”
‘Financial Reasons’ Is Studio Speak For ‘It Lost Money’
Strip the politeness off “financial reasons” and what’s left is arithmetic.
Honor Among Thieves grossed $205 million worldwide against a $150 million production budget, with a theatrical break-even sitting closer to $375 million once marketing gets factored in. It never came close. Paramount lost real money.
That fact has spent three years buried under the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes scores. 91% from critics. 92% from audiences. Glowing coverage from the trades, and a fandom that still brings the movie up as the beloved gem that deserved more.
None of it paid a single bill. Studios greenlight sequels with ticket stubs, not aggregator percentages, and the audience that supposedly loved this movie could not be bothered to buy any.
The Cleanest Case Study, Confirmed By The Man Who Made It
CBN made exactly this argument earlier this month when the box office started sending Hollywood the bill for a decade of running the Guardians of the Galaxy formula into the ground.
Honor Among Thieves was singled out as the cleanest case study of the whole disease.
An IP built on seriousness, stakes, and epic high fantasy, the same wellspring that gives you The Lord of the Rings, got handed to comedy directors and turned into a quip machine where nobody on screen takes anything seriously.
The verdict then was that the movie didn’t fail because audiences saw it and hated it.
It failed because they couldn’t be bothered to show up. Apathy, not anger. Now the co-director has confirmed what apathy costs. The sequel died in a drawer.
The Same Duo Is Now Steering Star Trek, With One Big Catch
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Goldstein’s comments came at Comic-Con, where he and Daley were promoting the new Star Trek movie they are writing and directing for Paramount, built around all-new characters and set further into the future.
On paper, that looks like Paramount losing money on the duo’s quippy fantasy adventure, refusing to fund a sequel to a movie critics adored, then handing the same two filmmakers the keys to Star Trek anyway.
CBN raised that exact red flag when the duo was first announced.
But there’s a catch, and it comes straight from CBN’s insider reporting.
As Cosmic Book News exclusively reported, David Ellison and Mike De Luca are out to save Star Trek, and insiders followed up with the specifics: the mandate is taking the franchise back to what made Wrath of Khan through The Next Generation work. Serious, sincere, event-scale science fiction. Not another quip machine.
Which means the shelved D&D sequel and the Star Trek reset are the same decision viewed from two angles. Ellison’s Paramount looked at the ledger, saw what the formula actually costs, and stopped ordering it. “Financial reasons” is not a scheduling casualty. It is the new regime declining to fund the old playbook.
The real test now belongs to Goldstein and Daley: whether the duo that turned high fantasy into a sitcom can deliver the serious Trek their new bosses are demanding.
The rest of Hollywood is still slower on the uptake. Masters of the Universe ran the identical camp-tone play on a fantasy legend this summer and won’t get anywhere near its $500 million break-even. The bill keeps arriving. The town keeps ordering the same meal.
