The Dragonlance Chronicles would be a great movie if done right but that's a risk many people aren't willing to make.

The Dragonlance Chronicles, i.e., Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Winter Night, and Spring Dawning would make an excellent television series. I've been re-reading them as of late, and this is my professional opinion. It also seems to be shared by Joe Manganiello, which I should have suspected, but never realized. Admittedly, this picture embedded below is already three years old (from Joe's twitter account). However, that isn't to say that it won't happen. It's just that people are talking about it, and talk can take years as we've seen from other intellectual properties.

I would (of course) love to see three movies come out with the kind of attention to detail that lavished The Lord of the Rings and most of a Game of Thrones. Krynn (the world of Dragonlance) is richly detailed, does a lot of really good things with Dungeons & Dragons's intellectual property (which honestly can be a bit goofy at times), and has surprisingly deep characters. It's a true epic. Every character is crucial to the plot as a whole, and everything seems to be carefully constructed with a clear finale in mind. It goes without saying that someone of Joe Manganiello's influence might be able to actually make this thing happen. However, there are interesting roadblocks that Tracy Hickman has written about in terms of what he calls, "The Original Bad Deal."

Here's the gist: Tracy and Laura Hickman and Margaret Weiss had to sign away any rights or copyrights to their Dragonlance creations in order to get the opportunity to create Dragonlance (keep in mind that this was 1981 and publishers had a lot more power than they do today). So, as far as the Dragonlance Intellectual Property goes, it belongs with a company that is very risk averse (Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro). They seem to have decided that the risk of damaging their intellectual property by making them into a film that tanks is worth less money to them than simply leaving them as books. Shrug. So it may never happen.

It is an interesting lesson though, right? The intersection of art and making money/profit is a fascinating one. If only every studio could afford to take a risk. Imagine the possibilities of all the great and probably terrible shows we could have. It would definitely make things more entertaining.